Onslow’s Telly Redux

Over the past few days, I’ve been posting lots of interesting facts about exactly what’s on Onslow’s telly in Keeping Up Appearances. If I was somebody sensible, I would pretend I had now tracked down every last piece of information about the topic. By poking it any more, all I risk is inducing boredom and confusion, even among the hardcore readers of this site.

However, as previously established for the past 15 years here, I am not sensible. In some episodes, I couldn’t quite figure out exactly what Onslow was watching. And I feel duty-bound to document it.

So, stand by to be bored and confused.

3.3 • Violet’s Country Cottage • TX: 20th September 1992

An odd one to start off with. What exactly is Onslow watching in this scene?

The main sound effects seem to be that of aeroplanes or similar, but according to the paperwork, the music in this scene is “Rocket Rebel” by Curtis Schwartz, from the 1991 KPM release Hit Mix. If you listen closely, especially at the start, you can just figure out the track bleeding through under the noise:

3.5 • Richard’s New Hobby • TX: 4th October 1992

Oh Onslow, what irritating thing are you watching now?

The music here is “Flashpoint” by Hubert Clifford, released on the 1991 Chappell album Drama 2.¹ Unlike “Rocket Rebel”, you can clearly hear this one in the episode:

It is possible that this is from one of the custom-shot Snoad films, but it would have to be from a section which is never broadcast in any other episode; “Flashpoint” only appears here. I suspect it’s probably something else… but again, what?

3.7 • What to Wear When Yachting • TX: 18th October 1992

We have slightly more information for our next puzzle:

We know, at least vaguely, what material this is. The paperwork reveals the following:

Shown on “Onslow’s Telly”

Enterprises Free Extracts – Diversions: Set 5 No 8 “Working With Glass – Engraving” (sound only)
Duration: 0.31″

The above takes a little bit of interpretation. The programme is called Diversions, and it was made by BBC Enterprises, the commercial wing of the BBC which eventually became BBC Worldwide, and is now known as BBC Studios.

But what was Diversions, exactly? The BBC Annual Report and Handbook 1987 has this to say, in its section on BBC Enterprises:

“Programme Adaptions supplies sales departments with programmes and promotional material tailored to meet market needs. Entering its fourth successful year, Rockline, a compilation of the best in rock and pop programmes from the BBC, continued to sell well overseas. Another series of Diversions, a collection of short fillers designed to bridge awkward gaps in scheduling, was produced to complement main programme sales.”

Although these were made by BBC Enterprises, and sold overseas, they were also broadcast on network BBC1 and BBC2; sometimes billed, but mostly unbilled. These were cutdowns made from full-length programmes; one unbilled episode I looked at recently was a chopped-down episode of Wildlife on One. Modern day equivalents of these kind of fillers are alive and well on the BBC today, especially when there are last-minute changes due to sport; Coast is the obvious example, but there are also ultra-short versions of programmes such as Natural World.

Sadly, despite knowing all the above, I haven’t actually managed to find the episode of Diversions used in Keeping Up Appearances.² I suspect this one might be tricky to find. But hey, we know more here than our first two examples, at least.

As for the music, the Keeping Up Appearances paperwork claims that the track used is “White Horses (b)”, by Bob Holroyd, from the 1992 album Classical Vision:

Unlike the first two examples in this article, I can’t quite decide whether the above is correct or not. I’d be very interested in your opinions on this. Regardless, in the Keeping Up Appearances clip, the music seems to change to a different track 50 seconds in, but only one track is listed in the paperwork. Which is extremely unhelpful. So we’re definitely missing something here.

This material also shows up three times in Series 5: in “Hyacinth is Alarmed” (5.3), “Country Estate Sale” (5.6), and “A Barbecue At Violet’s” (5.8). Here it is, in “Hyacinth is Alarmed”, which might give a slightly better shot at hearing the music:

5.6 • Country Estate Sale • TX: 8th October 1995

And finally, two for the price of one. When Daisy hits the telly at 18 seconds in, the set clearly changes to Diversions, as detailed above.³ But what is it playing before then?

