Decades ago, when viewers were less technically aware about the 'magic of television', we would sit back to enjoy our favourite programmes on the three or so channels with little care or knowledge about how those moving pictures actually ended up on our screens. Therefore, this article which is part knowledge, part educated guesswork, is designed to show how a series like Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and other film productions, were broadcast.

Most people of yesteryear were familiar with the concept of film projection, having no doubt seen a few things projected at school or college (quite possibly allowing close up examination of the projector) as well as of course the cinema. So, how did a film end up on television? Was it also projected onto some sort of screen? The answer is of course, no. This is where a different type of equipment called a telecine would be employed to turn the film image into a video signal and it would be much larger than a projector, requiring several 'cupboards' worth of analogue electronics. In the era in question, the main machine of choice for a broadcaster would be a Rank Cintel telecine, with the improved twin-lens version being designed around 1964.

Rank Cintel 1960s 35mm Twin Lens Telecine
Image © Jonathan Wood, 2023

The purpose of such a device was to illuminate a frame of film and create two video fields from that frame in order to satisfy the requirements for the 50Hz UK PAL TV system. Instead of the light source being some sort of lamp, the film was illuminated with a scanning spot on a cathode ray tube, in the same way the picture was made up on a CRT Television. Also, the film would run at a constant linear speed rather than being paused in the gate like a projector. In the Rank Cintel telecine, twin-lenses were used in combination with the CRT and the film movement to scan each film frame twice. However, this is where some fudging came into the equation, which has been referred to in more recent years as PAL speed-up. The main shooting speed for film production is 24 frames-per-second (fps) and anything destined for international sales would most likely follow this designation – as did ITC productions. However, maintaining 24 fps while converting to 50Hz video was something of a headache. It could be accomplished with telecine machines employing a polygon prism but at the expense of picture quality as frames would be merged. It was far simpler to run the film 4% fast at 25 fps instead, thereby aligning each film frame with each video frame. This would of course affect the audio side as well with everything being increased in pitch by a semitone.

The desire for international sales meant that series like Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) were shot on 35mm film, the same gauge that most feature film productions used, although this wouldn't always be the case once the 1970s came along. Also, at this time, if something was shot entirely on film it was invariably finished on film. That is the complete programme edited and assembled, with printed titles and captions, producing a finished print, often with a combined optical (com-opt) soundtrack even if the master audio source was magnetic. By the late 1960s, videotape technology had been around for a decade in terms of being a usable broadcast medium, but it was still an expensive format to use. Therefore, if a show originated on film, it would be broadcast directly from film rather than being transferred to 2-inch videotape beforehand.

Image © Network, 2016

Master film reels – that is the original negative and back-up elements such as an inter-positive – usually come in 1k lengths, about 1000ft of film, which equates to roughly 10 minutes. These would also include captioning at the fade points such as “Sponsor's Message”, “Insert Commercial”. So, a 50-minute episode would require five, sometimes six master reels depending upon how the action was split up. These split points would be chosen by the editors to avoid places involving continuous incidental music. For direct film transmission, the BBC would make up the printed 1k reels into several double length spools for a feature film or two larger 25-minute spools for a TV series episode. This compiling exercise would not only remove any commercial break captioning in the case of television productions, but quite often fades to black as well.

Two telecine machines would then be used as a duplex pair, with a triggering point to change over the output signal from one telecine to the other at a reel changeover, in order to produce a seamless broadcast. For a feature, these changeovers would flip-flop back and forth between the pair of machines, much like the classic cinema projection did. The transmission would be rehearsed a couple of days prior in order to check the condition of the film materials and find some basic colour settings as well as audio levels. A rehearsal sheet was filled in so that when it came to the actual transmission, the telecine machines could be aligned accordingly about an hour before the broadcast. The BBC, of course, would not screen ITC film series until the 1990s, but their practices with film materials of this type were largely reflected across the industry. In commercial television, the advert breaks would mean the seamless switching between machines wasn't always required, especially for a 50 minute show comprising of two UK commercial breaks. For the original 1969-70 Randall and Hopkirk broadcasts, it is possible that the commercials – which were also 35mm prints – were physically spliced directly into the programme material and broadcast from the same reel. This would have been in addition to the insertion of the graveyard titles, which replaced the more elaborate Chambers and Partners sequence within the master materials (see Features: Only You Jeff!).

