The Simpsons on the BBC: A Ludicrously Comprehensive Timeline

Pre-1988

Back in the day, BBC One used to show a considerable number of imported US sitcoms, and if you search the Genome for them you'll find a fair few names that would go on to greater things: Sam Simon as a writer on Taxi, Nancy Cartwright's guest spot in Fame, and Al Jean and Mike Reiss providing freelance scripts for Charles in Charge and Head of the Class. The earliest listing I can find by plugging a Simpsons-related name into the Genome in this fashion goes back to the 1970s, when Rhoda -- starring Julie Kavner in her earliest role -- aired on BBC Two as part of a "Yankee Treble" featuring three of America's top comedy shows.

(By the time the BBC started airing The Simpsons, the habit of providing cast and crew details for US imports had stopped, so these are often the only times they do appear in the Genome!)

8 January 1988

BBC Two begins showing a new US import, The Tracey Ullman Show. All the crude animated bumpers featuring a cartoon family are edited out. I bet that’s the last we’ll hear of that.

25 November 1989

With the debut of The Simpsons as a half-hour series in the US exactly a month away, Harry Shearer joins Clive James for an edition of Saturday Night Clive on BBC Two.

3 September 1990
BBC Two's late-night arts and media programme, The Late Show, covers the show's arrival on Sky Television this week with this report.

14 February 1991
As per this YouTube video, this is the week "Do the Bartman" reaches Number 1 in the UK charts and gets an outing on Top of the Pops (not the first time they'd played the video, though, since it'd already been bubbling under in the charts; the 24/01/91 edition seems to be the first time they played the video). Hence, when the BBC finally got their hands on the show, it technically wasn't the first time The Simpsons had been on terrestrial television.

17 March 1991

The documentary series Naked Hollywood -- which would go on to win a BAFTA for Best Factual Series -- investigates why screenwriters are paid so much but treated so badly; a certain James L. Brooks is interviewed.

15 June 1991

It's still some years before he'll really make his presence felt on the BBC, but Bart Simpson is still part of a feature on The 8.15 from Manchester, a Saturday morning childrens' magazine show, as on this date they show how to make Bart Simpson masks. Even though most of the country didn't yet have access to Sky, The Simpsons was a big deal even now.

26 December 1991

Stan Freberg presents a sketch show for BBC Radio 2 which features Harry Shearer among its cast.
 
23 November 1996

The Simpsons makes its terrestrial debut on BBC One. By this point the show has begun its eighth season in the US and on Sky. This is not by any means the first time viewers without access to satellite television would have seen the show; The Simpsons Collection, a range of 2-episode videos covering all of Season 1, half of Season 2 and two episodes of Season 3 had been released between 1991 and 1995. These videos probably marked the first time many UK viewers saw the show.

 

You can see trailers for the family’s arrival on UK free-to-air TV here and here, the continuity announcement for the first broadcast here (none uploaded by me), and the original listing in the Radio Times is reproduced here on BBC Genome. (The BBC chose to air “There’s No Disgrace Like Home”, the fourth episode broadcast and produced; some years earlier, Sky had gone with the mid-season “Call of the Simpsons”. Go figure.) A special documentary, “The Simpsons Have Landed”, airs the following day, interviewing some of the show’s creatives. The event even makes the cover of the premiere TV listings magazine, the RadioTimes (the cover can be seen here).

14 January 1997
An extended 40-minute cut of "The Simpsons Have Landed", retitled "The Simpsons: Live and Uncut", airs at the family slot of 11.15pm on BBC Two. Although the original 30-minute cut does not survive, this extended version does, and you can see it here.

July 2022 Update! The original 30-minute edit has now resurfaced on YouTube; you can watch it here.

15 February 1997

The Simpsons is broadcast for the last time on primetime BBC One. The episodes had been airing at the rate of one a week at around 5.30pm, with a random hotchpotch of episodes from the first four seasons being selected. Why they were broadcast so wildly out of order, I don’t really know; the terrestrial broadcaster had to stay four or five years behind Sky, who were showing new episodes weeks after the US, so this represented every season the BBC had the broadcast rights to, but that’s the only reason I can think of. I can’t find exact rating figures for what the show was getting, only that the first episode got “around 5 million”, which presumably dwindled as time went on. The final episode to go out on BBC One was the second season’s “Two Cars in Every Garage, Three Eyes on Every Fish”.

For reference for any non-UK readers, BBC One is the flagship, mainstream channel; its sister channel, BBC Two, is home to more niche or highbrow programming, and had recently had success with other US imports such as The X Files. Which is why what happened, happened.

