Last time we took a look at In Sickness and in Health, I spent a long time fantasising about a certain evening at Television Centre. Surely it’s about time we tackled the actual programme, in terms of the kind of ideas Speight was trying to get across with the series?
Yeah, yeah, at some point. Today, I want to be mildly irritating about the title sequence instead. Specifically, the title sequence for the show’s very first series.
If we check the paperwork for the pilot, broadcast on 1st September 1985, we discover something rather interesting about it:
Opening Titles:
Total Dur: 0.38″Montage of shots of the East End
BBC Specially shot (16mm col) 9/16.3.85 (33″)
+ five stills from ‘HORIZON’ – “The Writing On The Wall” Orig. TX: 11.2.74 (5″)
Some of that title sequence was filmed specifically for the series, on the 9th and 16th March 1985. But other shots are stock footage, taken from an edition of Horizon broadcast over a decade earlier. Which sounds ripe for a Dirty Feed investigation, don’t you think?