Comedy legends’ lost shows released

A COLLECTION of previously lost episodes of The Morecambe And Wise Show are to be released on DVD for the first time.

The first series of the comedy duo’s show, which was initially broadcast on BBC2 in 1968, was never archived and all eight episodes were disposed of in the 1970s to make space in the BBC’S archives.

After years of archive research and restoration, film copies have been found for four of the eight episodes with audio-only recordings having also been located for the other four.

All eight episodes are now being released on DVD together with a previously lost one-off Morecambe And Wise special.

They have all undergone extensive sound and picture restoration to recover their original full colour for the first time since they were screened in 1968.

The first Morecambe And Wise episode recorded previously only survived as a badly decomposed film print, rediscovered in a movie vault in West Africa.

As part of a seven-year restoration project, the film has been scanned with X-rays to recover the images locked inside the decayed film.