The comedy writer Alan Simpson has died at the age of 87. Genome takes another look back over his career, and the many outstanding shows he wrote with Ray Galton.

Collaborating from the 1940s to the 1970s, Alan Simpson and Ray Galton were responsible for some of the most popular comedy scripts ever produced for BBC radio and television. They wrote every episode of Hancock's Half Hour, and followed it with Steptoe and Son, which ran from 1962 to 1965, and 1970 to 1974.

Galton and Simpson teamed up when they were both recovering from TB in a sanatorium in Milford, Surrey, contributing scripts to the hospital radio service. After being discharged from hospital they turned professional, and as part of the writing team on the series Happy-Go-Lucky, came to the attention of up-and-coming comedian Tony Hancock, ending up writing material for his stage and radio acts.

This eventually led to the ground-breaking radio series Hancock's Half-Hour, where they refined Hancock's personality into the character of Anthony Aloysius St. John Hancock, whose exploits are constantly hampered by his associates, played by Sid James, Bill Kerr and (in later episodes) Hattie Jacques.  Various additional roles were played Kenneth Williams, most notably the nasal-voiced 'Snide' character.

Galton and Simpson's scripts managed to get away from old-fashioned gag-based comedy to some sort of real characterisation, while also indulging in occasional flights of fantasy (literally, in the case of the often-repeated 'test-pilot' sequence). Perhaps the most famous Hancock radio episode however was Sunday Afternoon at Home, which illustrated the tedium of the British 1950s Sunday by daring to use long sequences featuring little or no dialogue.

Hancock's Half-Hour successfully transferred to television in 1956, although only Sid James continued as a regular character. While omitting some of the whimsy of the show's radio version, the television Half-Hours showed Galton and Simpson fullly grasp the potential of the newer medium.

While Hancock's Half-Hour was not the first television sitcom, it was hugely influential and was one of the best-remembered shows of the 1950s. Hancock's regular costume of astrakhan-collared coat and homburg hat became instantly recognisable, and Galton and Simpson's skillful scripts allowed Hancock to practice his impeccable timing, and amazing range of facial expressions.

In 1961 Hancock decided to break the partnership with Sid James, and the last series Galton and Simpson wrote for him, just called Hancock (because they were no longer half-an-hour long), included some legendary examples of television comedy, such as the Blood Donor episode, and the first episode, Alone, in which Hancock performed solo for the whole 25 minutes.

A feature film, The Rebel, followed, written for Hancock by Galton and Simpson, but the comedian was restless and decided to end the partnership. Undaunted, Ray and Alan were commissioned to write a series of 10 one-off scripts under the title Comedy Playhouse. One of these, The Offer, became Steptoe and Son.

Comedy Playhouse saw Galton and Simpson often writing for actors rather than comedians, which they relished (although they continued to provide stand-up material for friends like Frankie Howerd). There was a second series of Comedy Playhouse written by Galton and Simpson, after which other writers began to contribute to it. Steptoe and Son was the only one of Ray and Alan's episodes to be turned into a series, but it was to be a truly outstanding example of the sitcom genre.

Concerning father and son rag-and-bone men Albert and Harold Steptoe, who lived in Oil Drum Lane, Shepherd's Bush, Steptoe and Son ran for four series in the 1960s and four more, in colour, in the 1970s, plus two extended Christmas episodes. Not counting sketches and short episodes in Christmas Night with the Stars, there were 57 episodes in total, and two spin-off feature films.  

Although there were occasional fanciful sequences (such as a Kung-Fu fight involving a gang of pensioners in a 1974 episode) the tone overall was downbeat, and without the studio audience's laughter many episodes could have been seen as tragedies, not comedies. Harold's social aspirations and attempts to escape from his clinging, devious father - while based on delusion - can be heart-rending.

Some episodes only involved the two Steptoes, others perhaps one or two other characters, but sometimes there were large casts if there was a wedding or a funeral. Notable episodes included The Lead Man Cometh (with a memorable appearance by Leonard Rossiter), The Desperate Hours (with Rossiter again, as an escaped convict), and Divided We Stand, where, tired of co-habiting with his father, Harold builds a wall throughout the house to split it in two. 

When Steptoe and Son finally ended at Christmas 1974, Galton and Simpson continued writing together for another four years, including more playlets, for ITV's Galton and Simpson Playhouse. Alan Simpson gave up scriptwriting in 1978 to concentrate on his business interests, but Ray Galton continued to collaborate with colleagues like Johnny Speight and John Antrobus. Galton and Simpson however remained firm friends.

