Missing Believed Wiped

The NFT play host to an annual show of recently recovered archive television. Many programmes get misfiled, destroyed or misplaced and turn up decades later in old men's sheds, or taped over the cricket. The Missing Believed Wiped screening allows the dust to be blown from the tapes, the programmes get shown, and then filed away again. Top show this year, but probably the most curious line up, and a somewhat atypical turnout for all of that.

Choice pickings were Shaggy Dog, by Dennis Potter which was made for ITV as part of the Company Of Five series of one off plays. It was much stronger than expected, and actually managed to fit the strand (what I've seen of it) rather well, with Potter flexing his political muscles but keeping it within a soft, fleshy, human frame.

We were also treated to the first reel of the first ever episode of The Avengers, along with the usual array of slightly flawed, format still maturing, action drama. One was a delightful courtroom drama where the case hinged on a new type of electromagnetic car door lock, presumably sold by the Maguffin car door lock company.

There's often something quite extraordinary that is shown, too, such as one year where they showed one of the earliest and abandoned experiments in television recording - we watched bleary, almost incomprehensible images of a dancing chorusline that were practically supernatural.

But the ghosts this year were of a different order all together, the filmed interview inserts for a documentary called Tyranny. The film concerned itself with Adolf Hitler, and the interviewees included Adolf's chauffeur and sister.