Notes to the 5th series
With the beginning of this series, the first to be taken by the BBC
Transcription Services, the shows become the familiar and well-remembered
full-length stories, featuring by now most of the best-known characters.
This
is the only series honoured by Radio Times with a synopsis and cast list for
most shows (although these get progressively more divorced from reality as the
series wears on).
1. Not coherently announced.
2. Announced as 'Death in the Desert'.
3. Announced as 'The Terror of Bexhill-on-Sea'.
4. Announced as 'The Lost Music of Purdom'.
5. Inspired by Nigel Kneale's television adaptation of Orwell's 1984. The show
was such a success that the script was repeated by popular demand: the second appearance is not a recorded repeat,
but a new performance of the script, which was re-typed, incorporating all but one of the timing cuts made
for the first version. In the second show Snagge (pre-recorded) reads the telescreen announcement near
the beginning: in the original this is read by Sellers.
6. Billed in Radio Times (and Programme Index) as
'The Six Ingots of Leadenhall Street'; the script was changed at short notice to a story
inspired by the appearance of a photograph of the floating pier at Westminster under
several feet of water with an 'Out of Order' notice being pinned to it. Greenslade tries
to announce the show as 'The Six Ingots of Leadenhall Street' (insisting that the Radio
Times is never wrong): finally Sellers announces it as 'The Port of London Authority's
valuable hand-carved, oil-painted, valuable floating pier'.
7. 'Milton Street' is the name of a village in Sussex.
8. The title situation for this show can best be described
as confusing. The front of the script, Radio Times, Programme Index and the 'Programme as Broadcast' files give the title as 'The Terrible Blasting of Moreton's Bank'.
However, the show is in fact 'The Six Ingots of Leadenhall Street', the script postponed from
15-Feb-55 (see note 6), is announced as such, and titled as such by TS. Strictly speaking, the title
ought to match the official files, but since the 'Six Ingots' title makes more sense, and in fact
would have been the official title of the script had not the last-minute change of plan happened,
Roger decided to adopt it!
9. Announced as 'The Confessions of a Secret Senna-pod Drinker'.
10. Announced as 'Beau Geste'
11. Announced as 'The Son of Houdini'