Help Save British Fraggle Rock Episodes

[anathema]

The Columbia release was in 2004, which I think makes it one of the last Muppet titles they released before losing (or not renewing) the license.

12 of the broadcast episodes have been released on DVD, several times. The 17 the BFI have, while broadcast-quality, are not the original transmission tapes but are instead off-air recordings; I have no idea whether they would even be suitable for a DVD release.

The VHS recordings vary in quality from as-good-as-VHS-ever-gets down to barely-watchable. Most of them are incomplete, missing their opening titles and end-credits and - usually - a few seconds from the opening/closing scenes. In some cases the missing material is insignificant, but in others there is dialogue missing. If you take a look at my archive listing, you'll see that some of the screencaps do not include the title-caption: this is because those recordings start after the caption. None of the recordings would be useable for a commercial DVD release.

I'm planning an update to the site to include full details of known recordings and their condition.

 

[johnpeters999]

Congrats to Fraggle rock for its 30th Birthday in the UK.

 

[Rugratskid]

I know I'm a little late, but this page was posted here a while ago, and it says, "I was fortunate enough to interview the producer of the UK wraparounds, Victor Pemberton, a few years ago and he mentioned that he at one time had every episode on VHS but that he wasn’t sure if he still had them in the basement." I just thought, maybe there could be a way to contact him, tell him what's going on and see if he still has the episodes? Maybe this sounds stupid, but it's worth a try, since there are currently no sources for some episodes, and this guy may have them still. Just a thought.

 

[anathema]

Got another one! A copy of Wonder Mountain has been located, bringing us down to just 13 still missing.

To answer the previous poster - sorry, I seem to have completely missed the post! - yes, we have contacted Victor Pemberton about the possibility that he might still have recordings. I won't go into details; suffice to say that sadly he wasn't able to locate any recordings of the missing episodes.

 

[Mister Muppet]

Good to know another one has been found, what's the quality like ?

 

[anathema]

So-so. It's an off-air recording, originally VHS but it's been through a few adventures since then and now only survives as a computer file. It's over-compressed but not massively so.

 

[FrackleFan2012]

Nice find, anathema!
Hope we could get the rest of the missing episodes soon.

 

[Rugratskid]

I'm quite excited at the fact that only 13 episodes are left missing. anathema is doing a fantastic job locating the episodes. I believe that eventually, the 13 missing episodes will be found.

 

[Rugratskid]

Sorry to double post, but I got to the BFI website, it says the VHS (Boober Gorg) can be requested for access?

I know nothing about the BFI, so if anyone could explain what that means, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[anathema]

It means you can request a viewing of the programme, on BFI premises.