Morecambe & Wise: The Lost Tapes

Having grown up watching repeats of them,I was happy to read that the lost first episode of The Morecambe & Wise Show (1968) had recently been found,and that ITV were airing a special dedicated to it,leading to me playing the lost tapes.

View on the doc:

From the handful of clips shown,Morecambe & Wise reveal that even at this early stage they were already masters of comic timing,with Eric Morecambe diving straight into hilarious physical Comedy,and Ernie Wise delivering his dead-pan one-liners with glee.

Billed as a celebration of the duo, director Simon Harries instead tries to make this special a tribute to the Celebrity Gogglebox series, via cutting away from the sketches, (broadcast for the first time in decades) in order to cutaway for extended periods to celebs laughing at the sketches,or most surprisingly,complaining how they are so not suitable,from a "2021 perspective" (yuck!)

Thankfully, along with the timeless quality of the original sketches, interviews with Eric Morecambe's family (Gary Morecambe looks so much like his dad) highlights the magic and the passion the duo put into their act for the audience,in order to bring them sunshine.

If it had actually been just the lost tapes themselves that had been broadcast then it would have probably been 10/10, but, what this show actually was simply 'Morecambe and Wise, the Celebrity Gogglebox edition' Don't waste your time on this, it's mainly reaction shots from rent a celebs who weren't even born when Morecambe and Wise were on. We got brief glimpses of the tapes constantly interrupted by celebrities pretending to laugh, I noticed several times one would laugh and their companion was either stony faced (the woman with Robert Rinder for instance) or one had a delayed reaction Bonnie Langford and Wayne Sleep.

A shambles of a programme. Why didn't they just show the tapes as they were originally broadcast, maybe with a quick introduction from Jonathon Ross, who I feel was the only genuine fan from the lot of them.

Sad to say this is modern TV, cart on some celebrities to comment on clips because most young TV viewers have the attention of a gnat without some 'reality' aspect to it, but, this wasn't the audience this should have been aimed at, it should have been aimed at us oldies, but, we simply don't count anymore. How sad Gary Morecambe decided to sell them to ITV

BBC are equally as guilty of this too with their 'Best of Morecambe and Wise' shows, but, at least they have also broadcast them as they originally did in the 70s for us with proper attention spans that can cope with more than five minute YouTube clip.