Many of my favourite mysteries involve lost or missing people and things.
Where did the crew of the Mary Celeste go?
Did the Holy Grail exist, and if it did, where is it?
Is the Ark of the Covenant really in Ethiopia?
I really didn’t intend so many soap-related items to come up in this blog, but news yesterday combined two passions: classic soaps and mysterious disappearances.
Amazingly, a lost episode of Crossroads has been found! (Thanks Unreality TV!). And if you’re interested you can watch the whole thing at itv.com.
It got me thinking about other “lost” telly programmes. Of course there are the programmes that were wiped or destroyed in the early days. I would dearly love to see the great Nigel Kneale’s teleplay The Road.
Fortunately, you can still read the moving screenplay (available on the DVD of The Stone Tape).
But then there’s a different sort of telly mystery. That thing that someone told you about or you vaguely remember seeing once but you can’t quite believe it’s real. You assume it must be a TV urban legend.
Thankfully, Web 2.0 has come to the rescue yet again. At least two such pieces of television folklore really do exist. And thanks to YouTube you can enjoy them again.
Take the Star Wars Christmas Special (handily abridged).
And the cast of kid’s classic Rainbow talking dirty (including the puppets). I was quite disappointed to learn that this was never actually broadcast. It was a spoof made for the Christmas party.