Unlike Ray Galton, Alan Simpson was also an occasional performer, contributing unobtrusive cameos in early episodes of Hancock's Half-Hour, as a man subjected to endless stories by the loquacious Hancock. Galton and Simpson were also partners with Eric Sykes and Spike Milligan in Associated London Scripts, which nurtured the career of many an aspiring comedy writer.

However, together with his partner, it is as a peerless writer of outstanding comedy scripts that Alan Simpson will always be remembered.

Some time ago we discussed early methods of recording television programmes, and how they were all based around filming the image on the television screen.  Now we're going to have a look at how this was replaced by an electronic method – videotape recording.

Film telerecording was expensive because it involved a medium which could only be used once.  It also took time to process so it was not possible to instantly play back the recording that had been made.  Early telerecording gave a much cruder result than the original television picture, and while methods increased in sophistication over the years, some of the drawbacks persisted.

The obvious answer to these problems was to devise a method of directly recording the electronic signals of the television picture, and by the 1950s scientists were hard at work on producing such a system.

The American company Ampex, named after its founder Alexander M. Poniatoff, was started in 1944 and became involved in developing captured German audio tape technology.  Sound tape recording had been invented before the war and one version, the Blattnerphone, was used by the BBC.  This used steel tape which ran at very high speeds, and had to be operated in a sealed room due to the danger of the tape breaking, which could have had lethal results.

The Germans had developed a cheaper and safer system that used plastic tape, and it was this that Ampex made into a mass market product.  The system came to the notice of Bing Crosby, who was attracted by the ability to record his radio shows, which had previously had to be performed twice, for East and West Coast audiences, due to the time zone difference.  The networks had refused to meet the high cost of making disc recordings of the shows, but audio tape provided a more economical solution.

It was soon clear that a video version of this technology would also be highly useful for similar reasons.  Avoiding the effort and expense of performing shows twice, it would likewise save the costs of telerecording (or in American parlance ‘kinescoping’) programmes, which resulted in a low quality picture anyway.  Video tape (the term being originally an Ampex trade mark) gave a similar picture quality to live television, and had the advantage of being reusable – the recording could be wiped off and the tape used for another show at a later date.  

This ability would of course one day come to be a controversial feature, rather than an advantage.  Videotape was relatively expensive but the cost was intended to be amortised over a number of uses, rather than being seen as an archival medium – if a recording was intended to be kept for historical reasons, it could be telerecorded onto film.

Ampex’s videotape system was demonstrated to the US television trade in 1956 and was soon employed in programme making.  At first live transmissions were recorded as they were broadcast, but it was soon realised that programmes could be recorded at any time, for the artists’ (or anyone else’s) convenience, and several shows could even be made in one day, saving studio time.

Since 1952, meanwhile, the BBC had been working on its own videotape system, called VERA (Vision Electronic Recording Apparatus) which was demonstrated publicly on Panorama on 14 April 1958.  The system seemed to provide all that was required of it:  it instantly replayed vision and sound, and the tape could be wiped and reused time and again. 

After showing a clip from ‘The Star’ Ballroom Championships recorded earlier that evening, presenter Richard Dimbleby interviewed Peter Axon, head of the team who had developed VERA, and the machine was shown in action.  However VERA used very large reels of narrow tape (Ampex tape was 2” wide with much smaller diameter reels).  The tape travelled over the fixed recording heads at a great speed and could only record for fifteen minutes – it also had problems of picture stability.  The proven effectiveness of the Ampex machine meant that VERA’s days were numbered and it never went into regular service.

By the end of 1958 the Corporation had taken delivery of its first Ampex machines and put them into service.  The first broadcast use made of videotape by the BBC was a trailer for the opera A Tale of Two Cities, but it was not long before it was being used for complete programmes.

It did take some time for the BBC to see the full advantages of videotape however.  The BBC was not faced with the same kind of time zone issues as America, and there was a prevailing mindset that live television was somehow purer than recording programmes in advance.  The fact that mistakes occurred in live programmes was seen as authentic and programme makers talked of not ‘cheating’ the viewer with what were then referred to as ‘bottled’ programmes. 

Nevertheless, it was not simple to correct errors with early videotape, other than by restarting the recording of the programme, so it would be some time before productions would appear to be flawless – but some of the worst disasters could be avoided.

Among the first users of videotape at the BBC was the top-rated comedy Hancock’s Half-Hour.  Tony Hancock was a perfectionist, but also a highly instinctive performer, frustrated by the technical difficulties inherent in any kind of broadcasting.  When making radio programmes he had to be dissuaded from too much rehearsal in case his performance lost its spark.  Television was another matter, for unlike radio he could not keep the script in his hand;  he had to learn it, and in his live television episodes there was no way of correcting mistakes. 

