Dad's Army missing episodes

The Dad's Army missing episodes are some portions of the British sitcom programme Dad's Army, which ran for nine series between 1968 and 1977. Certain episodes are no longer held by the BBC, as between 1967 and 1978 the BBC routinely deleted archive programmes. Three out of six episodes from Series 2 and two of the four Christmas sketches (1968 and 1970) are missing from BBC archives.

Until 1978, when the BBC Film and Videotape Library was created as a permanent archive for all its programmes, the BBC had no central archive. The videotapes and film recordings stored in the BBC's various libraries were often either wiped to allow recording of newer programmes without increasing costs, or destroyed to free storage space. The BBC Film Library kept only some programmes that were made on film, whilst the Engineering Department handled videotape but had no mandate to retain material. Some shows were kept by BBC Enterprises, but they too had limited storage space and only kept material that was considered commercially exploitable. In the mid-1970s, BBC Enterprises disposed of much older material for which the rights to sell the programmes had expired, and the Engineering Department routinely wiped videotapes that were no longer formally required.

The first two series (12 episodes) of Dad's Army were made in black-and-white, with most episodes made on two-inch quad videotape for initial broadcast. The first series was thought to have commercial potential overseas, and was offered for sale to foreign broadcasters by BBC Enterprises. To this end, 16mm film copies were made of the first six episodes by the BBC Engineering Department before the master videotapes were wiped, and these were retained by the Film Unit.

In the event, the first series sold very poorly and so BBC Enterprises did not express any interest in selling Series 2 abroad. Thus very few film copies of Series 2 episodes were made. Dad's Army was made in colour from Series 3 onwards; overseas interest in the series picked up, and BBC Enterprises resumed offering the episodes for sale in film and video format; this meant they were kept permanently.

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