Were the early Catherine Gale episodes exported...

Not until the early 1990's. A&E ran them. A little while earlier, I found one Cathy Gale episode available at my video store-- "Death of a Great Dane", and was susprised to find it had been remade almost exactly as "The 50,000 Pound Breakfast". Later, when I taped the same episode off of A&E, I was able to compare exactly what was missing-- 8-1/2 MINUTES. Every time they did a major scene-change, the beginning of the new scene-- long shots of the city, long, slow pans of an office, etc. was missing. Considering every episode A&E ran was probably butchered in the same fashion, its a wonder any of them made any sense at all!

Although I somehow missed a handful of them, I've seen the ones I have about 4 times apiece now. They continue to grow on me, especially as I've taken to try and watch them in production order.

I hope one of these days I can be in a position where I can afford to get the complete episodes on DVD, so I can see everything I'm missing.


As it is, because the complete series has never (to my knowledge) been syndicated as a single package, I had to tape the Purdey & Gambit episodes off the CBS LATE MOVIE (fortunately, I got most of them the 2nd time they ran it, when they had put back the opening credits, which were all cut out the 1st time, but they skipped a few, and I had to get those 4 years later, when they began cutting scenes and speeding the film up); The Emma Peel & Tara King episodes off of my PBS station (sometimes fuzzy copies); and the Dr. King, Venus Smith & Cathy Gale episodes off of A&E (as described above).

I'm sure there were attempts, but the video recording hurt the prospects. Most US tv shows, by that point (apart from talk shows and soaps) were filmed, rather than taped.

"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"