Some of his shows were telerecorded onto film for repeat, but still show him joking his way out of fluffs – on one notorious occasion however, in the episode There’s an Airfield at the Bottom of My Garden, a number of trick effects – bits of a house collapsing due to aircraft noise – happened before they were due to.  The cast had no option but to muddle through the rest of the episode, but the experience was shattering for the highly-strung Hancock.  (It could have been worse, fellow comedian Charlie Drake was once knocked unconscious during the climax of one of his live television shows.)

Videotape seemed to offer a way out of such problems.  Hancock saw the advantage of being able to make his shows in pieces, rather than running straight through.  His producer, Duncan Wood, had a fight on his hands to make that a reality.  Electronic editing of videotape was not yet possible, the only way of editing was to physically cut the tape with a razor blade, and this had inherent problems.

As the video signal was recorded in a succession of short diagonal stripes, due to the arrangement of four recording heads on a wheel, it was necessary to make sure you were not cutting through any of these stripes.  A fluid was developed which would make the stripes visible, enabling the engineer to select a safe place to make the edit. 

There was also the issue of sound – it was not possible to have the sound recording head in the same place as the video heads, so there was a gap between where the picture and sound for a given shot were recorded on the tape.  There were two ways round this – to cut when the picture had faded to black and the sound had been faded out, or to dub the sound onto audio tape and redub it  later.

Since a physical cut could cause a fault in any new recording on the tape, making more than a handful of edits in any programme was severely frowned upon.  Programmes then had to be recorded in a single session over a very few hours, as if they were live.  Re-recording too many sequences would meant that the recording time increased, and with that the production cost.

Hancock was nevertheless soon an enthusiast for videotape.  Duncan Wood demonstrated the possibility of editing smoothly by cutting some items out of an existing Stanley Baxter programme, and wary of upsetting one of their biggest stars, the BBC agreed to the new production process.

It was still to be some time before videotape became ubiquitous for most non-topical programmes.  Z Cars was nearly always ‘live’ in its original run, from 1962 to 1965.  Other dramas such as Softly Softly, Mogul and play series Thirty Minute Theatre also had some live editions, in the latter case as late as 1968.  Even these series were not averse to using videotape for sequences which it would be impossible to achieve ‘live’, as an alternative to pre-filming them.

By the late 60s it started to become possible to edit without cutting up the tape.  This process was achieved by locking together the output of two or more videotape machines to produce a master recording on another tape.  This was not always easy to achieve however, as tape could not be searched in vision.  By the early 70s, videotape editors began to be credited on particularly complex programmes to reflect their increasingly important contribution.

By the end of the 1970s things would change again, with a system employing 1” wide tapes, which could be searched in vision.  The machines were lighter and easier to use, and the tape was helically scanned, which meant that the recording was in a very long, nearly horizontal stripe along the tape, and thus would be impossible to edit physically – not that anyone needed to by then.

2” videotape vanished as a medium for new productions during the early 1980s, but it had been a versatile medium in its time which had revolutionised television production.  Even 1” was not to rule for too long, with each successive tape format lasting roughly half as long as its predecessor.

Cassette tape media were coming in during the 1980s, and soon the buzzword would be ‘digital’ – superseding analogue technology, and the BBC’s broadcast standard format was established as D3 in the early 90s.  Few suspected that by the early 21st Century, tape itself would start to be on its way out too – and we would be looking forward to the brave new world of tapeless production and file based delivery.

Any retired technicians out there with tales of the old days of video recording? Tell us your anecdotes, and dazzle us with your knowledge of time-base errors.  Was videotape a good idea?  Or did video kill the radio star?  You know where to tell us...

Choosing the cast for any drama or comedy is one of the most important factors in its success.  Many things have to be taken into account, not just the suitability of a performer for a role, but how they balance against the other actors, whether they are available for the shooting dates, whether – if they are a star name – the production can afford their fee…  Sometimes, however, despite all these efforts, for one reason or another an actor has to be replaced even in the most successful programmes.

There are generally two options when an actor has to be replaced, to recast the role, or in some circumstances to ‘kill off’ the character and devise a replacement – as sometimes the problem is not with the performer, but with the character itself.

In an earlier Post I mentioned the situation with the 1930s comedy series Ann and Harold, where lead actress Ann Todd got a part in a West End play during its run and asked to be released early from the programme.  Television at that time was not in a position to argue it seems, as the series was shortened from 6 to 5 episodes to accommodate her. 

