MovieChat Forums > The Sweeney (1975) Discussion > One of your own. (1978) Shewn 13-01-201...

One of your own. (1978) Shewn 13-01-2013 ITV4

posted 11 years ago by ggmn-1
5 replies | jump to latest

Firstly, my question... Are we being over-run with "do-gooders" and people that want us to only watch things the way THEY want us to see things ? Read-on...

I had not seen this episode for a good while so thought I would watch it. It was on ITV4 overnight/early Sunday morning.
During the programme I began to remember the plot and then expected what was coming, as you do...
All was OK until the last few minutes of the programme, the scene being Michael Elphick's character ( Fleet ) with Dennis Waterman's character ( Carter ), after a fight where Fleet has pistol-whipped ( with a gun, obviously )the bad guy that was giving Carter a good beating. Fleet is holding the pistol in his right hand. You start to hear the sirens of the approaching police vehicles containing John Thaw ( Regan ) etc.
In the "proper" un-messed with version of the programme, Carter tells Fleet to give him the gun, as he does not want him to be caught in possession of it, afterall he has just helped Carter. He hands the gun to Carter. Scene then cuts to the arriving Ford Consul-GT/Granada and other vehicles, then everyone piles out of the cars. Fleet asks Carter "are you going to arrest me?", Carter says "why would I, you were aquitted weren't you!"

In the version that was on ITV4 this morning, there is a sizeable cut from when you see Fleet holding the gun and hear the arriving cars, to where the cars skid to a halt. This is the part of the scene where you should see Carter when he asks for and takes the gun from Fleet, for his own good. This is removed completely. You not only hear that the scene has been hacked around but see the Consul-GT/Granada "jump" to a halt!
This "butchery" of the end of the programme means that anyone watching it for the first time would not have an idea about what has gone on at the end and will scratch their heads.

This can only have been done recently as I now remember seeing this episode about 18 months ago, on ITV4, when it was "complete" and had not been "butchered".

It appears that whoever decides what versions or cuts are made to programmes is trying to "change the past", possibly because they feel that it showed a policeman letting a criminal-off lightly. That USED TO, and probably still does happen!
GET REAL ITV4, let us watch the whole "un-butchered" versions as they were when they were made! Let us worry about the morals... DON'T SPOIL THE PROGRAMMES!

Just noticed that it is on again during the day on Sunday 13-01-2013, 08:40 until 09:35 hrs. Have a look at it and see if it spoils it as much for you as it did for me.

Ian.

[–] JaneDanton 11 years ago

ITV3 AND ITV4 cut out huge scenes for either financial or pc reasons, they've even done it with easy-going Columbo.
Sweeney! the film was on ITV4 last night but I didn't watch any of cause I knew the bloody shotgun scenes, and loads more scenes would be edited....probably the dvd's are the only way to go

[–] FieryJack 11 years ago

They do it to Morse too.

The spawn of Mary Whitehouse, alive and well in the ITV hierarchy.

[–] vaneyck 11 years ago

I can't speak for British commercial TV but in the US such cuts seem to be prompted by nothing more than the need to squeeze in additional minutes of advertisements. Sometime in the '90s the FCC gave the networks the right to put in as many ads as the traffic would bear, with predictable results. I notice my copies of the second season of NYPD Blue (1994) are about 3 minutes longer than episodes from the sixth season (1998). The result is that when TVland or some other cable channel runs NYPD Blue's second season they have to cut those three minutes from somewhere.

I have never noticed cuts made out of PC squeamishness or an effort to point a moral. Rather, pure laziness seems to be the dominant editorial motivation for the late-cutters. They appear to feel they've done a good job if they manage to avoid cutting to commercial in the middle of an argument or a car chase, though I've seen both such abortions perpetrated for the sake of flogging some more product.

[–] rainbird131162 11 years ago

.. try watching ITV4's version of Taste of Fear. The pre-credits sequence with Cook threatening the women and attacking the Dad has had so much chopped out it is literally incoherent. ITV4 is a waste of time for these shows.

Mai Yamane! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-sYFirfywY&feature=related

[–] PurpleProseOfCairo 8 years ago

Wow, I think this is the first time the word "shewn" has ever been used in a sentence on the internet.

Definition of shew in English:

verb

Old-fashioned spelling of show.