All 'Curse of...' DVD's will be withdrawn from sale!!

[PhilGlass]

The BBC lost. THIS WILL NO LONGER BE RELEASED ON DVD IN ANY FORMAT...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/de ... eptoe-dvds

To quote Harold Steptoe: "Finally it's got through to this dim-heads at the BBC"... Bye bye Curse of Steptoe... and good riddence.

[Archie]

Amen to that Phil! for once the Beeb are right to wipe a programme.

The hideous drama should never have been made

[bob]

Apparently the distribution company 2Entertain managed to overlook the recall request and in the mean time mamaged to distribute the DVD's in a way that no longer makes recall possible through them.

In other words it is still on sale.

"The dirty devils"

[PhilGlass]

I've noticed that G.O.L.D. are advertising their showing of the whole series as "The Dark side of comedy", but it omits "The Curse of..."... maybe we've got rid of this for good!

[Karl]

Don't the beeb own G.O.L.D?.If its thiers they wouldn't shoot themselves in the foot by showing "The curse of steptoe" again!

[winstonlegthigh]

I heard a whispering in and around the time of it's release that certain parties found it to be quite objectionable but i thought it was pretty cool. I mean, i can't really say what is or isn't an accurate depiction of Wilfred Brambell and Harry Corbett but as a piece of work it was pretty well done and certainly evoked a response.

Perhaps a better way of presenting it would be a based on a true story thing, artistic lisence and all that, y'know? 99% of biopics are a load of old twallocks anyway, that one they did of Jim Morrison or the Sid Vicious one or, y'know, the list is endless.

[bob]

The Corbett’s main objection was they way it portrayed Harry's second wife, Maureen

The show sets out to create the impression that she broke up the first marriage. The film has a scene where Maureeen knocks on Harry's door. The picture is created that they haven’t seen each other for some while and Harry is actually at home with his family. This is completely untrue and very hurtful for the family.

While 'The Curse' doesn’t claim to be entirely factual, there can be no doubt that the rest of the programme is based upon actual events so there is no reason why the viewer shouldn't believe the impression created about Maureen Blott was also based in reality.

[winstonlegthigh]

I was just chuffed at the time to see something, anything Steptoe related on the telly. I came up/grew up in the worst possible time for being a Steptoe fan i.e. the mid 90s was my youth etc and back then there was literally like, NO steptoe stuff whatsoever available, most of the videos etc they'd stopped selling or were petering out, the re-runs were thin on the ground, VERY thin on the ground, the only thing available was that Very Best of Steptoe VHS, other than that i couldn't find nothing, i had to go trawling the little side street shops of London and even then i only found the VHS of 65 Today.

Later, a HELLUVA lot later, as in new millenium later they played em on UK Gold ALL day and i got my cousin to tape the entire day for me. Then with the advent of ebay someone was selling "every steptoe episode" on dvd, i snapped em up, half of em didn't work and i was still chuffed. Then they started releasing them one series at a time so i started buying the ones that didn't work from my ebay purchase, then they released the entire thing on boxset, so i ended up buying em 3 or 4 times over in various ways

Point of my explaining that is i was chuffed to see The Curse of Steptoe, i don't think they should get rid of it, it's not as if there's a lot of Steptoe stuff out there and it is essentially a work of art BASED on a reality, it's at least something y'know, someone might stumble over that and then get into Steptoe through it....and it was well performed and well put together and everything which like, at the time i was thinking how on earth are they gonna find anyone approaching Harry Corbett and Wilfred Brambell (the answer to that is that they didn't but they did find actors to work out their own individualistic characterisation of said characters).

But yeah, i think getting rid of it's kind of extreme. If anything, i'd like to see another Steptoe documentary, only a proper one y'know, extensive, dig out all the old interviews and footage from across the world, piece it all together, credible interview, original footage. Perhaps a visit where the old set would have been, where the props came from, just everything. Set design is a fairly ignored part of the Steptoe fascination but where DID they get that set from, it looked wonderful, especially in black and white, i can totally understand why Galton and Simpson would have had a degree of trepidation regarding going to colour.