Examples of actors being replaced at the last minute include Dame May Whitty, a legendary figure in theatre and film, who had to withdraw from the second performance of the drama The Royal Family of Broadway on 14 February 1939 due to illness.  In this case as she was a major attraction of the production, the producer George More O’Ferrall made an on-screen apology for her non-appearance before the transmission.  Her role was taken by Betty Romaine, who had played another part in the first performance.

Less high-profile substitutions occurred in series such as Dixon of Dock Green, first broadcast in 1955.  For example in the series 2 episode The Rotten Apple (which had a young Paul Eddington among the cast), the regular character of Inspector Cherry was played by Stanley Beard instead of Robert Cawdron, and A.J. Brown played Alderman Mayhew in place of the billed Geoffrey Wincott. 

Z Cars and other products of the BBC drama department documentary unit in the 50s and early 60s did not make public any cast substitutions, as they did not publish cast lists in Radio Times.  But being live they were still susceptible to accidents of fate.  In the case of the episode The Share Out in 1965, an actress died just over a week before transmission and had to be replaced.  Even when Z Cars returned as a twice-weekly, videotaped  series in spring 1967, its relentless schedule occasionally meant that lead actors missed a week and replacement characters were hurriedly written in to cover the gap.

Not the Lad 'Imself

Another notable substitution in another genre occurred with the second series of the radio Hancock’s Half-Hour in 1955.  Tony Hancock was under a lot of pressure with stage commitments, and as the second series was about to start, producer Dennis Main Wilson was informed that Hancock had left the country…  It was the first major indication of the nerves that were to afflict the rest of Hancock’s career and contributed to his battle with alcoholism.  While attempting to locate his star and coax him back, Main Wilson still needed to produce a show, and turned to a friend and colleague, who he knew from the early years of The Goon Show – Harry Secombe.  While Secombe was a very different character to Hancock, he was willing and able to step in and replace him for three episodes. 

Cast substitutions happened with the Goon Show too, though the circumstances were different.  Over the long run of the show, from its early days under the title Crazy People in 1951, there were occasions when all of the main cast missed episodes.  In the case of Secombe and Peter Sellers it was minor illness that prevented them appearing, and various colleagues stepped in – more difficult in the case of the multi-voiced Sellers, who required more than one replacement, including the likes of Kenneth Connor, Dick Emery, and, resurrected from ITMA, Jack Train’s Colonel Chinstrap, who was anyway not too dissimilar from Sellers’ character Major Bloodnok. 

It was Spike Milligan who suffered the longest absence however, when he had a full blown nervous breakdown, caused by, among other things, the pressure of producing scripts every week, and the after-effects of post-traumatic stress, as it would now be termed, a result of his service in the Italy in World War Two.  The fourth original cast member was Michael Bentine, but he clashed with Milligan over the direction of the series and decided to leave after two series.

One series that had a large number of cast changes over the years was Last of the Summer Wine.  Originally a Comedy Playhouse transmitted in January 1973, with Michael Bates as Cyril Blamire, Bill Owen as Compo Simmonite and Peter Sallis as Norman Clegg, a series followed the same year.  After the second series Bates left due to ill-health, although he continued in his role in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, presumably as, being mostly studio-based, it was less arduous.  Blamire was replaced by Foggy Dewhurst, played by Brian Wilde, who stayed for nine years.  Foggy was then replaced by Michael Aldridge’s Seymour Utterthwaite, before returning briefly in 1990.  Illness forced his replacement by Frank Thornton as ex-policeman ‘Truly’ Truelove, and though Wilde had wanted to return, this never happened.  Bill Owen himself died in 1999, and was replaced by his son Tom Owen, playing Compo’s son.  As the programme continued, while some secondary characters were not replaced, the regular cast gradually increased, in part to lessen the burden on the central trio, and by the last series a completely new group of characters were roaming the Dales, with Peter Sallis’s Clegg making cameo appearances – though it was he who delivered the series’ last line when it finally ended in August 2010.

A similar thing occurred more recently with the popular police series New Tricks, which shed the original cast members in its last few years, until by the end the four leads were all different (but at least they kept Dennis Waterman singing the theme tune).  Waterman, the last of the originals to go, had been in the situation before when he left the ITV series Minder after many successful years, and back at the beginning of his career, when he had starred in the BBC William series in 1962.  He was replaced by Denis Gilmore in the 1963 series – well, the name was close enough...