When looking at the initial broadcast run of the series on ITV, it tells us several things. ATV started showing the series first and they would have run prints directly on their telecine machines for broadcasts starting on Friday 19th September 1969 at 7.30pm. For the first four weeks, the adjoining region to the west, HTV did the same, but, rather than running their own print, it is much more likely they just took a line feed from ATV until moving the series' time slot in their region to Sunday at 3.45pm. Similarly, Westward Television would have taken a line feed too but lasted an additional week compared to HTV, until moving their timeslot some 25 minutes earlier, with the entirety of their broadcasts being duplicated by Channel Television who had limited facilities of their own. The Granada region stayed with ATV's broadcasts for eight episodes (as did Ulster) before they dropped the series for a couple of months, but Yorkshire stuck with ATV right up until Christmas. In London and the Southern regions, it appears the prints ATV ran first were then sent down to LWT for rebroadcast two days later on a Sunday, then eventually sent onto Southern for showing a couple of weeks later. Once a region deviated from ATV's time slot, they would have had to run prints themselves which would have caused extra wear and tear to the materials. As odd as it sounds now, no videotape recording would have been employed as a method of timeshifting the broadcasts for other regions by recording ATV's output. For a production wholly on film, it wouldn't have been deemed economical to tie up VT equipment and tapes that way – it would have been considered better to just broadcast directly from film.

BBC transmission prints were marked with a red label stating, “This is a transmission print, it must not be marked or cut”. However, once a series on film started its journey around the various ITV regions to cater for different broadcasts, each region may have decided to take their commercial breaks in different places. This would have resulted in the cutting and rejoining of the film prints (often losing a frame or two) on top of the additional usage, which meant that having 'done the rounds' they were going to be fairly dirty and have some obvious joins. However, this isn't something that was really noticed by the average viewer or indeed was particularly worried about back in the day. In addition, these live telecine transmissions had people grading 'on the fly', meaning they had to adjust levels and colour as the programme went out live, based upon what they saw and in real time. The result of this can sometimes still be seen on film inserts in unrestored archive video productions, where the colour and contrast vary on a shot as live adjustments were made. Audio wise, only the combined optical track of the print was used as it would have been an extra headache to sync up a separate magnetic track, especially if commercials were also being spliced in.

The lack of an ITV fully networked broadcast underlines the way ITC product was treated by the big five companies, although of course ATV would usually debut and promote any ITC product well for the Midlands. The standpoint of the other companies – Thames, LWT, Granada and Yorkshire – was that ITC's film series were generally viewed as bought-in, non ITV material, much like any feature film or American TV series, except even less so, which in retrospect was definitely a mistake. Unlike today, there was also more individuality between the regions regarding schedules and apart from the national news, main feature films and prime ITV series, the programme line-ups could be quite different from one region to another. Sometimes, even if they appeared to be the same, with regard to ITC product, it was often a different episode being shown. So, for Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), if you happened to live in the overlap area between London and Southern regions in late '69, then by tuning into the aerial signals coming from the Crystal Palace and Rowridge transmitters, you would have had a choice of episode viewing on a Sunday evening with the two companies running different film prints.

It can be appreciated that from the set-up of the separate ITV companies, if a film series was not fully networked, then the film materials themselves would have had a lot more wear than any equivalent prints the BBC used during the same time period. However, one kind of damage that sadly always occurred on a 35mm prints run on the 1960s era telecines during rehearsal and transmission was scratching. Before going on air, each reel would be run in about half a minute for the initial grading levels to be set, then the telecine would be stopped and run backwards to the leader. When the machine slowed down, two stabilising rollers either side of the gate that made contact with the film would slow down at a different rate compared with the linear motion of the film. Consequently, the print base would be scratched, producing noticeable fine vertical black lines within the first minute of most film reels. Despite all this, I'm sure the original prints would have been utilised for live telecine broadcast throughout the 1970s, although by the end of that decade they would have been in quite a state, having been constantly chopped about – and the Eastman colour stock would have faded to a degree.

