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Hancock's Half Hour
1956 · TV series · 30 min episodes · 7 seasons
Created by Ray Galton, Alan Simpson
Hancock's Half Hour is a BBC television comedy series of the 1950s and 60s written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The series starred Tony Hancock with Sid James. The final series, renamed simply Hancock, starred Hancock alone. Comedian Tony Hancock starred in the show, playing an exaggerated and much poorer version of his own character and lifestyle, Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock, a down-at-heel comedian living at the dilapidated 23 Railway Cuttings in East Cheam. The series was influential in the development of the situation comedy, with its move away from radio variety towards a focus on character development.
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3 comments on Hacker News
Not even just films. The BBC was notorious for taping over old programmes to save money on tape and thus there's early episodes of Doctor Who that are lost along with some classics such as episodes of Hancock's Half Hour.
I'd suggest that tapes should be digitised and that way they're far easier for the public to watch and categorise them so that other hidden gems can be found again.
An older relative (must be in his 80s now) had Hancock's Half Hour on cassette tape, and I listened to them while visiting.
The funniest one I remember is "The Blood Doner", which turns out was a TV episode (most were just radio).
"The Radio Ham" is also good.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blood_Donor / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEUvyaNu0uw
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Radio_Ham
> you probably have to be 70/80+ to know about this
Not necessarily. "Hancock's Half Hour" and "Goon show" episodes were sold on vinyl records at the time (and are still to be found on the big internet retailer on Vinyl, CD and MP3).
If the media were in the house, years later, kids would play them for amusement.