Good morning. We take it for granted in 2025 that anything we watch on Christmas Day will soon be on a streaming platform, or end up on a pristine Blu-ray release. That was very much not the case in the early decades of British television. Programmes were often treated as fleeting stage productions rather than archival objects, and when recordings were made, tapes were often wiped or film reels junked, leaving frustrating gaps in our cultural memory.
Earlier this month I spent a day at Derby Quad which is devoted to Nigel Kneale’s pioneering Quatermass stories, and spoke to actor, writer and comedian Toby Hadoke. This newsletter is about the enduring appeal of seeking out these lost fragments in time, why certain programmes still cast such a long shadow, and why our chances of recovering missing episodes may now be running out. But first, here are the headlines.