10 March 1997

The Simpsons returns, now on BBC Two at 6pm (which had already been repeating the new BBC One episodes the next day, usually in the early afternoon); the first episode shown in its new home is “Stark Raving Dad”. Episodes now air on Mondays and Fridays, and continue to be a random mishmash of what the BBC has the rights to, with an omnibus repeat on Sundays. Apart from a lengthy summer break between June and October of that year, things continue like this for a few months.

21 March 1997

"Moaning Lisa" becomes the first episode to be censored by the BBC, with the violence in Homer and Bart's video game being heavily edited. I won't note every example of censorship, except some particularly interesting ones, but 'bastard' was generally not allowed (although it sometimes slipped through), and other violence such as the McBain film from "Saturdays of Thunder" also ended up on the cutting room floor. They also had a tendency to cut stuff that was meant to lead into an advert break as the BBC don't have ads (for example, the few moments of black when Homer's choking in "When Flanders Failed").

9 March 1998

“Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?” premieres, but with a line spoiling the conclusion of the “Who Shot JR?” storyline on Dallas edited out. I’ve heard that those episodes were being repeated around the same time on BBC One and they didn’t want people to get spoiled, hence the cut, but I can’t find confirmation of this. The lines were reinstated later on, along with everything to do with Bart's desire to get a machine gun which was also removed from the first airing.

11 May 1998

A rather interesting piece of censorship (to me at least). The blackboard gag for "Lisa's First Word" (first shown on BBC2 on this date) is originally "Teacher is not a leper", but the BBC's copy replaces this with "I will not teach others to fly", pasted in from "Marge Gets a Job".

(NB: I have also seen it alleged that the blackboard gag for "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?", which was originally "I will not fake seizures", was changed by BBC Two to "Funny noises are not funny", taken from "Black Widower", but the only source I have for this is the episode's recap page on TV Tropes, so confirmation of this from another source would be welcomed.)

22 June 1998

The Princess Diana reference (made by Barney) is cut from "Duffless". This is an interesting cut, because it was apparently not one that Sky ever made to their copy, yet they did make a number of other Diana-related edits that the BBC didn't - 'paparazzo' from "Rosebud", the car crashes from "Bart's Inner Child" and, in what is surely one of the most bizarre examples of censorship ever, the word 'royal' from the line "You two screwed up royal!" from "Bart's Inner Child".

23 July 1998

A third weekly episode is added, as “The Front” is shown on a Thursday. Exciting times! (You’ll notice this episode aired at 9pm; a cricket match pre-empted the usual 6pm slot, and moving the show to a later slot was common when this happened. The BBC had already done something similar a few months earlier during Wimbledon.)

31 August 1998

Double bills can now be seen on both Mondays and Fridays.

10 September 1998

“Homer’s Barbershop Quartet” marks the terrestrial premiere of Season 5; good thing, too, as it seems they’d already run all the Season 1-4 episodes at least twice by this point. This is the earliest run for which BARB’s website has the ratings available, so it’s worth noting that 3.8m viewers were watching. A double-bill of Season 1 repeats is on Friday, but the Monday is where things get interesting.

14 September 1998

This week, The Simpsons airs every weeknight at 6pm; an arrangement very familiar to anyone watching the show on Channel 4 to this day. As you’ll see on the link, something a bit odd happens, though; 14 September is the terrestrial premiere of “Cape Feare”, the second episode of Season 5, but it then goes into season 1. And, in fact, it was back to Mondays and Fridays only the very next week – also in repeats. Bit of a false start here, it seems.

28 September 1998

Season 5’s first outing finally continues, with a double bill of “Homer Goes to College” and “Rosebud”. This seems to establish a pattern the BBC can actually stick with; a new-to-terrestrial episode (just the one after this double bill) airs on Monday, and a repeat can be seen on Friday.

3 October 1998

BBC Two marks the 60^th birthday of Evel Knievel with “Evel Night”, a night of programming based around the man himself. The Simpsons pops up, with a repeat showing of “Bart the Daredevil” at 10.30pm. The BBC did a lot of these theme nights, and I’ll point out when The Simpsons were part of them as we go along, for my own amusement if nobody else’s.

19 October 1998

The BBC’s premiere of “Treehouse of Horror IV” has to cut the scene between the Devil and Richard Nixon; he was still alive when the episode premiered in the US five years previously, but by this point he had been dead for several years and they didn’t want to confuse anyone.

