Cult of Shoestring Documentary - Sunday 9/Mar/08
There's a documentary on BBC4 this coming Sunday, 9th March '08, starting at 8pm and lasting for half an hour. It's all about the late seventies BBC1 Detective Drama 'Shoestring' and has contributions from all of the major cast and production people. About time this classic show had some recognition, and I'm a little surprised at the lack of activity on its message board here. Mind you, it is almost 30 years old now I suppose, and hasn't been repeated in full for quite a time. A few years back BBC1 showed some of the episodes on weekday afternoons but they were cut for reasons of scheduling and possibly content. Despite the imdb summary stating it was a 'lighthearted' series, it often included quite grim content.
Apparently we are unlikely to see the series release uncut on DVD due to the prohibitive costs of securing the music rights for such releases...with the series set around a Radio Station, many popular tunes of the time can be heard in the background during the course of the shows.
Why this is such a sticky issue puzzles me...the songs you hear are very much 'in the background' and not actively used to 'sell' the show itself. Surely the only effect hearing them would be for viewers to suffer a nostalgia trip, possiby going out to buy the CD or whatever....nice, free publicity I would've thought. I realise it's not as simple as that of course, but its still a huge shame that we probably wont see a release in the forseeable future for such a trivial (and it is !) reason. Several episodes of Only Fools and Horses have been trimmed for DVD release for the same reason, one of them (Jolly Boys Outing) quite considerably.
The documentary follows a classic episode (7:10pm),Mocking Bird...who knows, one of the Beeb's satelite channels may show them all if the response is good enough. I'd love to see them all, uncut and free of adverts (they were shown on UK Gold years back, with ads inserted) once more. I think one of the BBC's digital stations did broadcast the whole series two or three years ago (including a couple of episodes not seen in over twenty years, apparently) but astonishingly they chose to show the trimmed versions of the episodes broadcast on BBC1 in the afternoon !
Well done BBC4, anyway, for keeping memories of Shoestring (and other worthy shows) alive.
AndyG