Home and Away ITV airings

[CaptainHulk]

The famous school siege episode which was not broadcast on UK Television until 2001 when Living had the rights to 1996-98 episodes after skipping over 1991-96, FFS!

One of the worst cuts was Richard Wood (10yr crook) stealing the car and there was freeze frame with Engiine Revving that had nothing do with the final scene they left in, Don and Maz's wedding problem due to their different denominations (C of E and Catholic, Respectively).

I think also Gus torching Jack's guitar got cut (or at least him finding it on fire) but thankfully, 5* left it in during Olympic repeat season in 2012.

Back to Jack, rest of the world got to see the Boot/Porno theatre Stunt (Australia Ireland, Scandinavia, Nederlands, Israel)

[Dan F]

1 hour ago, CaptainHulk said:

The famous school siege episode which was not broadcast on UK Television until 2001 when Living had the rights to 1996-98 episodes after skipping over 1991-96, FFS!

Though of course the school siege came only a year after the Dunblane massacre.

Also never shown in the UK by ITV was the 1998 episode where Rachel went missing whilst shopping with Alf & Ailsa, and they saw her on CCTV being led away by two young boys - which did suspiciously bear more than a passing resemblance to the real life James Bulger murder case here in the UK. Both the episode and all references to the storyline in following eps were cut.

Whilst those two may be understandable to a degree to avoid complaints, as the link Gerard posted attests to, ITV were utterly pathetic in regards to their butchering of episodes every week. Minor insults such as 'cow' were cut, any shots which could be perceived as product placement, certain references to Joey's schizophrenia, mentions of crime, references to two teens possibly spending the night together (including when Edward announced that Peta would be moving in and sharing his room). It was pretty much a relief when they lost it to Channel 5.

1 hour ago, CaptainHulk said:

I think also Gus torching Jack's guitar got cut (or at least him finding it on fire) but thankfully, 5* left it in during Olympic repeat season in 2012.

Yup that was cut too, as were a number of Ailsa's scenes with Bobby's 'ghost' which didn't become apparent until that repeat (presumably they thought it was too scary)

[home and away 1988-2000]

Very pleased to see this thread has taken off, I don't know exactly how true this is but apparently if ITV hadn't of lost Home and Away when it did to Channel 5 it was been geared up to be aired as the last show of the day for Citv. Hence why they were censoring it so much.

They always seemed to put the adverts like half way through the two Australian breaks didn't they, same for Shortland Street?

[masterjai30]

There was also a strange cut which removed Edward jumping off Jump Rock.I say it's strange because only a few years earlier Tug did the same to save Sarah when she had a asthma attack but that time the scene was left in.

[Gerard]

While I can't think of any examples off the top of my head, I'm sure there were times when the censorship was inconsistent.

Back in the old days, I used to maintain "Summer Bay Web", which was the "Back to the Bay" of the 1990's really. We used to have a Censorship section that detailed every cut to every episode in the late 90's. I probably still have these archived somewhere, although the website went away around the time H&A started on Channel 5, I did some web archaeology and found this:

https://web.archive.org/web/20020225071934/http://www.summerbayweb.com/news/arc/121100c.asp

which includes mention of the dropped abduction episode (understandable at the time) and a letter from none other than John Holmes himself, who was sent a VHS video tape of an edited episode (how times have changed! ) Not sure where the Censorship section of the website disappeared to in the web archive though.

[Old H&A Fan]

7 hours ago, Dan F said:

Though of course the school siege came only a year after the Dunblane massacre.........

The ITV censors seemed to also have trouble telling the difference between fictional dramas and reality. The Dunny-blame massacre was reality. Mr Fisher being held hostage was a fictional story. Yet those mean b........ds saw fit to completely cut it out anyway

[Homeandawayfan.]

I deffo saw Perez digging the grave for Gypsy, deffo not cut. But yes, that scene itself was not shown chronologically like most scenes, it was part of Gypsy's flashbacks to her time while being kidnapped by Perez.

I remember in 1994-1996 when H&A was really big when on ITV, and seemed to be more talked about than CS and EE. Looking at old TV listings in Jan 1994, and ratings, H&A got around 14.5 million viewers that month, the show was on fire in the UK back then. H&A should have stayed on ITV really. Such figures today are out of the question. Digital, catch up, Ch5+1 and 5Star have also dropped viewing figures down.

[Red Ranger 1]

I'm fairly certain we saw Edward jumping off Jump Rock and I thought Peta moving in with him was after the switch to Channel 5, unless there was two conversations about it.

But yes, the repeats on 7Two and 5* have provoked a lot of "We never saw that!" moments.We lost a whole scene of Angel being attacked while living on the streets.Beth and Tug kissing got cut out.The episode where Shannon tells Angel she slept with Shane, that whole speech was missing.There was an episode of Sam being punched by Justine's boyfriend and that got cut.There may be others that I've forgotten.

Censors got very nervy around the time of Dunblane, it's why the British print of the Doctor Who TV Movie got butchered and the season finale of The X-Files which opened with a gunman in a diner got dropped completely and wasn't shown until just before the following season.

[Dan F]

20 minutes ago, Red Ranger 1 said:

I thought Peta moving in with him was after the switch to Channel 5, unless there was two conversations about it.

It was literally the last scene shown on ITV, where they were announcing their intentions to Judith at the end of the episode, where they made a cut - the scene in question was shown intact in Channel 5's catchup ep and the pre-titles recap, and obviously the actual moving in came after that.

[masterjai30]

2 hours ago, Gerard said:

While I can't think of any examples off the top of my head, I'm sure there were times when the censorship was inconsistent.

Back in the old days, I used to maintain "Summer Bay Web", which was the "Back to the Bay" of the 1990's really. We used to have a Censorship section that detailed every cut to every episode in the late 90's. I probably still have these archived somewhere, although the website went away around the time H&A started on Channel 5, I did some web archaeology and found this:

https://web.archive.org/web/20020225071934/http://www.summerbayweb.com/news/arc/121100c.asp

which includes mention of the dropped abduction episode (understandable at the time) and a letter from none other than John Holmes himself, who was sent a VHS video tape of an edited episode (how times have changed! ) Not sure where the Censorship section of the website disappeared to in the web archive though.

Thanks for posting this,it made for interesting reading.