TV Series 'Airline'

Must be only a matter of time till we see repeats on some of the Sat channels!!

Now that i think of it i have the ” single” of the theme music somewhere…thats on vinyl beleive or not !!! 😮 Sad or what!!

Would be good to see Airline again, would look very dated production wise tho.
Secret army is another series I’d like to see

“Secret Army” has been available on DVD since 2004 . I recently bought the entire series (42 episodes) for £39.99. It was a special offer from DD video.

One episode of SA features “Sally B”” circa 1978 and a (taxying but not flying) Lysander features in a few episodes.

Colin

Airline was good nostalgia for me because a lot was filmed at Blackpool Squires Gate where I first started to watch aircraft.During the time of Reflectaire some sequences of Family at War were filmed at night using the Lanc NX611 at Blackpool.

Secret Army has just finished a run on one of the cable channels, some good footage of Mossie RR299 in some episodes.The series stands the test of time very well and Clifford Rose as Ludwig Kessler was the epitomy of a Gestapo officer,very sinister!

Would be good to see Airline again, would look very dated production wise tho.
Secret army is another series I’d like to see

The bit at the end during the berlin airlift was done in malta too, along with the other daks that were based there at the time along with 3 dhc carabou’s.

Part filmed at RAF Church Fenton when, I believe, the usual trade was Jet Provost shaped.

…and part filmed in Malta when Ruskin did a spot of illegal gun-running, supposedly to a Middle East country.

I think Airline was a YTV production…

Part filmed at RAF Church Fenton when, I believe, the usual trade was Jet Provost shaped.

Cadbury chocolates did the same thing with several famous TV characters James, taking the personas and actors but not using the names. Much to the TV writer’s chagrin, there was nothing they could do and no royalties paid.

I could tell you which TV characteres but you may think I’m obsessive.

There was some hoo-hah when British Airports Authority copied the characters of Ruskin & co without the OK of Gretorex in a TV advert. Apparently having got the same actors and dressed them as 1940s aircrew for an advert, not using the name was legally OK, despite everyone being led to believe it was Ruskin and co. Not a pleasant episode, typical rapacious BAA.

Let’s hope the legal problems surrounding “Airline” are eventually resolved and it can be released on DVD. Wilfrid Greatorex actually died some years ago but perhaps his estate still has some legal say in what happens to “Airline”. Remember how Terry Nation’s agent had to give approval for use of the Daleks in the new “Dr Who” even though Nation died years ago.

In a similar vein have you ever wondered why the 1972-74 BBC series “Colditz” has never been released on DVD? Apparently the reason is that it was a co-production with a US TV company and they can’t agree who owns the rights.

Colin

What ‘Airline’ is….? :confused:

No – piece of cake- see Sadsacks comment above mine Dave
TT

Well its available now on DVD – see ebay!

TT

What ‘Airline’ is….? :confused:

Well its available now on DVD – see ebay!

TT

re

I would love to see piece of Cake – to young to se it 1st time round

I remember visiting the Cosford museum while the Airline series was running.

Their Dak was sporting a hand written sign on the port undercarriage ‘Sold to Ruskin’.

Apparently the curator went ballistic when he saw it but no one was able to find out who put it there – till now. 😀

I stand corrected about Dad’s Army, though I had it in my mind that a techie copied some tapes using the work’s equipment – I wasn’t suggesting Betamax or VHS were around at the time.

Still looking for ‘Airline’ or ‘Game, Set and Match’

Copyright Nazis! If it wasn’t for home tapers that had squirreled away many of the B&W episodes of Dad’s Army they would have been lost for ever.

I’m sorry this is off-topic but that is an incorrect statement.

At the time Dad’s Army was being made the master tapes were large and expensive video tape. It could be wiped and reused, twice I believe. Basically all shows that were made in that era had a contractual obligation for the length of time it was stored.

Shows like Dad’s Army that were popular often got one repeat, and also from the master they made film prints which were sent to overseas broadcasters. Once the contract with those overseas broadcasters was up (ie they had been aired) the tapes were usually either returned to the BBC, passed on to the next overseas broadcast company who’d bought the rights, or destroyed.

The contract with British Equity, the actor’s union, stated that these shows would then have the master tape wiped. This was in order to stop the broadcasters repeating shows over and over, and rather they had to keep making new stuff, therefore keeping actors in work.

