Jack Hargreaves

Say what you will 
The countryside is still
The only place where I could settle down
Troubles there are so much rarer
Out of town

Before the next tape, a short primer on the work of Jack Hargreaves.

1960-1981. Southern TV Out of Town.

Jack made around 800 editions of Out of Town, a 30 minute programme about life in the country, for Southern Independent Television.

In each programme Jack would make an introduction from a set built to look like shed in Southern’s Northam studios and then provide an unscripted commentary over a 5-10 minute piece of location film about a country pursuit.

After a commercial break the second half would mirror the first, sometimes continuing the theme but more often on a completely different subject. The location filming was by Southern cameraman Stan Bréhaut using a handheld Arriflex 16mm camera.

1983-1985. Channel 4 Old Country.

When Southern Television lost its franchise at the end of 1981, Jack was commissioned to continue the programme for Channel 4 and a total of 60 more were made under the new title Old Country.

The same shed set used at Southern was set up in the village hall at Meonstoke in Hampshire, complete with fittings such as roll top desk and pot bellied stove to match the originals as closely as possible.

Location filming for these programmes was by Steve Wagstaff.

1986. Contender Videos

When Old Country finished Jack produced a series 28 programmes for the VHS video market under the original title Out of Town.

This time the introductions and links were made from a real shed, his own at his home in Dorset.

There was no new location filming for these.  Instead Jack obtained what remained of Stan Bréhaut’s original 16 mm films from Southern Television which were re-edited and a new commentary recorded in Jack’s front room.  One of the side-effects of using these films that were up to 15 years old is the noticeable change in Jack’s appearance between his shed and the great outdoors.

So to summarise, in chronological order:

1. Southern Out of Town
2. Channel 4 Old Country 
3. Contender Out of Town videos

(Yes I know this is ignoring Jack’s other TV work such as Gone Fishing, Country Boy, Country Visit, HOW….  perhaps some other time).

So far, so straightforward. But then in came Delta Leisure to muddy the waters.

When it comes to commercial releases of these programmes obviously the first, and most prevalent, of these are the Contender videos; they were after all specifically made for the retail market.

Over the years they appeared in various guises, firstly on VHS cassette and then DVD. When Delta took over the rights they repackaged them and sold them through a variety of outlets such as garden centres and Edinburgh Woollen Mill shops. A box set of 10 was also produced.

These, to recap, these were not original broadcast programmes even though Delta put the Southern TV logo on the boxes.

Then in 2012 the master tapes of 34 original and complete Southern Out of Town episodes were discovered.  These programmes, not broadcast since 1980/81, were also given a DVD release as “The Lost Episodes”. However, and against all advice to the contrary, Delta elected to  market these 34 episodes as a set of 10 DVDs in almost identical packaging to the Contender videos:

Spot the difference!

Both these sets went on sale as individual DVDs in the same outlets, no wonder buyers were confused. We can be very grateful to Delta Leisure for issuing these masterpieces but why they didn’t clearly differentiate between the two sets is a complete mystery. Regrettably Delta Leisure went into receivership in 2015 so supplies are now becoming scarce.

If you want to know more about Jack and Out of Town I recommend you look at the Wikipedia article and the Facebook page administered by Jack’s stepson Simon Baddeley (and where incidentally you can also find out about the Old Country DVDs not touched on here).

There’s no test but I will refer back to this post sooner or later. Actually sooner and later.