By Gordon's Beard

Recently, I have written a few things about editing on the BBC's 2006-09 version of Robin Hood. These posts feel a bit like they've come from a fansite in a parallel universe where the show survived the departure of nearly all of its original leads, ran for a few more series and left a bigger cultural footprint than it actually did, so I've been quite pleased with the audience they've found.

One of the most famous stories about the series, though, concerns the August 2006 theft of some master tapes. Although the majority of the material was apparently recovered later on, there is some reshot material in the broadcast episodes. But nowhere tells us exactly what.

Here is Little John, as played by Gordon Kennedy, when he makes his first appearance in the final moments of the first episode, "Will You Tolerate This?" (original TX 07/10/06):

Here he is in his first scene of the second episode, "Sheriff Got Your Tongue?" (TX 14/10/06), sporting a beard which looks much the same for most of the episode:

(Episodes 1 & 2 were filmed in the same block, and on the DVD commentary for episode 2 showrunner Dominic Minghella identifies the scene where Marian tries to rescue Robin from the dungeons, half an hour into episode 2, as the very first to be filmed.)

But when we get to the castle scenes later on, Kennedy is visibly close to clean-shaven in the scene where the other outlaws arrive to help Much with his rescue attempt (apart from this shot, he's only seen in wide shots for the rest of this scene, and the lighting also suddenly changes at the point the others arrive, as if it's been put together from two different takes):

Toddler of Terror: The Director's Cut

A few months ago, I published a history of Ivy the Terrible which went down spectacularly well. (Thanks again if you reposted it or said something nice about it.) This is a deleted scene which I realised very quickly should probably be spun out into its own piece.

This is, once again, the first ever Ivy strip, as published in the edition of the Beano dated 04/05/85:

In (approximately) May 1988, Ivy made her debut in the Beano Comic Library range, with an issue rather unusually titled simply Ivy the Terrible:

The reason for this name is because this issue is essentially a revised and heavily expanded version of that very first strip... and, since I've separated it out into its own post, I may as well give you the entire issue.

33 on E4

As one door closes, another must open. In the great shake-up of late 2024, E4 became the only place to see new-to-linear-TV Simpsons in the UK, following their releases on Disney+ a few months beforehand. Season 36 became the first season to premiere on the channel in this way at the start of this year, but E4 are still playing catch-up with Seasons 33 through 35, which were first seen over here on Sky shortly after their US broadcasts.

One week after their debut of S36 concluded, the first of these seasons entered the fray. Season 33 aired on FOX in the US from 26 September 2021 to 22 May 2022; was first seen in the UK on Sky with "A Made Maggie" as a Christmas special on 24 December 2021, then weekly from 21 January to 5 June 2022; and now it has completed its cycle with its first run on free-to-air TV, which occurred in double-bills from 1 March to 3 May of this year (with one or two little wrinkles we'll come to soon). After E4's premieres of Seasons 32 and 36 were largely untampered with, how did Season 33 match up?

Only YOU Can Save Cliff Hanger!

Last year, I published one of my favourite things I've ever written -- a history of Cliff Hanger, the part-gamebook part-comic strip that ran in Fleetway Publications' Buster from 1983-87, and was then reprinted from 1992 until near the comic's end in 1999. Here's a thing that's been bothering me about the strip for a while. Or possibly two things, one of which isn't bothering me any more.

One of the many interesting quirks of Cliff is that almost every single strip is numbered in a unique way: which number strip it is appears on Cliff's jacket. (Or occasionally somewhere else if artist J. Edward Oliver can't put it there for some reason.)

The number in the final regular strip in 1987 was 197. (Thanks to Great News for All Readers for the scan of the original strip, rather than the colourised reprint.)

The rules surrounding this numbering system seem pretty clear: Only the 'regular' strips in the weekly comic count. Cliff's jacket appears unnumbered in Christmas annuals or Summer Specials, or other nonstandard strips such as the Cliff Hanger Adventure Book, a cut-out-and-keep Choose Your Own Adventure story which appeared over five issues of Buster.

That Cannonball Kid Sure Scores a Mean Owen Goal

This is an example of Cannonball Kid (drawn by Rob Lee), a story which appeared in D. C. Thomson's Nutty from around the midpoint of its 1980-85 run to its end. If you remember my earlier look at Nutty, you may notice this is the exact same strip I used as an example of the Kid there... but there's a reason for this. (Apart from the fact it's the only Cannonball Kid strip I have.)

In April 1998, the Cannonball Kid was dusted down, colourised and renamed for use in the Dandy, and as it happens, this strip became the very first edition of Owen Goal:

Shot for Shot

On 29 December 2007, the second series of the BBC's latest adaptation of Robin Hood came to an end with a highly contentious finale where Guy of Gisborne stabbed Marian to death in a jealous rage.

It's perhaps not the most interesting thing about these episodes, but although produced as two 45-minute episodes, titled A Good Day to Die and We Are Robin Hood, they ended up originally airing as one single 90-minute compilation, on account of the BBC deciding to strip their Oliver Twist adaptation across five nights from Tuesday to Saturday, meaning no episode of Hood aired on the 22nd December.

All subsequent repeats, home media releases and streaming versions presented the story as the original separate episodes, so the compilation version -- only seen on the first UK broadcast, literally in the same week BBC iPlayer was launched and off-air copies of things started becoming a bit harder to come by -- became rather obscure.¹ However, I've been furnished with a copy of that original airing by Jim Lynn of VHiStory, and I am tremendously grateful to him for making this post possible. Because it isn't quite the case that they just stuck the two episodes together.

Armstrong and Miller Time

When looking in charity shops I am principally hoping to find another batch of old comics, or maybe some Choose Your Own Adventure books, but I buy other stuff as well. Such as this:

Children's Hour was the second Radio 4 series from Armstrong and Miller, in which they starred as newspaper critics Craig Children and Martin Bain-Jones (characters the duo later reprised for their Channel 4 sketch show), and as the little episode guide on the booklet tells us, it was broadcast in December 1998 (in the 11pm slot, which will become quite important later on).

Hmm. There's got to be a story there.

Life and Limb

Shadow on the Sand is the fifth Lone Wolf gamebook, and also the conclusion to the Kai sub-series (also known at that point in publication as the 'basic rules' series, as it marks the point where Lone Wolf goes from initiate to Kai Master, and so unlocks a whole new set of Kai Disciplines to choose from). It is structured uniquely: instead of a single 350-section adventure, the game is split into two parts, running to 200 sections each, with section 200 of Part One directing you to turn to the start of Part Two and 201.

To cut a long (well, four-gamebook) story short, at the beginning of the book, Lone Wolf has travelled to the desert empire of Vassagonia to sign a peace treaty with the ruler, Zakhan Moudalla, but upon arrival your entourage discovers that the Zakhan has died, and his successor Kimah is in cahoots with the Darklords, plotting to kill you and destroy the legendary Book of the Magnakai.

In the very first section of SotS, you are accosted by the new Zakhan's elite bodyguards from the moment your ship docks in the harbour at Barrakeesh, and the choices you are given effectively boil down to: surrender and be taken prisoner, or run.