Clash of the Metal Titans

The first four series of the iconic robotic combat gameshow Robot Wars were a straightforward knockout tournament: each episode comprised a single heat, the winner of which would progress to a semi-final, and the winners of those would progress to the Grand Final. Thus, the episode titles for those series followed logically: "Series 2 Heat K" or "Series 3 Semi-Final A" make it clear what you're talking about.

But after the Fourth Wars, the UK championship took a temporary backseat for Robot Wars Extreme, a series featuring a wide range of different mini-tournaments. Each episode of Extreme 1 featured a mix of the different ongoing tournaments, plus the occasional one-off battle. So with the exception of the two Annihilators (which featured six robots who qualified from the earlier "Mayhem" melees fighting together, with one robot being eliminated each round until only one survived), and the Second World Championship, those episodes don't have any easily identifiable moniker.

Except the original Radio Times listings appear to have given each episode a title. One fight in each episode would be branded the "Main Event" of the night, and most of these titles come from those: I don't know if these were official titles given to them by the production team, or if the RT made them up themselves. At any rate, the episodes were titled thusly (read this list alongside the Robot Wars Wiki's episode guide if you like):

1. The Challenge Belt
2. The Ultimate Mayhem
3. The International Inferno
4. The Ultimate Vengeance
5. The Armed Forces Mayhem
6. The Ultimate Vengeance
7. The Annihilator Special
8. The Ultimate All-Star Conflict
9. The House Robot Rebellion
10. The Second World Championship [NOTE: Shown in this position on BBC Two, but had aired as Episode 16 of the earlier BBC Choice run]
11. The Forces Special [NOTE: Shown in this position on BBC Two, but had aired as Episode 17 of the earlier BBC Choice run]
12. The All-Star Quarter-Finals
13. The Flipper Frenzy
14. The All-Star Semi-Finals
15. The Tag Team Terror Final
16. The Annihilator Special
17. The All-Star Grand Final

Given there are two different fights dubbed "The Ultimate Vengeance", the two Annihilators are not differentiated between, and one of the twelve Mayhems has seemingly been arbitrarily given the title "The Ultimate Mayhem" just because it had Hypno-Disc in it, these titles are sadly not terribly helpful. Still, the Radio Times listings are the only place I've ever seen these episodes referred to as anything other than "Episode 1", "Episode 2", etc.

Nog een Artikel met een slecht vertaalde Nederlandse Titel

Last time on the blog, my attempts to track down the obscure 1991 Diamond Brothers TV series brought the attention of Netherlands-based reader David; as the show was a British-Dutch co-production, he was able to provide me with a large number of contemporary pieces about the show's broadcast in the Netherlands from Dutch newspapers. David had a few more notes to give me after reading my resulting piece, which I think deserve a post of their own.

Vraag Gewoon Nog een Keer om Diamant

Last time on my epic quest for the never-repeated, never-released-on-home-video Diamond Brothers TV series from 1991, blog reader Giles Leigh had tracked down a whole bunch of newspaper and magazine clippings pertaining to the series' broadcast in the Netherlands. Bearing in mind I knew the show had been a co-production with a Dutch filming company, allowing for filming on location in Amsterdam, this is possibly something I should have thought to look into before. Ahem.

Anyway, another blog reader, Netherlands-based David, has now been in touch with another selection of clippings from various Dutch newspapers covering the series' broadcast there; I am tremendously grateful to him for sharing this veritable treasure trove, and for helping out with the translations. Pictured above is the first of these, taken from the 8th April 1991 edition of the Leidsche Courant and featuring, unless I'm mistaken, a never-before-seen publicity still of Colin Dale and Dursley McLinden.

Broken Gamebooks #20: Sword of the Samurai

By pleasing coincidence (since I'd originally planned to cover something else entirely, but logistical issues -- namely, that the gamebook series I meant to write about turned out to have a set of reprints by a different publisher a few years later that fixed several of the problems found in the original versions, and it's going to take a while for me to track everything I need down -- mean we're getting this instead), Sword of the Samurai is both the twentieth entry in the original Fighting Fantasy series, and the twentieth entry in our ongoing series examining mistakes in adventure gamebooks. So what's the problem?

Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie & Fred & Wilma & Pebbles

Here is one of the sillier, yet strangely intriguing, mysteries surrounding The Simpsons. "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", as well as being correctly considered one of the greatest episodes the show ever did, was also the 167th episode to be broadcast -- meaning it overtook The Flintstones as the world's longest-running prime-time animation.

Most versions of the episode use the Sgt Pepper's parody couch gag -- this was definitely the version used on the original US broadcast on 9 February 1997, and it is also the version used on the Season 8 DVD. However, an alternative version of the episode exists, which uses the couch gag from the Season 4 episode "Kamp Krusty", where Our Favourite Family run in to find the Flintstones already on the couch -- obviously done in reference to the episode's record-breaking nature. However, this has obviously been hastily done, since the audio from the Sgt Pepper's couch gag is still playing over it. ("Kamp Krusty" also featured a screen in the end credits saying the Flintstones appeared courtesy of Hanna-Barbera, which is presumably not found in the alternate edit.)

There are two known places where this alternate edit is or was seen -- US syndication, and Sky One's original UK broadcast of the episode, which was on 13 April 1997. A theory is that after the original broadcast, people suggested that they should have used the Flintstones gag, and someone went back and made the edit to the network copy so future broadcasts could mark the milestone. (The fact that the alternate version was seen in the UK at all indicates that it was not done specifically for the syndicated version -- copies of episodes for overseas broadcasts tend to be copies of what the network had, not anything that was done for syndication.)

Now, look at this video someone's made of all the Season 8 couch gags. At 47 seconds in appears the alternate Flintstones-visuals-Sgt-Pepper's-audio gag... with the Fox Network logo in the top right corner. Is this from the one and only US network repeat (which was on 25 May 1997)? Because that would seem to go an awfully long way to validating the above theory, although it does raise the question of why the DVD uses the original version when they generally go with revised versions -- perhaps someone on the commentary team noticed the oddity and decided to get the "correct" visuals restored?

Gordon's Alive

A few years ago I wrote about obscure and unarchived ephemera related to The Brittas Empire, including the series of 10-minute fitness-related shorts Get Fit with Brittas -- a significant part of the show's history that were not on DVD, or indeed anywhere else. So it seems worth flagging up that the fourth episode, Gordon Works It Out, has just resurfaced on YouTube. (EDIT: I've just noticed the same episode was also uploaded to YouTube two months earlier, as part of a longer video which also includes a trailer for the rest of the series at the end.)

The most notable thing is that this episode was written by Ian Davidson & Peter Vincent, who were part of the team of writers brought in to write the last two series after creators Andrew Norriss and Richard Fegen departed. I was a little surprised when their names flashed up at the end, since it really doesn't feel much like even the post-Norriss/Fegen version of the show, but maybe that's just the oddity of a sitcom meeting a legitimate attempt to educate the public about healthy living, which this apparently was. There's a very strange, un-Brittas title sequence, too.

Also note the joke at 3:51, and that this episode was broadcast on BBC One on the 8th of August, 1997...

Vraag Gewoon om Diamant

Last time on my quest for the missing 1991 Diamond Brothers TV series, I mentioned I had some information I'd been sent by Giles Leigh about the show's broadcast in the Netherlands. Bearing in mind I already knew the show was a co-production with a Dutch film company, perhaps this is something I should've thought to look into myself before now. But anyway, since that last post was already earth-shattering enough, I decided to leave what Giles had sent me for another day and another post to avoid it all being a bit too much. And here we are.

29 on 4

At some point this autumn, Channel 4 will begin airing a new-to-terrestrial season of The Simpsons, first screened in the UK by Sky One around four years ago; the eighteenth season of the show they've premiered, and, in all probability, the fourteenth consecutive season to make its debut in the tried-and-true weekdays at 6pm timeslot. Based on the last few years' form, this will probably start early in November, but it could start at any point from September so it's good to get this in now: for the third year running, the blog's guide to potential censorship cuts for those watching along. As ever, keep an eye on Wesley Mead's UK schedules page to find out exactly when.

Before we get started, a general note: When these episodes were first aired by Sky One between December 2017 and May 2018, they were shown in a new, later-than-usual regular timeslot of 8pm on Fridays, which has stuck for every season since. This means that Sky's original broadcasts of these episodes were, with one notable exception, completely uncut, even the Treehouse of Horror; I cannot say the same for any repeats they made in earlier timeslots.