21 December 1998

Starting with this week, we’re back to five days a week again, alongside a selection of daytime triple-bills for the Christmas season. What’s more, the 6pm episodes are all-new, as the BBC burns through the rest of Season 5. (There seem to be a few cases of the new episodes airing out of order or in odd timeslots, presumably just due to unusual Christmas schedules; check the link for exact details.)

2 January 1999

It’s Cuba Night on BBC Two, and “The Trouble With Trillions” airs to celebrate. There are two interesting things to note about this. The first is that the Radio Times gives a completely inaccurate description of the episode, claiming that Homer swaps jobs with Fidel Castro and Castro goes to work at the nuclear plant. The second is that, at the time, the episode was less than a year old, and the BBC obtained special dispensation to air it several years before they would get the rights to the rest of the season.

4 January 1999

We’re back to just two days a week again, Monday and Friday, although we do get a double-bill on both days and a lunchtime bonus episode on Sunday.

12 May 1999

Nancy Cartwright appears on the BBC’s iconic childrens’ magazine programme, Blue Peter; this seems to be the first interview of any of the cast or crew on the BBC since the 1996 documentary. (Anyone got a clip of this?) She shows up again a few days later, this time on Fully Booked - I think there may be a few more non-BBC appearances around this time too.

5 July 1999

James L. Brooks is interviewed by Christopher Cook for BBC Radio 3’s “Postscript”.

6 September 1999

“Bart of Darkness” kicks off the terrestrial premiere of Season 6, delivering an audience of 3.8m. The pattern established by Season 5 continues; new episode Monday, repeats Friday. This season’s premiere runs into Christmas, so this pattern doesn’t always stick; it seems “Homer vs Patty and Selma” was seen for the first time at 10am on Christmas Day. From around this point onwards, it looks like the BBC Two broadcasts show episodes in order instead of previously hopping from one season to another day by day.

3 January 2000

Incumbent showrunner Mike Scully is interviewed on Radio 5 Live -- interesting, as it'll still be several years before the seasons he was in charge of reach the BBC!

15 January 2000

Saturday morning kids’ show Live & Kicking first includes The Simpsons as part of its lineup. If memory serves, they showed all of Season 1 and a few episodes from Season 5. This is notable chiefly because they broadcast the “Let’s have sex!” line from “Deep Space Homer” completely intact at 10 in the morning on a programme aimed at young children (the other US imports being shown on L&K were Rugrats and Kenan & Kel).

 

23 June 2000

BBC Two brings us “Simpsons Night”, an entire evening of programming based around the show to mark the 10th anniversary. You can see all the relevant information on the BBC Genome link; it includes a 50-minute documentary, the first episode of Season 7 to be broadcast on terrestrial television with “Much Apu About Nothing”, an interview with Matt Groening entitled “My Wasted Life”, and a viewer vote to choose which episode was the best ever, based on a selection of five chosen by Groening himself. All the continuity for the night can be seen here, and a version of “My Wasted Life” (edited to remove all the clips of the show) here. (Again, I was not responsible for uploading either.) The night attracts a peak of nearly 5m viewers! It's also rewarded with not one, but four RadioTimes covers; the picture below, from an old eBay listing, shows three of them, and the Bart one is viewable here.

4 July 2000

Matt Groening is interviewed for a Radio 4 documentary on Dr. Seuss.

28 July 2000

The BBC begins to show the rest of Season 7 having teased us the previous month. Things kick off with “Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two)” playing to 3.3m viewers, with Part One helpfully repeated immediately beforehand (it was premiered around six months ago). Interestingly, the pattern established by the previous two seasons has been inverted; we get a repeat on Monday and a double-bill of new episodes on Friday.

10 November 2000

Another Friday is upon us, and Season 8’s first run begins with “You Only Move Twice”, following a Season 6 repeat; 4.3m people tune in to the new episode. This pattern continues, with every Friday seeing a repeat followed by a new episode (once again, it runs into Christmas, causing the occasional oddity). For some reason, it seems “Treehouse of Horror VII” was not part of this run, but was shown when Season 8 got its first repeat run in June 2001. The only reason I can think of is that if it had premiered during the first run, it would have been in the week where the 2000 US election took place, and would’ve looked out of place satirising the previous election.

12 November 2000

Yes, it’s another theme night, this time based around The X-Files and seeing the terrestrial premiere of Season 8's “The Springfield Files” (which is naturally skipped during the Friday premieres as a result).

