Best of 2022

It was exactly one year ago today that my round-up of everything vaguely readable posted to this blog in 2021 was posted, meaning that that post technically qualifies for inclusion in this, my round-up of everything vaguely readable posted to this blog in 2022. That's some Inception-level stuff there.

But also, that post effectively served as a round-up to a story that had taken over the blog in 2021, having spent the previous three years as an occasional running thread: my quest to track down The Diamond Brothers: South by South East, a television series that, despite being written and directed by a hugely successful and prolific novelist and featuring an all-star cast, had fallen into such obscurity as a result of airing exactly once and never being repeated or released on home media that not so much as a single still image from it was available online at the time. And obviously the big story of the blog this year is that, in March, thanks to the hard work of Neil James and Simon Drake, I was finally able to see it for myself, and discovered a new mystery: what the cast list for episode 3 should have been, given that it was affected by a transmission error that, in short, meant it was broadcast without any end credits.

I had a follow-up on that enigma in April, where I'd been able to fill in most of the cast list but still had a few gaps left. And before I write any more, I want to find out if I can get the missing names at the very least (as well as a few other things, such as where exactly episode 3 cut off during its failed transmission). And this is where you come in. Possibly.

Even after SBSE resurfaced, there was some reluctance to put the episodes on YouTube, principally because of a worry that the company that currently owns the rights might block them pretty quickly. However, Neil and Simon's copies have now reached someone willing to take the risk, and as of this writing they haven't been taken down (episode 6 hasn't been put up yet but should be there imminently). I won't provide a direct link just in case that leads to such a thing happening, but a simple search should bring the episodes up; it seems right given that, when I first wrote about it I was not wholly sure if the series even actually existed, this story ends with the episodes being readily available for the first time since their original broadcast. I am still carrying out my own research, and have reached out to a number of people involved in the original production, but any thoughts you may have on episode 3, and indeed any other matters pertaining to the series, would be most welcomed. (In particular, one thing I have in mind is a list of all the Hitchcock references in the series, which is going to be quite an undertaking.)

Anyway, we're not quite done with the Brothers Diamond yet, because in January I finally tracked down all the relevant different printings of their first ever adventure, The Falcon's Malteser, and was able to cross off something that'd been on my to-do list for quite some time: an examination of how the book was changed and edited between its original 1986 publication and subsequent printings; the second book in the series, Public Enemy No. 2, followed not long after. I also kicked off a year which contained the 40th anniversary of Fighting Fantasy by looking at all the times the recently knighted Ian Livingstone cameoed in the series, reported back from my second time being in the studio audience for Would I Lie to You? and wrapped up everything I had to say from the first such occasion.

Later on, I finally managed to track down all of J. H. Brennan's adventure gamebooks, allowing me to write another thing I'd wanted to for years: a comprehensive guide to what happened when you died in said gamebooks, which is a hell of a lot funnier than it first sounds. July then marked the start of a period where the blog was updated on a weekly basis for well over a month, like it was 2019 all over again, starting with my look at the recording and broadcast dates for the seventh series of WILTY, followed not long after by an almost complete list of the things for every single episode. Staying on that theme, I also examined the UK broadcast details for the 1990s Goosebumps TV series in far too close detail, not once but twice, and provided a comprehensive look at the Radio Times listings for A Bit of Fry & Laurie.

As Autumn approached, I reported back from Fighting Fantasy Fest 4, and provided my now annual look ahead to the season of The Simpsons Channel 4 were about to show for the first time, and the various different ways in which they might screw it up, which was naturally followed up in December by my look back at all the various different ways in which they actually did screw it up, including many I hadn't even conceived of. I would also like to direct the interested to a new blog, "Simpsons Censorship in the UK", recently started by sometime-commentator-to-this-blog Rick to cover C4's recent vandalism of older episodes, including the startling revelation that some episodes have different versions for daytime and 6pm airings.

I then wrote this look back at all these things on the 13th December, but didn't publish it until 1st January 2023, which is the date it will be then.

I trust that's all clear.