Joking Apart - Scheduling

Scheduling

After the pilot was transmitted on 12 July 1991, the BBC were interested in a series. However, Moffat had signed on to write the third and fourth series of Press Gang as one twelve-episode block so it was not until 1992 that they produced the series. After being postponed from the autumn schedules, the first series was transmitted on Thursday evenings on BBC2 from 7 January until 11 February 1993.

The second series was filmed in late 1993. However, the controller of BBC2, Michael Jackson, had little faith in the project at the time, which, according to the writer, he now admits was wrong. Jackson felt that it was too mainstream for BBC2 and not mainstream enough for BBC1. The second series was scheduled to air from 11 June 1994, but was delayed many times. Bathurst articulates the group's frustration at the delay:

Every so often, I’d get a call from the producer saying, it’s going out at this time. The publicity people would be alerted, then we’d get a call saying no, it’s not, it’s been put back. That happened six times, I think, altogether – seven reschedules in a year or so ... It was extraordinary and inexplicable, and just one of these things that happen. I mean, a lot of shows are left on people’s desks and they hardly get seen, and Joking Apart was certainly one of those. Meanwhile, they were making about four series of The Brittas Empire, and you thought, "Bloody Hell! Come on, surely….?" To my mind, our show was a very superior product, and it upset me that other shows, which I, personally, felt were broader and less interesting, were getting precedence.

The first series was repeated in preparation for the six episodes of the second series, which began transmission on Tuesday evenings from 3 January until 7 February 1995. The second series was only transmitted once even though the BBC had paid to show it twice. Moffat feels that the delay damaged the series because such bad scheduling hinders returning audiences and that the two-year gap meant that it seemed as if Mark "had been banging on about this sodding divorce for an awfully long time!"

After winning the Montreux award it seemed inevitable that the show would get a third series. At a Christmas party, a BBC executive had plans for the ratings of a third series "to go like Everest", indicating a steep slope with his hands. Bathurst replied, "But, Everest goes down the other side ..." The show was not recommissioned. Moffat says that he had no idea for a third series anyway, as it would have been difficult to contrive how a group of people who did not particularly like each other would get together so regularly.