14 March 2001

Top of the Pops broadcasts a Comic Relief special. The Simpsons are included, apparently, although I’m not sure what was broadcast. (UPDATE: Thanks to commentator MadGazF1, for confirming this was a 'novelty tunes' special and the Simpsons' involvement was an airing of the "Do the Bartman" video.)

12 May 2001

Harry Shearer contributes to an Arthur Smith series on Radio 2, The Smith Lectures.

5 26 October 2001

“The Cartridge Family” brings Season 9 to the BBC, with new episodes now airing on both Mondays and Fridays and attracting a peak of 3.4m viewers. It is worth noting that, for obvious reasons, “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson” was not aired by the BBC, either during this run or at any point (BBC Genome claims it was shown on 8 May 2002 as part of the first repeat run of the season, but I am certain this is incorrect). When Sky One got the rights back, they were planning to air it in late 2004 but dropped it at the last minute; its next UK broadcast would be in mid-2005, using an edited version that removes as much of the Twin Towers as possible.

It’s also worth noting that “The Cartridge Family” was banned by Sky back in 1997 due to the depiction of foolish use of firearms, hence why the BBC used it as the premiere episode as they had no qualms about showing it uncut – so it was the episode’s premiere on UK television altogether, not just the BBC. (It had, however, already been available on an official video, “Too Hot for TV”, since 1999, so it wasn’t the first opportunity for UK viewers to see it – the VHS also made the most of this ‘exclusive’ episode. “Too Hot for TV” also included “Natural Born Kissers”, which Sky had originally banned before U-turning and airing it a few months later as part of the following season. When Sky got the rights to Season 9 back from the BBC, they also began airing “Cartridge”.)

Another curiosity of the BBC’s airing of Season 9 is that it seems “The Principal and the Pauper” and “Lisa’s Sax” were both also skipped from the first run; it looks like they were both seen for the first time during the May 2002 repeat. (“Miracle on Evergreen Terrace” was also moved about for obvious reasons, premiering on Christmas Day instead.)

Big update! I previously said here that the BBC's premiere of Season 9 began with "The Cartridge Family" on 26 October 2001, and also that the first showing of the season skipped "The Principal and the Pauper" and "Lisa's Sax". In December 2021, Wesley Mead compared some old notes with me and I realised I'd got this wrong -- "Pauper" was shown on 5 October 2001, and "Lisa's Sax" the week after on the 12th. These listings were present on the Genome, but I must have missed them because of the way the Genome deals with double bills (both were shown after a repeat) and also because of the BBC's weird scheduling -- there was a repeat on the 19th, before the run continued on the 26th. (And, obviously, my own incompetence.) Everything I haven't crossed out from the above still applies, though.

17 November 2001

BBC Two documentary strand Omnibus profiles Chuck Jones, creator of many cartoon characters including Bugs Bunny; Matt Groening is interviewed for the show.

17 December 2001

All mention of the word “wankers” is censored from the BBC’s premiere of “Trash of the Titans”. This was also the case on Sky, but it is worth mentioning because the BBC chose to replace Mr Burns’ use with a repeat of the word “ow” from seconds earlier (when he gets hit on the head with a spoon during the end credits). I mention this mostly because it’s hilarious if you see the doctored version knowing what’s missing.

25 February 2002

It’s a very big day. The Simpsons is once again on every weeknight at 6pm, and this time, it’s there to stay. I was surprised when I found out this was only the full-time deal for the last two years of the BBC’s time with the show. (As pointed out by Jack in the comments, in Scotland Thursday evenings were reserved for Gaelic-language programming, so the show did not run there on those evenings.)

4 June 2002

Matt Groening is interviewed for BBC Radio 4’s “Front Row”.

24 June 2002

The Simpsons is taken off-air for two weeks for Wimbledon, which would also happen the following year.

26 July 2002

The Simpsons is aired as part of the BBC’s childrens’ programming strand, CBBC, as the programme’s usual 6pm slot is unavailable due to the Commonwealth Games – did they get complaints when it was bumped altogether for Wimbledon, maybe? Hilariously, they kick off with the famously child-appropriate “Bart After Dark”. Normal service resumes on the 12^th August.

7 October 2002

Season 10 arrives on the BBC with the premiere of “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace”, viewed by 3.5m people. “Treehouse of Horror IX” is held back for Halloween, and for some reason “Lard of the Dance” is aired much later than it should be (it seems the unusual placement of the latter was kept for all repeat runs), but otherwise we get everything.