So at the point when the period, usually two years, was up and shows were to be wiped and their expensive tapes recycled, a form would be sent around to the Producer telling him or her.

At that point they had the option to preserve the master, simply by signing the form. If they signed, it would not be wiped and would simply stay in the archives.

When this occurred for Series Two of Dad’s Army however, producer David Croft was away. He had a personal policy to always sign and thus preserved everything he made. No-one in the office realised and the form was not signed. Series Two was sadly wiped. The same thing occurred for Series Three, I’m not sure if this was at the same time. Some if not all of the third series was also wiped.

Some years later David was in Australia on holiday or a business trip, and turned the television on to see one of the Series Three episodes. He realised that the broadcaster must have film copies still, so he contacted the station and they found several in their archives. David arranged for copies to be returned to the BBC, which was done.

At that time the BBC wasn’t rerunning the series so this batch returned to the archives and were forgotten. When they did begin to replay them, one was found to be missing from Series Three (“Room At The Bootm”) and all of Series Two was declared as still lost.

Around about 1995 “Room at the Bottom” and “the series two episode “Sgt Wilson’s Little Secret” however turned up in the BBC archives after all. They too had been returned from Australia and had been misfiled. The only problem was Room At The Bottom was only in black and white, probably because when telecined for Aussie they were a b&w broadcaster.

That left five missing from the 80 in the series.

Then in 1998 I think it was, two more turned up. This story is more well known as it made world news. “The Battle of Godfrey’s Cottage” and “Operation Kilt” were returned to the BBC after laying in a man’s garden shed for ten years. These were not home taped copies either.

The truth is in 1969 when writers Jimmy Perry and David Croft were trying to sell the idea to film production companies for a Dad’s Army film, one of the companies they approached was the famous Boulting Brothers. Jimmy had a meeting with them and they were not familiar with the series so he’d had two recent episodes copied onto film. He’d taken then to their office to show them, and left the films with them. They never took up the deal of course (sadly, they’d probably have done a much better job than Columbia). So much later on when Boultings were having a clear out, these two film reels along with many others were dumped into a skip at Elstree.

A worker at the Elstree Studios saw all these cans in the skip and thought “I’ll ave them”. He took them home and had them stored in his garden shed for years, never looking at them. After about 15 years he passed them all onto a mate, who had them in his garden shed for another 10 years or so. It was only when this chap’s daughter forced him to tidy the shed he actually had a look at what was on them. 23 of the film cans were full of uninteresting stuff. Two had priceless gems in them!

So he took them back to the BBC and that was when they finally acknowledged the public could have more stuff and began their Treasure Hunt. That did bring in a lot of home recorded items that had been lost – particulalrly lost Goon Shows, Hancocks, Round The Hornes, etc.

Not one episode of the Dad’s Army radio series was lost, and not one of the lost TV episodes that have been returned (yet) have been because of home recordings. All have been on official BBC film reels.

Three TV episodes remain missing – “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Walker”, “A Stripe For Frazer” and “Under Fire”. If you have them, please return them to the BBC.

I had the pleasure of finding and returning the two lost episodes of It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, and Rear Guard, the appaulling US version of Dad’s Army (also wiped by ABC-TV), to David Croft and Jimmy Perry a few years back. All three were lost till i tracked them down. The two IAHHM were sadly badly cut by ABC in Australia when broadcast, and were taped on home video. Despite this, they now appear on the official BBC DVD as extras, and I didn’t get a single credit, nor did the chap who recorded them in the 1980’s. Oh well.

I’d love to find complete uncut versions. They were ‘It’s A Wise Child’ and ‘A Star Is Born’.

You are quite right that other things have been preserved and returned by home tapers, but I had to clear up the fact that it’s not the case with Dad’s Army.

Back to ‘Airline’, a great series I’d love to see again.

ITIR the Wroughton L-749 N7777G was originally purchased from Dublin for the second series and was shipped (literally) via Fleetwood with Aces high Titles but the corrosion was too far advanced for restoration to flying standard.
I also believe they filmed 2 endings to Buccanear one with the safe landing as used on TV and a less succesful one using an ex Caledonian Brit on the Stansted fire training school site. Rumour has it that some static shots were taken of G-BRED with Redair titles? Can anyone confirm. For a proposed second series.
Be lucky
David

AHHH fond memories of Ruskin Airlines (G-DAKS, G-DAKK?) Dakota at Sywell and Cranfield when I were a nipper….

TT