Now i think about it, it'd be a good way to get an excuse to get someone to raid the Beeb vaults and see if there's any old gear hanging around.

I went onto the front page of this website and you've got a colour shot of the snooker episode and i just went *gasp* I've not seen that in any form other than the one thats on general release, looking how well shot it looks...

It's absolutely criminal that they're trying to say that the paltry amount of footage available is all that there is in terms of footage regarding what was like, the most popular telly show of it's day, i mean even when you look through old footage of the 60s you can tell how popular it was just from like, the way it's referenced and mentioned, these days we live in a too cool for school self referential culture but in those days you had to be really special to permeate a culture like Steptoe did, there simply HAS to be more footage out there, there has to be.

What i wouldn't give for a lost episode or...i dunno, just anything.

[Ivor Biggun]

"Point of my explaining that is i was chuffed to see The Curse of Steptoe, i don't think they should get rid of it, it's not as if there's a lot of Steptoe stuff out there and it is essentially a work of art BASED on a reality, it's at least something y'know, someone might stumble over that and then get into Steptoe through it."

If they were portraying one of your loved ones in a less than charitable light for millions of people to see, you'd want it recalled wouldn't you?

[winstonlegthigh]

Perhaps it's one of those things where you've got to be in the situation to judge but i'd like to think not. I mean, if anything, the amount of attention it got i.e. viewing figures were like some of the best that channel got, weren't they? It shows that there is interest in Steptoe abound and the aforementioned loved ones have neglected to put stuff out there about them so if anything it'd raise awareness to, OK, thats out there, now lets show em what things were REALLY like, it's got the Steptoe cauldron bubbling if you like, whereas without it, we'd just have nothing.

And as i say, it's a work of fiction more or less as biopics ALWAYS turn out to be, look at them, any of them through history, they are always wildly inaccurate and very little resembling the actual person. The facts of it are that dramatisations of real life instances are in fact just that, dramatisations, altered and accentuated to give them a dramatic quality.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that the loved ones have no right to object, object away but i think some form of rebuttal whether through a statement or a documentary or whatever would be better. The pulling or banning of things, from The Rolling Stones Cocksucker Blues to Clockwork Orange to The School Kids Oz doesn't actually serve to do anything other than cannonise the thingies in question.

Also, y'know, people could take it as the loved ones not liking the reality of the situation presented.

Perhaps i'm just a greedy fan dying for a more complete Steptoe documentary.

Having said all of this stuff, i was watching When Steptoe Met Son again just this saturday and i remember sitting through it and hearing the statements of certain loved ones or confidants of Wilf or Harry, spilling their guts about various things intimated to them and i couldn't help thinking, y'know, you snidey little bastards, "i was wilfs friend, he came to me in such and such a place to confide in me" and i can't help but thinking "right, so you thought you'd hang about til he died and spill your guts for some documentary for a few quid, well done".

To which i suppose one could say that i'm just as bad for patronising said documentary in the first place and as such, not really in a position to claim moral high ground. The tawdry intrigues us, it always has.

Censorship has never really sat well with me i suppose.

[PhilGlass]

It is easy for us as fans to have our pint of view, but we must think of Harry's family.

It impliedthat H's first child was born illigitimately. Would you like that? His marriage to Sheila Staefel was history, they were divorced (and her recent book explains how it was her fault the marriage failed) and he had been married to Maureen Blott for longer than anyone is married these days before having a child.

It would be very hurtful for anyone to say that to me, and Im sure all of you. I understand we want Steptoe, but a fictional program is not Steptoe... if you accept this, we must accept with the same integrity a drama that shows Wilfrid was a time traveller from the future who invented tractors and that Harry was an alien who beamed down having stolen th starship enterprise from Kirk and his crew...

Artistic license I agree with. Hurtful lies I dont. Put yourself in their shoes.

[Ivor Biggun]

Good job keeping up the pressure to force them to pull this tripe off the market. Those early release, unedited versions must be worth some money, though, as a result of the lawsuits.

[harryfaversham]

I watched it once and couldn't bring myself to watch it again. I agree a more concise, in-depth, TRUTHFUL documentary is way overdue, not just for the show but Harry and Wilf too.