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TV Theft, Radio Rip-off?

TV Theft, Radio Rip-off was the title of a documentary, broadcast as part of the Arena Radio Night theme evening several years ago, about the notion that television steals radio's greatest ideas.  For some reason, radio-to-TV transfers seem to occur almost exclusively in the field of comedy and light entertainment as opposed to, say, drama or current affairs.  In the past few years, as many as half of all successful TV comedies seem to have had a prior existence on the radio.  Of course, there is no real theft: the material in shows which transfer does not belong to 'the radio' but to its writers, who are generally not too dismayed at the prospect of bringing their work to a much larger audience for very much more money.

What follows is intended as a complete list of comedy shows which have made the jump since 1980, with their dates and the channels on which they were broadcast (nb: these do not necessarily relate to the production companies which made the shows).  Details for several programmes are missing: let me know if you can fill any of these in, and also if you spot any omissions from the list.

The following shows have run to at least one full series on British television:

An Actor's Life For Me An Actor's Life For Me (BBC1, 1991)
After Henry After Henry (ITV, 1988-92)
The Bodgers Absolutely (C4, 1989-?)
The Comedy Network [4] The Comedy Network (C5, 1998? onward)
Delve Special This Is David Lander (C4, 1988-?)
Goodness Gracious Me! Goodness Gracious Me! (BBC2, 1997-)
Growing Pains Growing Pains (BBC1, date?)
Harry Hill's Fruit Corner Harry Hill (C4, 1997 onward)
In The Red [1] In The Red (BBC2, 1998)
Knowing Knowing Me, Knowing You Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge (BBC2, 1994)
Lee and Herring's Fist of Fun [2] Fist Of Fun (BBC2, forgotten the dates)
Loose Talk Loose Talk (BBC2, date?)
The Mary Whitehouse Experience The Mary Whitehouse Experience (BBC2, 1991-2)
On The Hour The Day Today (BBC2, 1994)
On The Town with the League of Gentlemen The League Of Gentlemen (BBC2, 1999)
People Like Us People Like Us (forthcoming?)
Radio Active KYTV (BBC2, 1990-3)
Room 101 Room 101 (BBC2, date?)
Second Thoughts Second Thoughts (ITV, 1991-?)
September Song September Song (ITV, date?)
The Shuttleworths 500 Bus Stops (BBC2, 1997)
Son Of Cliché [3] Red Dwarf (BBC2, 1988? onward)
Up the Garden Path [1] Up the Garden Path (ITV, dates?)
Victor Lewis Smith Inside Victor Lewis Smith (BBC2, date?)
Whose Line Is It Anyway? Whose Line Is It Anyway? (C4, dates?)

Notes:
[1] Both versions were derived from a novel
[2] The TV series also used material from its creators' work on other radio series
[3] Not really a transfer: the TV series was largely an original idea.  However, it incorporated material and plot devices first heard in sketches on the radio show
[4] Possibly not a transfer at all: as far as I know, there is no kind of contractual or ownership connection between the two shows. They do, however, have an almost identical (if very simple) format. This is probably a complete coincidence; alternatively, of course, it could be the one true 'theft' on the list.

The following shows transferred to television as one-offs or transmitted pilots only:

Alan Parker London Shouting (BBC2, date?)
And Now In Colour It's A Mad World, World, World, World (BBC2, 1993)
Fab TV The Preventers (ITV? Date?)
The Miles and Millner Show Beethoven Is Not Dead (BBC2, date?)
The Nick Revell Show N7 (BBC2, date?)

It should also be noted that some shows have passed in the opposite direction, whether as straightforward soundtracks from the TV shows (A Bit Of Fry and Laurie, Victoria Wood As Heard On TV) or with the aid of partial or complete re-recording (Shelley, Yes, Minister and, in the 1970s, Dad's Army, which spawned a little-known radio-only spin-off called It Sticks Out Half A Mile).  To The Manor Born was originally planned as a radio sitcom but was remodelled for television before it had even been recorded — only to be brought back eighteen years later as a Radio 2 show.


© JB Sumner 1999.  Thanks to Oliver Allsopp and Simon Davis.  Modified 11/4/99