32 on E4

It has been a weird, strange, sick, twisted, eerie, godless, evil time to be a British fan of The Simpsons over the last few months, and I want in. The first clue something was up was when we hit mid-November and there was still no sign of Season 32 making its premiere on Channel 4, but nobody could have guessed the multitude of bombshells that would come our way in December. Disney+ would become the exclusive home for new episode premieres in the UK beginning with Season 36. Sky would be cut out of the picture entirely as far as new episodes were concerned, although they retain repeat rights for now. Channel 4 would move their airings of the show to E4 in the New Year, becoming the only place to see new episodes on linear television, beginning with the long-awaited arrival of the 2020-21 season on free-to-air TV.

Any fears that this would be a sideways move or demotion were quelled when we finally got a look at how the show would be scheduled in its new home: episodes were plentiful, with up to seven a day running between 4pm and 9pm, and the newbies were given a prominent slot not dissimilar to how Sky used to schedule them (and, it must be said, a far more convenient one for me): a double-bill every Sunday at 8pm, starting on the 12th January (with 7pm repeats on Thursday and Friday) and running until the Sunday before this post was published. The show also retains a presence on C4 with the daytime repeat block on weekends.

With the new episodes airing later than usual, you might expect them to be more lenient with regards to censorship (Season 31 having already been significantly less cut on C4 compared to the previous few years). Some things I'd warned about in my preview of the season back in September suddenly seemed like they might not be issues at all. (For effect, try reading back the fourth paragraph of that post with "The Eve of the War" playing in the background.) Was that to be the case?

Big General Notice

With a few exceptions, this post will detail cuts for the 8pm premieres only; the 7pm repeats were subject to a higher degree of censorship, but one that was generally a bit more lenient to what you'd expect if they'd been shown on Channel 4. I tried, but I didn't really have the wherewithal to keep up with both showings (especially once it became apparent the 8pm versions were the ones on catch-up). Regular commentator Rick did make some notes on what was being censored from the encores, but you can go through his skeets to get a taste of what was cut as just typing them up seemed a bit too close to taking credit for his work.

For the other usual notices: if something nonstandard was going on during the end credits E4 generally left them alone for at least the duration of whatever nonstandard thing might be going on provided there were both different visuals and audio; this included instances that were still frames and not moving video, which wasn't always the case on C4.

Sometimes even occasions that were just different audio were left alone entirely, but sometimes they were not; as against that, on one occasion ("Yokel Hero") there was an extra scene during the credits but E4 still saw fit to put a banner that pushed the screen upwards advertising the next programme, since obviously the latest showing of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was just too important not to. All episode dedications are, as expected, missing from E4's copies.

ZABF15 The 7 Beer Itch

Thanks are also due to Rick for spotting this one. Right at the top of the episode, about 30 seconds in, we cut from the establishing shot of the British pub ("The Brexiting Swan") to the above close-up of a tin of Wankers brand shortbread... as a gentleman in a bowler hat brings it down on someone else's head, revealing we're in the middle of a pub brawl. E4's edit excises the shot of the tin completely, so we cut from the establishing shot to the fight in full flow.

Rick also noted that the 7pm repeat of this episode was pulled at the last minute, replaced with "Regarding Margie" from season 17 -- almost certainly because the episode features a joke about an aeroplane crash and the repeat was scheduled for the same day as the Washington DC disaster.

You may also like to know that whilst Wankers Shortbread is a play on the Scottish manufacturer Walker's Shortbread, the show's depiction of a tin with a Union Jack is how it's sold overseas (also available to buy in the UK, but seemingly aimed primarily at tourists), even if the flag used in the episode appears to be several hundred years out of date.

There's going to be an article about me in The National before the week is out now, isn't there?

QABF02 Three Dreams Denied

In the music lesson:

MR. LARGO: Great. Now, keep playing. I have a very important meeting in the instrument closet. [Which he enters; he puts on a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and produces a bag of CBD gummies.] CBD gummies, take me away! [He eats some gummies and starts hallucinating.] Mmm, mmm, mmm.

Given this was the only drugs-related cut to the 8pm versions, I can only assume it's actually depicting the taking of drugs that C4 objects to. The context of a schoolteacher leaving his students to take them mid-lesson probably doesn't help.

During the scene in the Android's Dungeon a minute or two later, there's an odd moment where some of Nelson's lines don't match the animation, but it seems the original episode is like that, almost as if there was a last-minute change of dialogue. Whilst I said I wouldn't cover all the cuts from the 7pm repeats, the one made to Bart's cartoon described by Rick here is particularly interesting; I do give points for making sure what was left was still coherent.

