Morecambe and Wise: Rescuing a 'lost' film

An old BBC broadcast of Morecambe and Wise from 1968 has been restored using a groundbreaking new technique. Once thought unsalvageable by experts, the badly damaged old film was scanned using X-rays, then an algorithmic reconstruction method was used to digitally reconstruct the images. Now they have 30 seconds of restored film which can be seen for the first time in decades.

Bringing a Morecambe and Wise film back to life

BBC archivists have described the painstaking process of restoring a previously lost 50-year-old episode of Morecambe and Wise.

Eric, Ernie and Me, written by the estimably witty Dundonian Neil Forsyth, was the tale of market trader Eddie Braben's breakdowns as he rose and rose from scribbling gags on paper bags to giving us what many rightly think of as the television of the 1970s, the M&W Christmas specials.

Stephen Tompkinson was pitch-perfect as Braben, but the standout find was Mark Bonnar as Eric Morecambe. Flawlessly, he began to inhabit the soul of Eric, but slowly, moving from hesitant to comfortable, as indeed the clever script had Eric and Ernie move, under clever Eddie's tutelage, from vaudeville gagsters to two pals taking the gentle rip out of each other on primetime TV: the 1977 special was watched by 28 million.

Interestingly, Eric, as played by Bonnar written by Forsyth, came across as the reactionary scaredy-cat; Ernie Wise as the ebullient, exuberant, travel-loving hoofer. What a lovely programme, rewatchable often, if only for Braben's finest gags.

We've seen this nasty treatment meted out to Tony Hancock, Frankie Howerd, Kenneth Williams, Tommy Cooper and many more -- and now, in a miserable distortion of the truth called Eric, Ernie And Me (BBC4), to Morecambe and Wise.

This hour-long drama was based on the life of Eddie Braben, who wrote much of the duo's material in the Seventies when they were at their peak. But according to this version, Eric & Ernie were nobodies before Braben arrived -- rotten material, no rapport, behaved like strangers on stage.

That's complete nonsense. They were a superstar double act, who had starred together in a series of films. Even the Beatles clamoured to be on their show.

Braben was a brilliant gag-writer, who took the boys to new heights. But it was wrong to claim he plucked the Andre Previn/'Andrew Preview' sketch out of the air: the raw version was penned in the Sixties by Eric & Ernie's former writers, Sid Green and Dick Hills.

The whole thing was a depressing business, obsessed with Braben's breakdowns and bouts of mental illness. Writer Neil Forsyth seemed to be reproaching us: see what agonies this poor man suffered to make us laugh.

Most scurrilous of all was the way it portrayed Eric as a manipulative, cowardly tyrant, who bullied everyone around him. That bears no relation to any description of the man that I've ever read.

For an honest depiction of Morecambe and Wise, we had an hour of cine film shot by the boys themselves, in Eric & Ernie's Home Movies (BBC2) -- though why this was aired on a different channel was not explained.

Some of the best material was the very earliest, from a Fifties panto season. We saw the duo doing slapstick routines on stage, knocking each other down and riding about (for reasons not specified) in a pram.

Other reels showed them in New York, hoping to conquer America, and touring Australia -- as well as larking about on family holidays and at home.

The tenderness that Eric felt for his children, and the attention Ernie lavished on his wife Doreen, shone through.

Because the stars were behind the lens most of the time, the really interesting moments were few, with much padding in between. And it wasn't clear why the home movies stopped in the Sixties. Is there more to come?

Because Christmas wouldn't be Christmas and all that, a double dose of E&E. First, a trawl of their archive of home movies from the 1950s and 60s, seen for the first time by Eric's surviving relatives. Then, on BBC Four, an engaging Neil Forsyth-scripted drama starring Stephen Tompkinson as Eddie Braben, the Liverpudlian co-responsible for the massive success of the duo in the 70s but who was worked to exhaustion under pressure.

Eric, Ernie & Me, BBC4 review

It is good to see a writer getting some credit for a change. And deservedly so.

Eric, Ernie And Me review

It's not Christmas without Morecambe and Wise, but even you think you've seen everything the duo have done, this latest BBC Four comedy biopic offers a new perspective on their enduring partnership, through the prism of the contribution Eddie Braben made to the act.

BBC re-writes history by faking Eric & Ernie's story

ATV/ITV made them mega TV successes and household names with Two of a Kind (1961-1968, written by Sid Green & Dick Hills) and that TV success was 'bought' by the BBC who offered them much more money and then made their shows 1968-1977 (written by Eddie Braben). The BBC bought them because they were already ratings successes and they built on that.

How a market trader helped to make Eric & Ernie

A profile of Eddie Braben.