Rank Cintel MkIII telecine with sepmag bay on the left
Image © Jonathan Wood, 2023

By the time the last repeats finished in 1977 and the series disappeared from our screens for a good while, the BBC had bought one of the newer Rank Cintel telecine machines called the MkIII. Rather then being upright like the previous generation of machine, it was designed to look more like a VTR, with the film reels side by side, and it was capable of running different film gauges with interchangeable gates. It could also run film on spools or plastic cores and, unlike the earlier telecines, it did not drive the film through with multiple sprocketed rollers. Instead, it employed a friction drive with tension arms keeping the film taut through the gate and over a capstan coated in a rubbery compound. It also had the big advantage of being able to fast wind the film forwards or backwards, whereas the old telecines could only run at play speed in either direction. There were some downsides to this new equipment, one being the more compact electronics had a poorer signal to noise ratio than the previous generation. Also, as the transport mechanism relied upon maintaining a certain tension, if a dodgy film join came along which was slightly sticky, it could quite easily cause a tension arm to go out of position and bring the whole thing to a grinding halt. Therefore, despite the BBC buying more of the MkIII machines, ending up with eight of them by the late 1980s, they continued to use the older generation of telecine for live film transmissions right up until the end of their use in November 1988. This was mainly because those machines, with more sprocketed rollers, would just keep churning along unless the film print actually broke. ITV on the other hand obviously embraced the newer technology for broadcast rather more, which occasionally caused problems. For example, their transmission of From Russia With Love in December 1985 came to an abrupt stop for several seconds during the train sequence just after Bond smacks Tatiana on the behind!

The following summer, repeats of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) began to emerge once again on ITV, with each region running the series as a daytime or late night filler. By this time, the main videotape format for broadcast use had shrunk from 2-inch to 1-inch wide tape, and it was therefore somewhat cheaper to use. That's not to say though that 2-inch was redundant, being used by the BBC as a direct-to-air format until the end of the 1980s. However, most ITV regions would still have had their legacy Telecine departments, so if air time could be filled by utilising those facilities, freeing up VTRs for recording and editing tasks, then that route would be considered advantageous, especially for an archive repeat. As the 1980s progressed, some film programmes and features would of course get broadcast from videotape, having been previously transferred. However, even during the last summer of direct-to-air film broadcasts (as far as the BBC were concerned), there were still times such as 8.00pm on Saturday 18th June 1988, when both networks carried live transmissions from the telecine department, with a TV movie on BBC1 and a feature on BBC2.

A TVTimes listing for the TVS ITV region
Image © TV Times, 1988

With a new, fresh set of 35mm prints having been made (now featuring the Chambers and Partners titles), two years of repeats commenced around the ITV regions, being kicked off by Granada in 1986 and finishing up with TVS (Television South) in 1988. I feel confident that the majority of these showings would still have been directly from film. TVS carried most of their Randall and Hopkirk repeats in their Late Night Late strand which also repeated Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's UFO around the same time. Both of these series had apparently been voted for by TVS viewers, hence their listings had “Viewer's Choice” preceding the series title. During the broadcasts, there were a couple of examples where the break caption cards (an electronic slide) were held far longer than the usual 5 seconds or so. At the end of one of the UFO episodes, the in-vision continuity announcer apologised for the hiatus in the middle, saying it was down to them not being sure if they had the reels in the right order! The majority of this last ITV airing from TVS did start out as transmissions directly from film, but towards the end of the series' run (similarly with UFO) they changed to transferring to videotape in advance and then broadcasting those recordings. By the 1990s though, things had most definitely changed.

Whereas the early days of VHS home video had mainly revolved around timeshifting your favourite programmes and renting the latest blockbuster, by the late 80s there was additional bias towards buying and owning pre-recorded favourites. These 'sell-through' tapes weren't so ridiculously priced – unlike rental titles – and, via labels like Channel 5 Video, some ITC series like UFO were available. However, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) was completely absent, even in the compilation movie format going back to the Precision Video days. By early 1992 though this had changed, with ITC series having started to be released in their original episodic versions by ITC Home Video, with two episodes per VHS tape and a pair of volumes released together. Broadcast wise, Channel 4 began a 13-part series of theme nights called TV Heaven hosted by Frank Muir. Each instalment would concentrate on a different year and the ninth episode looked at 1969. Being featured that week was the first episode, My Late Lamented Friend and Partner, in what would have been its first network broadcast. Instead of a film print, the episode was supplied by ITC Entertainment Group to Illuminations Productions as a video recording, no doubt a dub of the home video master. However, they made a change to this copy, sneakily re-editing the end titles of the show, shortening each credit slightly in order to include a little free plug at the end. They added a new company production credit and also one promoting ITC Home Video Ltd, which were releasing the first wave of VHS tapes. The TV Heaven theme nights were edited and broadcast on 1-inch videotape.

