Gems from the Raiders

The half-hour show is fronted by breakthrough comedian Paddy McGuinness, whose live comedy DVD was one of many new releases just before Christmas. He presents a meticulously researched series that unveils personal favourite TV moments from a host of stars, including Bruce Forsyth, Michael Parkinson, Chris Tarrant and Rolf Harris. What makes these different to those you’ll see on other shows is that these clips had previously been though lost forever - wiped from the archives.

This series is the first to come out of the “Raiders of the Lost Archive” initiative that ITV that has been running. It is the biggest ever worldwide search for missing TV shows that feature some of the best-loved stars in the history of British television.

As the website notes, if you were the Ant and Dec, Peter Kay or Ricky Gervais of three or four decades ago, your show may have gone out live and not been recorded at all – or if it was shot on videotape, and soon after broadcast the expensive tape may have been reused to record other broadcasts. Or, and this is the optimism at the heart of this initiative, it may simply have got lost, lying unlabelled somewhere on some dusty shelf for decades.

That's how thousands of shows featuring some of our favourite TV stars – of the like of Tommy Cooper, Morecambe and Wise, Bruce Forsyth and Tony Hancock – came to be lost. It is a story known only too well by fans of Doctor Who - over 100 episodes from the Time Lord’s 1960s adventures are missing from the archives!

Over the last year, archive researchers working for ITV have been searching all over the globe for material thought to be lost. But the job’s not done with the broadcast of this series – it is hoped the British public will be keen to help this initiative, with this four part series being the catalyst to more finds of material missing believed wiped. If it does, then many more series of Raiders of the Lost Archive are likely to follow.

In conjunction with the British Film Institute and Kaleidoscope (the TV appreciators' organisation), ITV’s initiative is spearheaded by trying to locate TV’s 50 Most Wanted Shows, which are detailed on their website. The glorious thing about this list is it does not matter whether the series was screened on ITV or BBC, shown in the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies or even the Eighties. They are united in all being shows that mean something in television history.

The Raiders of the Lost Archive series will renew the clarion call to those who may unknowingly be a potential source of lost material - the private collector with a rarity on their shelves; a fan who filmed their favourite show off the telly on a cine camera; someone who knows where master tapes ended up – in a library, a car boot sale, an uncle’s garden shed, or even shipped abroad for overseas sale.

Maybe some of these shows came into someone's possession while they worked at the BBC, or at an ITV station in years gone by. Perhaps they were plucked from a skip and saved from extinction? The Raiders team are clear to emphasise this is NOT a witch hunt – but it definitely IS a treasure hunt!

What we will see from next Tuesday on Raiders of the Lost Archive is just the tip of the iceberg. Many more shows not on the Top 50 list suffered the same fate. Try checking Kaleidoscope’s sister-site www.lostshows.com, and use their database to see if your film print at home, or early videotape recording from the 1960s, might also be missing.

Chris Perry, together with fellow Kaleidoscope member Simon Coward, has been assisting with the hunt. Chris noted: "This first series is the result of six months' work asking celebrities what was their most cherished work and then trying to find it. I have spent more time in ITV archives this year, than probably ever before!"

There is still treasure out there ...

News Item Added: 10-01-2007