I've got the 2000s French releases somewhere, it would be interesting to see how they handle it - whether they're all animated or have some of the filmed titles (the title captions have to be different anyway - French episode title and the series is called by its original name the same as the 1960s series - no New/Nouveaux!).Dandy Forsdyke wrote:Thanks. That's how I remember it.
I remember being quite surprised when I saw the live action opening credits.
The only thing that seems odd is that on the current releases, series 1 has green end titles backgrounds and series 2 has red...Alan wrote:The film montage sequences were definitely produced before the animated ones. The clue is in the end title sequences, which were made to fit in with the opening sequence. The end titles on the early episodes are green, the later ones red (to fit in with the animated sequence). These were not changed when the animated sequence was grafted onto the episodes in question.
I don't think there's any argument that this was done prior to first broadcast.
It's strange that Joanna Lumley's long brunette hair screen test is in there; and such a preponderance of scenes from a tiny handful of episodes (mostly The Midas Touch!); so these live action titles must have been prepared early on, not after production for later USA showings.