The final caption added for the TV Heaven broadcast of 4th April 1992
Image © Illuminations / ITC Home Video, 1992

Two years later in 1994, yours truly was looking at the film shelves in the telecine area at BBC TV Centre, and was amazed to find some 35mm prints of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). After making some enquiries, I discovered that the full series had been bought for broadcast. The person responsible for this was most probably TV executive and new controller of BBC2, Michael Jackson, for when it came to an internal promotional launch of the new BBC2 Autumn schedule, at one point Michael donned a white suit and told us we'd be seeing an old friend again.

Each episode print comprised of three unedited 35mm reels, that is the five or six 1k reels had been compiled into three for easier use by the Programme Acquisition film department. However, they had not been cut in terms of break points as this was no longer required since live film transmissions had ceased in 1988. Instead, any editing to form the complete programme would be performed on the transfer from film to tape, the video format being D3 - a digital PAL half-inch cassette system made by Panasonic which had been adopted by the BBC for broadcasts three years before.

As I had seen the full series several times thanks to my TVS recordings, I had noticed that the usual broadcast order appeared to be all over the place. There was a world of difference over the 14-month production period from the earlier produced episodes with a somewhat more serious tone and a dark suited Randall, compared to the jauntier later ones with tan leather jackets and a big-haired Jeannie. Therefore, I had tried to work out a rough production order based on titbits of information as well as personal viewing notes. When I saw the programme numbering that the BBC had assigned the episodes I could see they were similar to previous airings, in other words somewhat haphazard. Late episodes such as A Disturbing Case were planned to appear very early in the run and other episodes where Marty pops in and says, “Don't say anything, Jeannie will think you're talking to yourself,” were placed way too far down the order, making no sense in terms of the progression of the series. I explained this to the programme executive in charge and they decided they would follow the order I recommended. By the time these discussions took place, the three initial episodes had already been put onto tape by my colleagues. However, I was then assigned to transfer the remaining 23.

BBC-designed grading desk and Digi-Grade panel (right)
Image © Jonathan Wood, 2023

Each episode was allotted approximately four hours to grade, edit and transfer, with each reel first colour graded before being rewound and then edited across to the D3 VTR, pulling up the commercial break points in the reels whilst retaining the fades. The grading settings were stored using the BBC's in-house designed platform called Digi-Grade, which had a simple dot matrix display to indicate timings and settings, allowing for shot-by-shot adjustments as well as linear changes. Another factor during these transfers was an attempt to help any of the times that Marty appeared and disappeared, if required. With the actors having been told to “freeze” and the action later continuing with the appropriate edit in the negative, all would generally be well if the camera was locked off. But if the original framing moved slightly there would be a tell tale shift of the image on the edit point which rather spoilt the overall effect. It was these examples where I would also program a picture position change on the telecine in order to counteract any camera movement either side of the edit to help sell the effect.

On the audio side of things, as per the original 1969, 1970s and 1980s broadcasts, a comopt track (combined optical) was the source, even though original studio takes and the subsequent editing / dubbing stages of a film production all utilised magnetic recording mediums, with the final mix being recorded onto either a 35mm sepmag (separate magnetic) track or a quarter-inch tape with locking pulses/tone. Either of these would then be used as an audio source for the optical sound printer in order to create an optical track. The downside being the frequency response of an optical track starts to fall away rapidly above 5kHz and is therefore never going to be a match for its magnetic counterpart that may contain frequencies up to 15kHz for an archive film. However, because a comopt soundtrack is part of the print, running alongside the picture frames, it's quicker and simpler to use even if it is of a lesser quality and, in the case of these transfers, no alternative audio source was supplied.