QABF01 Sorry Not Sorry

In the pawn shop scene:

GROUNDSKEEPER WILLIE: Uh, uh, yo no hablo English... Ach, the English. How I hate those wankers.

In a change that is perhaps best categorised under 'nice try', "wankers" is replaced with a repeat of "English" from seconds earlier, so the line becomes "Ach, the English. How I hate those English".

QABF12 Panic on the Streets of Springfield

As expected:

QUILLOUGHBY: Shut your gobs, you wankers!

[The crowd gasps.]

GUY IN CROWD: Woo-hoo! Wankers!

QUILLOUGHBY: Can't you see this show is just a cash-grab?

These are technically pretty good; they get lucky with the way Benedict Cumberbatch delivers the first line. Shortly afterwards, to the imaginary Quilloughby:

LISA: Thanks, Quilloughby. You're the best imaginary friend a complicated eight-year-old could ever ask for. But I think we both know it's time for you to go. [She hugs QUILLOUGHBY.] I'm going to miss you, you bloody wanker.

This one is a bit more obvious, as there's a slightly awkward cut from Lisa pulling out of the hug to a shot of her standing still.

QABF14 Mother and Child Reunion

MAGIC SHOP OWNER: Now, I'm afraid the next kilometre on Lisa's autobahn of life would not be, as you say, easy peasy.

As you can probably guess, this isn't actually a proper edit, just sloppiness: E4 stick the advert break in a place where there wasn't one originally here, and the beginning of the first line of the second half is cut off as a result. It's pretty much impossible to make a clean edit because there isn't an establishing shot or moment of silence at the start of 'part 2', and the new joke going into the break isn't a particularly good one (the adult Rod and Todd ask for Ned to bring the monster spray and he admits he may have coddled them too much), so I have to wonder why they bothered. (They also put the break in a new place for "Panic", going to ads after the music video for "Everyone is Horrid Except Me (And Possibly You)", which actually works okay.)

The drugs scene is left intact, but did have the knock-on effect of the repeat being moved to 8:30pm; presumably there was no way to edit around the very visible marijuana joints, and no alternative that didn't render the resolution to the episode incomprehensible.

QABF13 The Man from G.R.A.M.P.A.

A reappearance for Wankers Shortbread, a direct call-back to the one that was cut from "The 7 Beer Itch":

If you're wondering at what point it was this article nearly got retitled "A Load of Wankers", it was when I remembered the existence of this.

The tin is only seen for a second or two, in the wide shot right at the start of the episode, which presumably explains how it slipped through the net, for it was seen uncut in the 8pm premiere.

On the 7pm repeat, though -- and I did actually watch the start of the repeat specifically to check and managed not to notice this, so thanks to Rick for spotting it! -- it had changed to this:

Either they realised their mistake when the first airing happened, or (perhaps less likely) someone else was editing the episode for an earlier timeslot, and was paying closer attention. (As of this post's publication, 'WANKERS' remains on catch-up; there do not appear to be any other differences between the two versions.) Whilst there are plenty of examples of bad words being blanked out over the years across Sky, the BBC and C4, I can't think of another case of one being changed like this.

QABF15 The Last Barfighter

When Lenny and Carl are injected with anti-booze, Homer exclaims "Those poor bastards!", which was not cut from the premiere; I can't be certain if this is a case of someone taking their eye off the ball or if the word was deemed to be OK given it went out just before 9pm, as this is the only use of the b-word in this season.

The line was cut from the 7pm repeat (thanks to Rick for checking), and I am strongly leaning towards it being deliberately left in the first airing, but hopefully later seasons will have some similar instances of swearing so we can work out what the fuck is going on.

* * *

So has the move been for the best? Well, yes, of course; compare the length of this article to the one I wrote for Season 31, a season which Channel 4 was pretty lenient with by their standards, and the difference is pretty stark. All the cuts for language were for the same word, one which clearly cannot be broadcast before the watershed in the UK, and the drugs-related cut may be a little more iffy but there is a consistency which didn't seem to be there before. Everything was going pretty well right up until the very last moment, when something that blatantly should have been cut slipped past compliance.

Reports are that Season 36 -- not yet concluded in the US at the time of writing, and currently being added to Disney+ in the UK on a weekly basis -- could hit E4 as soon as later this year. If so, I will of course keep an eye out for cuts, but there won't be a preview post, although I will probably do one for the E4 premiere of Season 33 at least, if only because one of the episodes has the word "shit" in it.

Thanks again to Rick for an enormous amount of help with this article, Wesley Mead for scheduling information and other assistance, and John J. Hoare and Jack Horsley-Green for additional consultation