Out of the Trees

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Out of the Trees was a television sketch show pilot written by Graham Chapman, Douglas Adams and Bernard McKenna and broadcast on BBC 2. The show shared some of the stream-of-consciousness style of Monty Python's Flying Circus, of which Chapman was a member. Actors included Mark Wing-Davey and Simon Jones. It was shot in 1975.

The concept of the show was, according to Chapman, to follow the exploits of two modern-day linguists who would travel around a Britain gripped in rapid decline. The linguists would comment upon the origins of a word or phrase, which would then be the genesis of a sketch. Although two scripts were written (the second a collaboration between Chapman and David Yallop), only one episode was ever filmed. It was broadcast only once by the BBC, with little promotion, on a Saturday evening opposite Match of the Day, and so was seen by relatively few people.

The videotape recording of the show has since been wiped, as used to be common for archived BBC shows, due to the relatively high cost of videotape at the time. The sections filmed in outdoor locations are all that remain of the show (the script still survives), and consist of a sketch titled "Severance of a Peony", and some inserts intended for an item about Attila the Hun. The former was included on the DVD for Adams's 1981 TV series adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and also appeared, rewritten as an anecdote, in Chapman's book A Liar's Autobiography. Rewrites of the latter appeared in some editions of Adams's posthumous work The Salmon of Doubt. It was reported in 2005, by a representative posting on the forum at the archive television website The Mausoleum Club, that a videotape on an obsolete format had been handed to the National Film Television And Videotape Archive by a relative of one of the cast, which purportedly contained an off-air recording of the show. However, checking the contents of such videotapes can often be a long process due to their fragility and technical complications. By the end of August, 2006, the complete copy had been confirmed, and it is reported as "back in the archives."<ref>Newsgroup message about the find and restoration, reported to alt.fan.douglas-adams.</ref>