As with any tape created for transmission, the video recording contained an identification countdown clock preceding the programme material. By the time of these 1990s broadcasts, this was derived from an electronic device which would produce a simple 30-second countdown with a fairly basic white font on a black background. I decided with these transfers to pep things up a bit and utilise the clean frames during the original end titles to produce a background that changed until reaching 10 seconds on the clock (the standard cue point) along with some of the original logos. The image below shows the different stages of the master clock I created, over which I would add the BBC programme number assigned as well as the episode title.

Episode-less countdown clock
Image © BBC Resources, 1994

Having had an interest in the classic shows of the 60s and 70s, even when they weren't that old, I seemed to have taken a path with regards Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). After I had seen a brief clip of the show in the Noel Edmonds hosted Telly Addicts quiz, I wanted to see more. Then in 1987, on the way back from a holiday in Wales, my family popped in to see some relatives and armed with a new VHS tape, I commandeered their video recorder for an hour that afternoon. The reason for this action was that I had noticed HTV were running an episode of the series that day and so I saw my first-ever complete episode, which turned out to be one of the last produced, Somebody Just Walked Over My Grave – and I really enjoyed it. Then the following year, my local station TVS broadcast the whole lot, which I dutifully woke myself up to record, even when it was on at 2.00 in the morning. Fast forward some six years and I found I was making the transfers for most of the episodes for a full repeat on BBC 2. Those transfers had a couple of airings on the BBC, although the second one was far less prestigious, being used as a sporadic daytime filler. Indeed, the transmission breaks in the 1996 showings meant the broadcast rights actually ran out before the last episode could be shown, with the satellite channel Bravo running the series at the start of July but utilising the ITC Home Video masters. In the year 2000, the BBC D3 masters were sent to Carlton (then current owner of the ITC library) to be used as the source for most of their DVD releases. However, in the sending of the tapes, one of them did a Marty and disappeared!

The D3 tape of the episode Whoever Heard of A Ghost Dying? had somehow vanished and couldn't be located either at the BBC or Carlton's video department. Therefore, in order to complete the series, a new transfer of that episode was requested and this is where things went up a notch for the first time. Where the original prints used six years before had ended up I'm not sure, but for whatever reason it was decided to work from an inter-positive element this time around – a higher quality picture source. Not only that, BBC Post Production had acquired a new telecine machine in 1998 called a Spirit Datacine. In comparison to the Rank Cintel MkIII machines (even by the early 1990s they were somewhat past their best) this was like changing up from Marty's Austin Mini to a Rolls Royce!

The BBC's Spirit Datacine running 35mm master material
Image © Jonathan Wood, 2023

Furthermore, the grading system in use with the telecine was now a commercial product with more comprehensive grading tools, running on a computer with a VDU and large control panel. If that wasn't enough, the VTR format had also progressed from Panasonic's D3 to Sony's Digital Betacam, the latter providing component recording. In layman's terms, this means the colour signal in an image is recorded separately which results in a higher quality picture. Add to all that the fact that yours truly had amassed rather more experience with grading, having over ten years under my belt by this point, and the results – even though still in standard definition – were a definite step up in quality. The final icing on the cake was on the audio side. As an interpositive element carries no audio, the soundtrack was supplied as a 35mm sepmag. Once I had loaded the magnetic track and started the playback, it seemed like cotton wool had been taken out of my ears in comparison to what I had heard before: the clarity of the speech and especially the music was superb!

At the end of that work day, sandwiched between Christmas and New Year 2000, it felt like I had achieved something special. It may have only been a single episode of the series, but finally it looked and sounded the way it deserved. Even by this point, those six year old masters had begun to look a bit tired. Seeing them from today's viewpoint, turning up on low bit-rate digital Freeview channels (which only serve to soften the image even further) they now look pretty dreadful to be honest. However, that first network showing on BBC2 in a regular Friday evening timeslot really did bring the series to a new audience, which often placed it in the top 10 most watched shows on BBC2. To have been involved in that in any capacity makes me feel somewhat proud.

BARB viewing figures, 9th-15th January 1995
Image © BARB, 1995

It seemed that the one-off IP transfer would be my last work with the series, but little did I realise that some 16 years later I'd be lucky enough to have yet another opportunity to improve the available quality of the series even further in high definition... but that's another story!