At Last the 1948 Show

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At Last the 1948 Show
Cast photograph: Aimi MacDonald, Marty Feldman, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, and Tim Brooke-Taylor
Genre	Sketch comedy
Creator(s)	Tim Brooke-Taylor Graham Chapman John Cleese Marty Feldman
Starring	Tim Brooke-Taylor Graham Chapman John Cleese Marty Feldman Aimi MacDonald
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	13
Production
Running time	25 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	ITV
Original run	1967 – 1968
Links
IMDb profile

At Last the 1948 Show was a satirical TV show made by David Frost's Paradine Productions (although they weren't credited on the actual programmes) in association with Rediffusion London for Britain's ITV network during 1967, bringing Cambridge Footlights type-humour to a broader audience. It starred John Cleese, Graham Chapman (in their pre-Python days), Tim Brooke-Taylor (later one of The Goodies), Marty Feldman (in his first screen appearance), and Aimi MacDonald.

The programme editors were John Cleese and Tim Brooke-Taylor.

David Frost personally approached John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor, to star in a new television sketch series, and they suggested to him that Marty Feldman, who had been known only as a comedy writer (primarily for radio) up to then, be included in the cast.^[1]

At Last the 1948 Show (DVD cover)

The series represented an important stage between the radio cult series of I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again and the television cult series Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Goodies, as well as leading to Marty Feldman's television comedy sketch series Marty (which included Tim Brooke-Taylor in the cast), when the conventional light entertainment format in which wacky comedy scenes were interspersed with unchallenging popular songs was finally abandoned. The shows had no relationship to the year 1948; the title simply referred to the BBC's annoying habit of letting new shows sit on the shelves for months at a time before broadcasting them. The cast also recorded an LP of sketches from the show.

The show was made shortly before the introduction of colour on ITV. There were two short series totalling 13 25-minute episodes (six episodes in the first series, seven in the second). Unfortunately, Thames Television wiped the original material from existence once they had acquired the Rediffusion archive, and all but two episodes were destroyed (John Cleese having rescued the two episodes from destruction when he became aware of what was happening). In addition to the two episodes, five compilation episodes made for Swedish television survived. Much, but not all, of the missing material has been recovered in video or audio recordings from the series, or from the LP version, and the surviving video footage has reportedly been restored by the British Film Institute.

Of the surviving footage, only the five Swedish compilation episodes have been released on DVD. This includes the original "Four Yorkshiremen sketch" with John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Marty Feldman. The DVDs were issued by Pinnacle Vision in the UK (Region 2) and by Tango Entertainment in the US (Region 1). The DVD incorrectly states these as "recently recovered episodes", titles them as "episodes [1-5]", and also presents them in the wrong series order. There is no mention on the DVD that the content is compilation material.

Several of the show's sketches were later revived by the Monty Python team for their two German TV specials (Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus) and for their stage shows, including the "Four Yorkshiremen sketch", which was performed on the stage show Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.

Some other important pre-Python / pre-Goodies shows that fared no better in terms of archival preservation were Do Not Adjust Your Set, Twice a Fortnight and Broaden Your Mind.