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:
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”
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“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film, Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
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