"Happy to Sign This!"

The author was delighted not only to see a copy of this edition again, but also to learn that the entire series is now on YouTube.

Which may be the closest this saga ever gets to a nice, neat ending.

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.