Production
The BBC were wary of the sketch, and reluctantly agreed to let it go ahead on the condition that the studio audience were heard to protest loudly, then invade the set at the sketch's conclusion. This was poorly executed: the audience began booing and shouting too early (those who weren't heckling were laughing), and because of studio fire regulations, only a limited section of the crowd were allowed to rush onto the studio floor; the rest simply sat there looking awkward. (As Roger Wilmut pointed out in the book From Fringe To Flying Circus, a genuinely shocked audience would have reacted with an embarrassed silence.)
Following its initial broadcast of the sketch in 1970, the BBC wiped the sketch from the master tape and replaced it with the "Spot the Braincell" sketch from episode 7 of the second series ("The Attila the Hun Show"). However, when the second series was released on BBC Video in 1985, episode 13 was "restored", thanks to the discovery of a (low quality) copy of the sketch that appears to be sourced from an off-air recording or a foreign (probably American) duplicate of the original show. This restored episode was finally shown again on television in the late 1980s as part of a complete (if frequently interrupted) run of second and third series repeats.
Read more about this topic: Undertakers Sketch
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The society based on production is only productive, not creative.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)