Fun With Daisy and Onslow

When you’re a Red Dwarf fan, it’s easy to forget how spoilt you are. The DVDs bombard you with deleted scenes and unused material. Want an early version of the opening episode, featuring an entirely different introduction to The Cat? The DVDs have you covered.

Sadly, Red Dwarf is an outlier; a rare example of a series which started in 1988 which still had a production office at the time of the DVD revolution. Moreover, it was understood that there was a large geek audience who would lap this kind of thing up. The chance to see this kind of material for programmes of Red Dwarf‘s vintage on an official release is rare, especially when it comes to audience sitcom. Sometimes, you have to rely on other means.

Or, just occasionally… mistakes.

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Although I’ve been writing a lot about Keeping Up Appearances recently, I’ve mainly been using my DVDs of the show, rather than the iPlayer versions. So thanks to Rhiski91 on Roobarb’s Forum, for pointing out something I never would have spotted in a million years.

Take a look at Series 5 Episode 9, “The Rolls-Royce”, first broadcast on the 29th October 1995. Here is the first Daisy and Onslow scene in the episode. This is how the episode was broadcast on first TX on BBC1 back in 1995, and how it’s also presented on the 2013 DVD release:

And for decades, that’s the version of the scene we knew.

Which is why the following is so startling. Here is how the scene was transmitted on its BBC Four showing in 2022, and how it currently appears on iPlayer:

A completely different version, set during the day rather than at night, and with some mildly different dialogue, including a new tag. It also plays to mainly silence from the audience.

What’s going on?

Clearly the scene was reshot back in 1995 for whatever reason, and when BBC Four dragged out the episode in 2022, they simply picked the wrong, unfinished version of the show from the metaphorical dusty shelf.¹ I’d be wary of saying exactly why it was reshot, although it’s worth noting that Daisy’s worry about Father leaving the house works so much better when the scene is set at night. Moreover, three scenes later, we have Rose saying “You said last night you’d take him out”. The lighting change might not be the whole story, but it’s surely at least part of it.

The point is: we never would have got to see the original version of the scene, unless somebody had made a mistake. I mean, I’d love for there to be a proper DVD release of Keeping Up Appearances, featuring every last unbroadcast scrap of the show from the archives. But in lieu of that, I’ll make do with the BBC dragging the wrong version of things out in error occasionally.

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The above is, of course, the simple version. But you know me by now. It sure would be nice if we could figure out exactly when both versions of the scene were recorded, wouldn’t it? For that matter, have we really proved that the BBC Four/iPlayer version was definitely the first incarnation of the scene, with the BBC1/DVD version being the reshoot? It seems like that’s probably true, but there are any number of other possible scenarios. Television is a complicated business.

Don’t worry. We can get there. Strap yourself in, though. This needs a bit of concentration.

Firstly: we can easily prove that the reshoot was done during a different week of production on the show, rather than a retake shot later on the same day. How? Well, much like Victor Meldrew and his kitchen cabinets, all we need to do is closely examine what’s on Daisy and Onslow’s shelves.

There are two different scenes set in Onslow and Daisy’s living room in “The Rolls-Royce”, and crucially, the second scene is identical in both versions of the episode, give or take some audio differences. So by comparing the two scenes, we can find out when everything was recorded.

Here’s the BBC Four/iPlayer version; both scenes have a cup and a red box on the bottom shelf, and so were recorded during the same studio session:

The shelves are very different when examining the correct version of the scene used for first TX and DVD, with a Cadbury Dairy Milk case² present on the bottom shelf. This means the two scenes were shot during different sessions:

“The Rolls-Royce” was recorded in studio on the 10th September 1995.³ The above indicates that the BBC Four/iPlayer version of the first scene really was the one which was shot first, together with the second scene, during the main studio record for the episode. The version of the first scene on as shown on BBC1/DVD must therefore be a remount, done later.⁴

Which leaves us with one final question: can we figure out when the reshoot was? This is a little more complicated than it might first appear, as Series 5 of Keeping Up Appearances wasn’t shot in broadcast order. The episodes recorded after “The Rolls-Royce” are: “Skis” (5.5), “Country Estate Sale” (5.6), “The Boyfriend” (5.7), and “The Hostess” (5.10).

You know what’s coming. If we check Daisy and Onslow’s shelves for each of these episodes:

The shelves in the reshot scene for “The Rolls-Royce” clearly match those of “Skis”, with the Dairy Milk box present on the bottom shelf, and so they must have been recorded in the same session:

All of which means: the first Daisy and Onslow scene from “The Rolls-Royce” was reshot on the 17th September 1995, the date of the main studio record for “Skis”. This is just a week after the main studio record of “The Rolls-Royce”, when the first version was recorded. Clearly, that first version was quickly deemed unsatisfactory, and so Snoad re-recorded it the following week. This re-recorded scene then correctly made it into the first transmission in 1995… only for BBC Four to accidentally pull out the wrong version decades later.

Brilliant. Join me next week, when I figure out Brittas Empire reshoots by carefully examining the coffee stains on Julie’s desk.

With huge thanks to Rob Keeley, for dragging out his off-air of Keeping Up Appearances to confirm which version of the episode actually aired in 1995. Thanks also to Tanya Jones, for some more extensive editing help than usual.

1. There are also some audio differences throughout the episode, particularly when it comes to the laugh track, but that’s outside the scope of this article. Seriously, things get complicated enough here, without dealing with all that. Suffice to say that the BBC Four/iPlayer version clearly hasn’t had a finished sound pass; presumably, it’s a pre-SYPHER edit. It was clearly never intended to be broadcast in this state. ↩

2. I think Whole Nut? ↩

3. All main studio recording dates are taken from the production paperwork, although sadly it doesn’t have enough granularity to detail the reshoot for us. For more on this topic, see this faintly ridiculous article. ↩

4. For further proof: “The Rolls-Royce” and “A Riverside Picnic” were both shot during the same studio session, thanks to both episodes containing a large amount of location material. Daisy and Onslow’s shelves in the BBC Four/iPlayer version of “The Rolls-Royce” exactly match what you see in “A Riverside Picnic”. ↩

5. I do apologise for Geoffrey Hughes’s orgasmic face in this shot. Believe me, it was the best I could do. ↩

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