A Comedy Fantasy Drama with Bite

30 December, 1998 marks the arrival of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on British terrestrial television, with the double-length pilot airing on BBC Two at 8pm, as part of a huge block of other US imports (it followed a double-bill of The Simpsons and a repeat of Star Trek: The Next Generation). Debuting in the nowhere space between Christmas Day and New Year's Day might not be the most promising of scheduling, but nevertheless the show is a success (despite also having to contend with this dreadful trailer).

The rest of the first season premieres on Wednesday evenings, in the earlier slot of 6.45pm -- a timeslot the show would go on to hold across all seven seasons on the BBC. I don't have a list of cuts to hand for any season, although TV Tropes claims that even the 8pm broadcast of the pilot was censored, with the drum-cymbal-decapitation scene left on the cutting room floor, and presumably in the early-evening timeslot censorship was pretty heavy throughout (TV Tropes' page on family-unfriendly shows being marketed towards children also cites "demons who suddenly just decided to give up and lie still for no reason", and also recounts the sad story of the UK broadcasts of Angel, which the BBC never aired -- either they weren't interested or were outbid for the rights, but the first two seasons aired terrestrially on Channel 4, who got rebuked by the Broadcasting Standards Council for showing it in a similar early-evening timeslot despite heavy censorship, eventually moving it to a post-midnight slot; the third season was picked up by Channel 5, but the last two seasons never saw terrestrial broadcast in the UK at all).

Eventually, when the second season returned after a mid-season break (the BBC showed the first season and the first part of the second season continuously without a break), a late-night showing euphemistically referred to as "an extended repeat" was added (perhaps trying to put people in mind of director's cuts such as the three 'Xtended' episodes of Red Dwarf VII released on VHS, rather than admitting in so many words that the early-evening premieres were being censored). Perhaps this was an attempt to discourage younger fans from watching the uncut late-night showings? Eventually they dropped any such pretence -- when the sixth season began, the late-night repeats are expressly referred to as "uncut". Note that the final episode to be shown without an uncut repeat was the second season's "Reptile Boy", and the first with an uncut repeat was "Halloween", both of which seem particularly likely to have been prone to cuts -- perhaps they either realised they were cutting so much out a late-night repeat was viable/sensible, or they were getting complaints about episodes with obvious/extensive censorship? (There was a very dedicated Buffy fanbase in the UK back in the day -- there was an official magazine that managed to keep going until 2007, over four years after the show ended -- so I think the latter is definitely possible.)

The earliest reference to the show in the Radio Times outside actual broadcasts of the programme comes in May 2000, when BBC One gameshow Whatever You Want? -- the premise of which was that winners could win, er, whatever they wanted -- offered a visit to the show's set. Despite the show's popularity, further references to it on the BBC are far and few between, with most of them coming from multiple interviews with the cast on The Saturday Show (an early-morning children's magazine show). A theme night on BBC Choice was held very early in the show's run in May 1999, but frustratingly the Genome doesn't have exact details of what was broadcast apart from a repeat of the pilot (although this repeat of the pilot in October 1999 had an introduction from Anthony Head, which was probably recorded originally for said theme night).