“Wild Barts Can’t Be Broken” was also postponed due to a controversy around a sniper which meant that the line about a sniper at the all-star game was obviously unsuitable (as well as another line IIRC, although I can’t remember what it was); it was aired on 6 November, a delay of three weeks from its originally intended broadcast, with both lines (or just the ‘sniper’ line if I’m misremembering) cut.

16 November 2002

The Smith Lectures on Radio 2 features Dan Castellaneta for "an overview of human knowledge".

7 February 2003

Harry Shearer contributes to a BBC Four documentary on the life of British singer-songwriter Richard Thompson, Solitary Life. Note that although the documentary debuts on this date, Shearer is first mentioned in a repeat a month later!

28 July 2003

The show is taken off air for a week to make way for the genuinely dreadful celebrity quiz “Nobody Likes a Smartass”.

12 November 2003

Blue Peter shows us how to make a replica of The Simpsons’ living room with a shoebox.

12 December 2003

The BBC begin broadcasting the last season they will win the rights to, as Season 11 starts with a triple-bill (that includes the last episode of season 10). 4m people tune in to the new episodes.

20 January 2004

The BBC airs its last ever new-to-terrestrial episode, “Behind the Laughter”. (The stuff designed to lead into the advert breaks is not cut, oddly.)

20 April 2004

The controller of BBC Two confirms they have lost a bidding war for the rights of The Simpsons to Channel 4, as they were offering less than half of what Channel 4 were per episode.

7 May 2004

“Behind the Laughter” becomes not only the last new episode to air on BBC Two, but also the last ever, as part of the BBC’s one and only repeat run of Season 11. (This was several weeks after the rest of the season had been broadcast, and the show had been off air for three weeks at this point, so the send-off was a bit of an event.) It’s watched by 1.7m people.

9 August 2004

Danny Elfman, composer of the series’ theme tune, is interviewed for BBC Radio 3.

22 August 2006

Harry Shearer stars in Not Today, Thank You, a comedy series for BBC Radio 4. He’s also interviewed for Ken Bruce's Radio 2 show the previous week, and Miles Apart on the 31^st.

16 October 2006

The series’ regular composer, Alf Clausen, follows in Danny Elfman’s footsteps as he is interviewed for BBC Radio 3.

30 June 2007

With promotion for The Simpsons Movie hotting up, the show makes a few sort-of returns to the BBC. First up, Phill Jupitus presents a documentary about the show’s political values, Whose Side is Bart Simpson On? Harry Shearer is also interviewed on Jonathan Ross’ radio show, and Matt Groening is on Radio 1, but the big one’s still to come.

25 July 2007

The Simpsons: A Culture Show Special marks both the release of the movie and the 20^th anniversary of the Tracey Ullman shorts, and is surely the most notable piece of broadcasting a channel has ever devoted to a show they’ve lost the rights to and is now broadcast by a rival.

And that’s your lot. As you’d probably expect, the show continues to be mentioned from time to time, and Harry Shearer appears on programmes including The Graham Norton Show and Have I Got News for You (as well as appearing on assorted Radio 2 documentaries, mostly relating to Spinal Tap), and perhaps most notably of all BBC Two airs the Family Guy crossover episode "The Simpsons Guy" on 5 July 2015 (thanks to similarly named but different commentator "Chris" for alerting me to this), but that is the last really notable piece of the BBC’s timeline.

To briefly discuss what happened on Channel 4: Their tenure as the show’s terrestrial broadcaster began on 7 November 2004, with new-to-terrestrial Season 12 (watched by 4 million people) followed by a new documentary, The World According to the Simpsons (featuring exclusive interviews with the cast and crew) and a celebrity quiz which didn’t even chart high enough for BARB to record it. They continued to show ‘classic’ episodes on weeknights at 6pm, with new episodes Fridays at 9pm; however, the latter weren’t successful, with ratings rapidly dropping and C4 never having the time to actually air them due to Big Brother. Season 13 was delayed by months, with terrestrial viewers being as far behind as they’d ever been, and after a brief experiment with showing them at weekend afternoons as part of their youth strand T4, they stuck the new episodes in the tried-and-tested weekdays at 6pm slot alongside the regular rotation of older seasons, where it continues to this day. They also bizarrely over-censor episodes, and actually caused a minor controversy when they cut the line “something about being gay” from “Homer Loves Flanders”, which led to C4 issuing an apology and reinstating the material. (The BBC's episodes were also cut, but generally only to remove the "bastards" and the like.) Still, Channel 4 have proven themselves with buying stuff from the BBC, eh?