At the end of last year, we talked a little about how some sitcoms were shot far closer to transmission than I ever expected. But sometimes, such stories just seem a little too unbelievable. Take Are You Being Served? – or, specifically, Wikipedia’s episode guide for the show. If you scan your eyes down that list until you reach Series 5, you will come across something rather odd.
Apparently, every single episode of Series 5 was recorded the day before it aired. For example, “Mrs Slocombe Expects”, shown on the 25th February 1977, was recorded on the 24th February 1977. This continues right up until the last episode of Series 5, “It Pays to Advertise”; this was shown on the 8th April 1977, and was apparently recorded on the 7th April 1977.
Something smells fishy. Being recorded close to transmission is one thing. The entire series being shot the day before TX is quite another. So let’s take a sneaky look at the paperwork for that first episode of the series, “Mrs Slocombe Expects”.
Through that haze of atrocious reproduction, we can just about read the recording date for the episode: 18th February 1977. Actually very close to transmission – exactly a week before, in fact – but certainly not the previous day.
And the same holds true for the rest of the series. “The Old Order Changes” was recorded on the 11th March for transmission on the 18th March, “Goodbye Mr. Grainger” was recorded on the 25th March for transmission on the 1st April, and “It Pays to Advertise” was recorded on the 1st April for transmission on the 8th April. And while I’m missing information on two of the episodes, it’s not too difficult to work out from all this that “A Change is as Good as a Rest” was almost certainly recorded on the 25th February for transmission on the 4th March, and “Founder’s Day” was recorded on the 4th March for transmission on the 11th March.
As to how somebody updated Wikipedia with this particular piece of incorrect information, who knows. It could perhaps be a simple confusion between “a day” and “a week”. But despite it triggering my Spidey-sense, this kind of misinformation is all too easily believable to some, because it’s so damn specific. There’s no actual need to quote the recording dates in the first place; if somebody has bothered to do so, it’s extremely easy to just assume that they are the real deal. Indeed, this “fact” about some episodes of the show being recorded the day before TX has been quoted to me at least twice before.
It ain’t true. And to be fair, given past experience, Wikipedia will probably be corrected by somebody within an hour of me posting this.1
I’ve been asked before why I don’t fix things on Wikipedia myself. Without going into too many details, I struggle a little with Wikipedia’s guidelines on various things. Not to the point where I want to do some massive rant about them… but I’m not going to get involved myself. Sorry, Wikipedians, but my work is best done here. ↩