For those of us who are fascinated by the television of the past these are very interesting times.
For some old TV heads the idea of magically going back to live in the 1960s or 70s is a very attractive fantasy. To be able to see those shows that are now lost, perhaps forever, when they were originally broadcast is a highly alluring dream. From my 21st Century perspective living in those earlier times may sound great from a televisual standpoint, but there are a lot of other things that make the idea far less appealing. Watching lots of television from those eras, brilliant and fascinating though a lot of it is, shows a very different world that I for one am quite glad I do not live in.
Besides, outside of a dream world where someone takes a video recorder back to 1967 to record and bring back Callan’s first season to the present day, seeing our missing holy grail TV shows as originally broadcast is never going to happen.
Except in some ways that is exactly what is happening right now.
On Good Friday in this year of 2026 I got to settle down in front of my telly and watch, for the first time, two episodes of long thought lost forever Doctor Who from 1965. I have mentioned before in this blog the amazing work done by the UK based charitable organisation Film is Fabulous! It is thanks to them that these chunks of Archive TV gold have been returned and made available (incredibly quickly) for both Doctor Who fans and other lovers of old tv to enjoy.
And what a joy it was!
I can’t help but feel, however, that the pleasure I experienced watching these two half hour episodes of a Dalek ridden 1960s science fiction serial was heightened by the decades of being denied seeing them. There is something almost mythical about ‘lost’ television and when, beyond all hope, these shining reels of film are suddenly held aloft by the TV equivalent of the Lady of the Lake for all to see, I have to admit to being swept up into an almost religious ecstasy!
And it is not just Doctor Who that can bring on this special kind of joy. Ten years ago, in 2016, the British television preservation group, Kaleidoscope, recovered a first season episode of the classic British adventure series The Avengers from a private collection.
The episode, titled Tunnel of Fear, had originally aired in the UK in 1961. Its recovery increased the number of surviving episodes from The Avengers first season to three. Twenty-three sadly remain missing. It took two years from the return of the episode for it to be made available to purchase by Studio Canal in a special DVD release. My wife, being a lover of the show, had previously purchased the entire series and we had only recently finished a complete rewatch. Getting to then see another of the very early episodes was a real thrill. Particularly seeing more of Patrick Macnee’s Steed who even that early on had the twinkle in his eye that marked him as the future leading character of the show.
Going even further back to 2013 we come to one of the most well-known returns of lost television. Nine missing episodes of Doctor Who from 1968 were returned by episode hunter Philip Morris after they were discovered in an archive in Nigeria. These were initially made available for viewing via iTunes and later were released on DVD by the BBC. Exactly how long the gap between the episodes discovery and their being announced and released to the public has not been made completely clear, but it is believed by many to be quite a number of years. However, watching those episodes with Patrick Troughton in the role of The Doctor, was revelatory. Seeing him play in the surf in his long johns in episode 1 of The Enemy of the World was hilarious. And then witnessing the nuanced and ever-changing facial expressions as he is shamelessly flirted with by Mary Peach’s character, Astrid, showed us how much we had been missing not being able to see this consummate actor make the most of his every moment on screen. And that was just from the first 15 minutes of one of nine episodes!
Yet sadly it is predominantly only high profile shows like Doctor Who and The Avengers that seem to be made widely available after lost episodes are recovered. As I listed previously on this blog Film is Fabulous have made numerous other recoveries of long missing television episodes from other shows that I would love to see. The same is true of Kaleidoscope. Several years ago Network DVD would have been the obvious avenue for sharing these shows with the world – much of my own archive TV collection was purchased from Network – but very sadly that company went into liquidation in 2023. (*Please note that the Network website has recently reappeared, but it is NOT the real deal. Avoid it and do not share the URL.)
While some recent finds have had special screenings at Film is Fabulous events – or at the British Film Institute’s (BFI) Missing Believed Wiped screenings – very little has been made available for home viewing, and virtually none outside the UK. Even the recent episodes of The Daleks’ Master Plan were only officially made available to stream in the UK and the US. Here in Australia, as in the rest of the world, access to these episodes was only possible through the use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
The UK based Talking Pictures Television has been able to transmit some of the Film is Fabulous finds, but again these screenings are UK only. When and if these less well remembered shows will be made available for non-British aficionados like myself, seems to be in the hands of the rights holders. Having waited for literally decades to see these lost shows having to wait on the foibles of rights holders can be immensely frustrating.
However, with more classic TV being found and preserved, and the barrier defying dissemination of so much Archive TV on YouTube and other streaming services, our chances of seeing these tantalising pieces of media history is better right now in 2026 than it has ever been before.
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