Loggo
Was there a lost episode 'Loggo's Story' that was never shown in the UK?
No, but it was part of Bleasdale's original plan for a seven part series; following on from the 1980 pilot play 'The Black Stuff', with episodes about each of the main characters.
1: Chrissie's Story (which later became 'Shop Thy Neighbour')
2: Dixie's Story (which became 'Moonlighter')
3: McKenna's Story
4: The Social Security Employees (later partly adapted into sections of 'Jobs For The Boys' and 'Shop Thy Neighbour')
5: Yosser's Story
6: Loggo's Story
7: George's Story (which became 'George's Last Ride')
Bleasdale wrote treatments for each episode and the series was commissioned in February 1980. Production was delayed for technical and scheduling reasons until 1982.
In the meantime, he had detached episode three from the series (originally involving David Calder's corrupt character, McKenna, from 'The Black Stuff' play), and rewrote it as an independant one off single play in 1981 called 'The Muscle Market'. McKenna became a new character called Danny Duggan, played by Pete Postlethwaite. None of 'The Black Stuff' characters feature in this seperate play.
He dropped Loggo's story, and the seperate social security service's episode. He took parts of the social security service staff's lives from the dropped episode and mixed them into scenes in the opening 'Jobs For the Boys', and into parts of Chrissie's story to create 'Shop Thy Neighbour'.
He, and the series producer (Michael Wearing), director (Philip Saville), and the head of the BBC English Regions Drama Department at Pebble Mill (David Rose) who commissioned the series, felt that the revised five episode structure was tighter, better structured, and an improvement in every way. Bleasdale stands by that decision to this day.
Yes, it's a pity that Loggo never got his own episode, but creative decisions had to made at the script and commissioning stage.
You're not Alan Bleasdale are you?
I ask because I once tried to get a copy from The Everyman of the script from the 1972 production of Canterbury Tales written by Bleasdale and Russell, which was utterly hilarious and still one of the funniest things I've seen in the theatre, only to be told that no one knew whether there was a script or not and if even if there had been no one ever stuck to it. I think it had Jonathan Pryce, Anthony Sher, Bernard Hill, Trevor Eve, Bill Nighy and Julie Walters in it. Wonder how much it would cost to put that lot together today?
Anyway, given his memory and his dislike of paper, I don't think there can be too many suspects when it comes to knowing the details of his pre-broadcast thought processes.
And if you can lay your hands on a script, I'd still love one.
Great informative post.
A shame Bleasdale's original vision couldn't be realised.