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Comment by ulf-77723 | Hacker News Reader

Where is it available?

https://archive.org/details/bbc-connections-1978

https://www.kanopy.com/en/video/1217815

Not on BBC's iPlayer, despite it being a BBC production. There's so much good old stuff that the BBC can't be bothered to put up on iPlayer - they'd rather fawn over royalty or pretend to be impartial by giving equal time to experts and the sanity-challenged.

More stupid is that it may or may not be on their (joint with ITV) paid 'BritBox' service. I'd probably have signed up in an instant (despite the stupid name) if it had the whole archive. (But it doesn't, so (a) it's possible it doesn't have Connections; (b) I haven't signed up and don't know if it does or not.)

https://archive.org/details/ConnectionsByJamesBurke

Also available on YouTube and torrents.

I mean the whole BBC (nevermind ITV) archive, not Connections specifically which I've never heard of before now.

If they just put up everything they already made they could charge more than Netflix IMO. Instead, god knows why, it's a limited selection that too from which some missing episodes due to the usual 'woke' rewriting of history & present (racist or whatever-ist people exist right, so what's the problem with a show having such a character? Doesn't mean it's right, nor that the show itself is that-ist).

> not Connections specifically which I've never heard of before now

You're in for a treat, especially if you can enjoy the 70s stylings of James Burke. I particularly enjoy his dry wit which would probably be toned down quite a bit for modern serious productions.

> the usual 'woke' rewriting of history & present

It's not so much rewriting (unless you're a publisher looking for free publicity), but attempting to not broadcast very offensive material that was considered normal back in the day (much as slavery used to be considered normal). Personally, I was quite a fan of "Till Death Us Do Part" featuring Alf Garnett as a racist bigot, but then I can appreciate irony and that the programmes were making the point that he was a character to be lampooned and pitied. However, there's too many people that would accept it at face value and use it to justify their vile racism, so I can understand that it's not suitable for modern consumption.

It's not on the Prime Video Britbox channel, which I do have. Only the new one shows on Prime at all, via the Curiosity Stream channel.

Britbox doesn't publish their standalone app library but googling the two names together doesn't suggest they have it either.

BBC iPlayer access is different in UK than elsewhere, right?

I suspect for much of the older stuff it's licensing issues making it not worth the time to verify, in their view. Just because it's BBC production doesn't mean there isn't 3rd party stuff that has to be checked.

That and content, they probably don't want to air everything they did in the 60s/70s for example, for fear of being buried in complaints...

I think a lot of times they licensed the soundtrack for the initial broadcast(s) only. Home media wasn't a thing in the 60s for video.

Good point. Very unlikely it was licensed outside the UK even after home video started.

I think they showed it on PBS

As I understand it though, the typical way this would happen is through a new and/or separate licensing agreement (in this case for PBS, and for a different region, etc.)

The older programmes were typically exclusively BBC produced content - I can't think of any part of Connections that would be problematic for them. Surely with a new series of Connections having been made, they should have a look at making it available. It was a similar thing with their Oppenheimer series - fully available on YouTube and not on iPlayer.

Are you sure they didn't license e.g. theme songs, or backing music? That's often the source of problems with older content.

It's all fixable, but may not be considered worth the effort. Sometimes not worth the effort to audit even.

According to IMDB [1] 'Connections' was produced 'in association with' Time Life Films so probably some sort of clearance would be required from them ?

FWIW Time Life were involved in a number of distribution arrangements with the BBC, there's some details here [2].

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078588/companycredits/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Life_Television#Televisio...

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