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.

Just Ask For South By South East: The Book of the TV Serial, Only It Turns Out It's a Bit More Complicated Than That

When we last left my ongoing quest for the missing 1991 Diamond Brothers TV series, I was still reeling from a startling revelation: the TV series was not actually an adaptation of the third Diamond Brothers book, but rather the book was a novelisation of the series. Not only that, but it appeared one of the reasons why nobody had ever realised this in the time since the series fell into obscurity and the book became the far better-known version was because when Walker Books reprinted South by South East in 1997, several sections of the text were significantly rewritten, removing or changing sections from the 1991 version of the book. I strongly suspected that the material only found in the earlier Lion Books printing that coincided with the broadcast of the TV series was originally in the show, was faithfully novelised by Anthony Horowitz when he did the book, but then removed when he did his rewrite a few years later. But without access to the TV episodes, I had no way of knowing for sure.

Except, of course, that the title sequence for the series is on YouTube. Jamie, who uploaded the only footage of the series publicly available, does have access to the full series, but as he is not the license holder he can't upload anything else (so please, please don't pester him about it, least of all on my account -- he's not deliberately withholding the episodes, he just can't share them for legal reasons; he is working on a documentary about the tragically short life of Dursley McLinden, for which he tracked the episodes down in the first place, and may be able to include some more footage from the series in that). But it occurred to me that surely it would be OK to ask him a few questions about the material that's only in the 1991 version of the book and check to see if it was in the TV series?

And it was, and I can tell you that Jamie delivered in spades; I am enormously grateful to him for taking the time to do this. So let's take a second look at the differences between the '91 and '97 versions of the book, with the tremendously helpful addition of the perspective of someone who's seen the TV series. (I would recommend you read my first comparison of the two different editions, linked to above, if you haven't already before going on to this one.)

L'escouade Mystère

I noticed from my stats page today that quite a few new readers have been directed to the blog today from a French-language forum about adventure gamebooks, so if you're one of them, a very warm welcome to you. The page in question was specifically linking to my review of The Mystery Squad adventure gamebooks, and I learnt quite a lot of new stuff about the series' publication in French from it, specifically:

• The final two books in the series were never published in France for whatever reason; a similar phenomenon affects several other series of the time, such as the GrailQuest series which also never saw its last two entries published over there.
• As you can see from the picture above, the French editions used original artwork for the covers rather than the photographic ones, although they did mostly use the original internal illustrations (with one important difference... see below).
• In France, the Mystery Squad were rechristened Thomas Laloupe (Casey), and Rémi, Anatole and Julie (James, Bodger and Beans). So presumably French parents in the 1980s were less cruel to their children.
• Finally, what probably really makes this post worth writing: the series' frequent rebus puzzles, which I didn't mention in the original review but probably should have done, were redone for the French-language editions, so here's a comparison using the one uploaded by Gauthier, the author of the article:

The French version decodes to ES-PIONS-NON-DIVERS-ALLAH-TOUR-JUS-LIT-ET-RE-MI: Let's spy divers at the tower. Signed Julie and Rémi.

The Diamond Solution

On a previous edition of what is now apparently the blog's defining mission to chronicle every oddity concerning the Diamond Brothers books and their film and TV adaptations, we looked (well, correspondent Simon Drake looked at it and I made some extra notes) at two different edits of the 1988 film Just Ask for Diamond -- a longer one, which was originally released on VHS in the UK, and a significantly truncated one that appears to be the only edit of the film available on DVD. Lacking information about what was originally shown theatrically or was available overseas, I couldn't determine exactly what the deal was with the two versions. But thanks to another reader, Giles Leigh, who carried out some research into home video releases of the film outside the UK, I think we can, at the very least, make a pretty educated guess about what happened. Much of what you are about to read is what he sent me, and I am enormously grateful to him for doing the work and giving me permission to reproduce it here.