Editing Till Death Us Do Part (section)

===Original decline===
Johnny Speight gained a reputation for late delivery of scripts, sometimes unfinished and still in the form of rough notes (which would be finished and finalised as a script by the script editor and cast during rehearsals), either close to, on, or occasionally past the deadline. This was claimed by Speight to ensure maximum topicality for the series, although this was disputed by the programme's first producer, Dennis Main Wilson, who stated that Speight was frequently found late at night in a regular selection of [[West End of London|West End]] bars, and that on more than one occasion the writer had to be physically dragged out of such establishments by Wilson and driven home to get the scripts typed up and finished. {{citation needed|date=October 2023}}

This was the reason for the second series consisting of ten episodes rather than the commissioned thirteen. As three scripts that were scheduled to be recorded and broadcast towards the end of that series were not ready and actors, crew and Speight had already been paid in advance for thirteen episodes, it was decided that an Easter Monday bank holiday special – "Till Closing Time Us Do Part" – would be made and that this would mostly be made up of the cast and crew [[ad-libbing]] within the broad confines of a plot. For accounting reasons, this would be considered an 11th episode of the second series. At double the usual length, it also made up for screen time of a 12th episode. The addition of this episode meant that only one week's worth of pay was wasted, rather than three. Normally, a sitcom would have plenty of time (ranging from several weeks to several months) between recording and transmission to iron out any such script delivery problems. However, to ensure maximum topicality, most episodes of the second series of ''Till Death Us Do Part'' were recorded less than seven days before their intended transmission date, and as all studios would be booked on other nights for other – sometimes more important – productions, this meant that the recording of ''Till Death Us Do Part'' episodes could not be moved to another night or another studio should the script not be ready in time for rehearsals or recording. Should this happen (which it did towards the end of the second series), this would mean no episode ready for transmission that week and – because of the very short gap between recording and transmission and lack of unbroadcast episodes to replace them, other programmes had to be used to fill in the schedule in the last three planned weeks of the second series' thirteen-episode run. It is because of these problems of topicality delaying (sometimes cancelling) scripts that the third series is noticeably less topical than the second and had some weeks between recording and transmission to act as a "cushion" to ensure continuity of the series should one or more episodes fall through.

The late delivery of scripts had been a problem that had first reared its head during production of the first series. The second series got off to a good start in this respect with the first four scripts being delivered ahead of the deadline, but it became clear as that series wore on that Speight was having these problems again. Amongst a myriad of other problems (detailed below), the final straw for the original run appears to have been a script in the final (third) series of eight episodes not being delivered in time for rehearsals to begin and thus losing one episode. This confirmed to the BBC their suspicions that Speight was not an ideal writer to be writing for a topical sitcom.

To combat these problems, it was suggested by the production team that there be "windows" or "spaces" within the script that could easily be excised and replaced with more topical jokes (a frequent tactic used in other topical sitcoms like [[Yorkshire Television]]'s ''[[The New Statesman (1987 TV series)|The New Statesman]]'' twenty years later), a suggestion that was initially refused by Speight in the 1960s run of the series but which was taken up during the 1970s run. This came to be particularly useful to ensure maximum topicality during the 1974 series, some episodes of which reflected and satirised the UK miners' strike and the [[Three Day Week]]. However, Speight's initial refusal to accept these suggestions, combined with his constant demands of pay increases (eventually becoming the highest-paid comedy writer and then – after another increase – the highest-paid TV writer, during a time of strict public-sector pay restraints imposed by the Labour government of [[Harold Wilson]], which was a source of particular embarrassment to the BBC) and the increasing clashes he and the BBC were having with Mary Whitehouse, came to a head. Over time, Mary Whitehouse and the [[National Viewers' and Listeners' Association]] (NVLA) had several court cases with the BBC directly or indirectly related to the series, some of which Whitehouse or the NVLA won. During the first two series, the programme was originally broadcast on weeknights in a 7:30pm timeslot, before the post-9pm "[[Watershed (broadcasting)|watershed]]", and both Whitehouse and Speight campaigned for such a change in scheduling, the only aspect of the programme that they agreed upon. The reluctance of the BBC to reschedule the series at first can possibly be explained in the fact that the "watershed" was a relatively new phenomenon at the time and there was no consensus between the BBC and the ITA over what should and should not constitute family-friendly broadcasting, nor when this "watershed" should start, the responsibility over what constituted family-friendly viewing being primarily placed with the child's parents.

Public outcry over the episode "The Blood Donor" as being a particularly distasteful episode and a new [[Chairman of the BBC|Chairman of the BBC Board of Governors]] – [[Lord Hill of Luton|Lord Hill]] (who had been appointed as [[Lord Normanbrook]]'s successor when Normanbrook died suddenly in June 1967) – taking a rather different, more conservative approach to the running of the BBC than the liberal and laid-back attitude of his predecessor, were two other factors that turned up the heat of criticism against the series. Lord Hill had previously been the chairman of the [[Independent Television Authority]] and ensured that the [[ITV (TV network)|ITV]] network remained relatively controversy-free. He shared many of the same opinions as Whitehouse and the wider NVLA, which also clashed with the opinions of the then BBC Director General, [[Hugh Carleton Greene]] (he is quoted as having the "utmost contempt" for Hill), who had been the series' biggest champion and gleefully ignored Whitehouse whenever he had to. Many other members of BBC management also voiced their opinions directly to Hill over his appointment, most notably the then Controller of [[BBC Two|BBC2]], [[David Attenborough]], who compared Hill being Chairman of the BBC Board of Governors to "giving [[Rommel]] the command of the [[8th Army (Wehrmacht)|Eighth Army]]". Neither Hill nor his predecessor, Normanbrook, had any direct influence over the series itself (as the [[BBC Charter]] prohibits this), but their relationship with the Director-General indirectly influenced the programme. Because of his total personality and culture clash with Hill, Greene resigned in July 1968 (soon after the series ended its original run) and, with the series' biggest champion now out of the BBC, it looked like the show would be cancelled. Another champion of the series – Head of Comedy output at the BBC, [[Frank Muir]] had resigned his post between the second and third series to take up a new, similar, post at [[David Frost]]'s fledgling new ITV franchise [[London Weekend Television]], which would launch on 2 August 1968. His replacement, Michael Mills, recognised that the series had enormous potential but did not understand why it had to be so topical, controversial or full of swearing and blasphemy, which hugely irritated Speight.

The final straw for the BBC at this time came when a script for the third series, which was intended to be made up of eight episodes, was so late that it missed the scheduled beginning of rehearsals. This episode was intended to be between the fourth and fifth episodes, putting a break in the recording dates and leading to one week's less space between recording and transmission of episodes.

Given the problems the series had given the BBC with steep pay increases in the midst of a government-imposed public sector pay freeze, scripts being delivered in varying degrees of completeness (and sometimes not at all), several court cases (usually libel or blasphemy), hundreds of complaints, several run-ins with Mary Whitehouse and the NVLA, the loss of the series' two biggest champions (first Frank Muir, then Hugh Carleton Greene), the new management having different opinions over the programme and the general stress its production placed on staff (primarily down to the incomplete scripts submitted by Speight), all despite its ratings success over ITV (particularly over ''[[Coronation Street]]'') in its first two series and its general popularity as a whole, contributed to the BBC getting cold feet over the programme. A planned fourth series, scheduled for autumn 1968, was scrapped.