It is clear that the replacement of a character is a far more common occurrence than the replacement of the actor playing a part.  Obviously there are reasons for that, not least the credibility problem of a character suddenly having a different face.  In ensemble dramas that can be got round in part by having the character disappear for a while, and when they return hopefully people will accept the new actor – although obviously their performance is likely to be different from the original.

One of the most obvious examples of the replacement of the actor playing a character is of course Doctor Who, where it has become part of the format that the lead role can be played by someone else.  By 1966, the original Doctor, William Hartnell, had difficulty learning lines and was generally ailing physically, but the BBC did not want to end the series – its instigator, Sydney Newman, was still head of drama and was reluctant to dispose of his brainchild.  The fact that it had been established from the start that the Doctor was from another planet, led to the brainwave that he could change his face.  When Hartnell was transformed into Patrick Troughton at the end of the story The Tenth Planet, it was rationalised that he had rejuvenated, as if Troughton was just a younger version of Hartnell.  Indeed, his costume was similar to his predecessor’s, and actually changed along with his body...  

A few months into the reign of the new Doctor, there was another kind of substitution when the character of Chicki was played by Sandra Bryant in episode one and by Karol Keyes in episode four of the adventure The Macra Terror – Bryant had been contracted for both episodes, but asked to be released after the first recording.  At the time the show was being recorded just a week in advance of transmission.  As the character was relatively minor, it’s likely the production team assumed no-one would notice the difference.

After the first recasting of the lead role, it was often uncertain whether the show would be cancelled when subsequent lead actors decided to leave.  This was certainly the case in 1969 when Patrick Troughton left, and the BBC actively looked for a replacement series.  On a personal note, I for one was not happy with the change at the time – aged 5 ½ I was assured by my (lovely) older sisters at the end of Troughton’s final story that he was dead;  when the Doctor returned to television some six months later in the guise of Jon Pertwee, instead of being reassured, the style of the programme had changed to a much scarier, violent, adult version, which put me off watching for the next two years…

By the time Tom Baker took over in 1974, Doctor Who had become a ratings-winner, but this was no longer the case when he left seven seasons later.  Through the 1980s the series did recover viewers at first, but after its ‘rest’ in 1985-6 audiences gradually reduced, partly due to erratic and unfavourable scheduling, with two more changes of lead from Peter Davison to Colin Baker, and then Sylvester McCoy.  An American co-produced TV movie with Paul McGann in 1996 failed to take off despite good ratings in the UK, and it was not until 2005 that a new series emerged, starring Christopher Eccleston.  Eccleston unexpectedly bowed out after only one season, replaced in turn by David Tennant, Matt Smith, and the current incumbent Peter Capaldi.

But Doctor Who is a unique case.  We find it hard to adjust to well-known characters seeming to become other people.  There are exceptions, though it helps if you get in early. 

Recasting occasionally happens in soap operas, most commonly with child actors who cannot or will not continue to appear as a particular character – and a child actor cannot be guaranteed to turn into a convincing performer when they get older.  Occasionally an adult part is recast, as in the case of Mark Fowler, following the suicide of original actor David Scarboro, replaced some time later by Todd Carty.  The redoubtable Peggy Mitchell too was originally played by Jo Warne, but she was only in the series briefly;  when the character returned in 1994 she had morphed into Barbara Windsor.  Another member of the Mitchell family, Sam, was first played by Daniella Westbrook, but following a troubled history with the programme due to her cocaine use, Kim Medcalf was brought in to replace her in 2002.  Yet when the character came back again briefly in 2009, Westbrook played the role again.

Typecasting can be the bane of an actor’s life, and being known for one part can prevent them getting more interesting and different work – it’s certainly one of the reasons for people leaving a role, they hope, not too late to escape it.  Rupert Davies, star of Maigret from 1960-63, certainly felt that the series blighted his career, though he still returned to the part in a 1969 Play of the Month.  Ironically he had not been in the 1959 edition of Sunday-Night Theatre which acted as a pilot for the series.  It’s a testament in a way to the strength of an actor’s performance if we cannot accept them as anyone else than the part that made them famous.  It is however much harder to accept someone else playing that role.

Replacement characters are another matter altogether – but viewers I’m sure are not always sorry to see the cast of long-running series refreshed from time to time.  With the accidents of mortality, or just the wishes of actors to spread their wings after a time, it is something that we all have to get used to.

Have you had a traumatic reaction to a new Doctor Who actor? Do you get confused by the changing faces of soap actors?  Have you missed or welcomed replacement actors in your favourite series, from Dixon and Z Cars to Casualty and New Tricks?  Let us know…