The answer: the Bruton library track “Western Panorama” by Len Beadle, from the 1991 album The American West:

This is also in “A Barbecue At Violet’s” (5.8), where we get to hear a bit more of the track:

Note the sound of the horses present, as well as the library music.

*   *   *

Here is where I get to give my theory⁴ on at least some of these. We know that Harold Snoad shot five fake film extracts for use in Keeping Up Appearances: Virgin’s End, Gangster’s End, German’s End, Hostage’s End, and Pilot’s End. It is tempting to suspect that Harold Snoad actually shot more than these five films, and these are what we’re hearing on Onslow’s telly in the above clips, Diversions aside.

I don’t think he did, though. Both Snoad’s book and the production paperwork both seem very clear that he only shot five film extracts. I can happily distrust one source, but when they both match, it becomes a lot more believable.

Next up, we have to look at when Snoad shot his five films. The first two were made in 1990 for Series 1, the second two were made in 1991 for Series 2, and the final one was made in 1993 for Series 4. That leaves Series 3 in 1992, and Series 5 in 1995, as the two series without any new films debuting.

Now let’s revisit from Snoad’s book some of the circumstances in which these were shot:

“During every filming period you have to schedule a certain amount of time (usually a couple of days every three weeks) as ‘standby’ to allow for shooting sequences that weren’t able to be filmed as originally planned because of inclement weather. If an element of those two days hadn’t been used because the weather hadn’t been all that bad – or we had managed to pick up the lost sequence on another day because something hadn’t taken quite as long to film as myself and my production manager had originally thought – there were occasions when we could see that we would probably have the odd afternoon free. […]

For various reasons, therefore, there generally came a time in most filming periods when we could see that on a certain day we would have a few spare hours. I used those to make the ‘movies’ you saw on Onslow’s telly – or to be more precise, the ‘extracts’ you saw.”

As I don’t believe Snoad shot any of these silly films during Series 3 or 5, we have to assume that the standby days for these two series were actually used to shoot real material for the show, that had been delayed for whatever reason.

With this in mind, isn’t it an odd coincidence that I can trace every single thing that’s on Onslow’s telly for the first two series… and then as soon as I hit Series 3, I start running into problems? Which makes me think that Snoad turned to other sources for what to put on the TV, rather than his fake films, in order to keep things varied. We know that Snoad was conscious of this latter point. Back to his book:

“Eventually there were so many occasions when Onslow had his telly on that the various sequences were used quite a number of times – although I tried to avoid having the same sequences in consecutively transmitted episodes.”

We are, of course, well into the realms of guesswork here. But guesswork is all we have left for a lot of this. In none of the instances in this article do we actually see what’s on Onslow’s telly – we only hear it. Only in the case of Diversions do we have proof that Snoad has used an existing television programme; the other three instances remain completely unknown.

So the big question is: did Snoad grab some library music, shove some sound effects over the top, and “pretend” he’d made some new films for Onslow’s television, deliberately keeping it safely out of vision? Or is every single example above some kind of genuine TV programme or cheap-to-licence film, just undocumented in the paperwork?

We may never know. But the question has been annoying me for months. I hope it now annoys you as well.

With thanks to Milly Storrington for help with Diversions.

1. In this set of articles, I generally haven’t traced back the library music to its original source, but merely listed the release Keeping Up Appearances states it is from. “Flashpoint” isn’t a 1991 track; it seems to have been first released in 1957. Tracing back library music to its source is a fun hobby, but you can easily find yourself lost in the weeds, and I’m lost in the weeds enough with these pieces. ↩

2. I have viewed another episode, and can confirm that the endboard states it was made by BBC Enterprises. ↩

3. The section using the second, completely unknown track. ↩

4. Which is mine, and what it is too. ↩

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