Talk:Episode 1564 (12th January 1976)

Double Banking
This week(1564 and 1565) and the following week(1566 and 1567)seem to be examples of "double banking" or "spilit cast" whereby two separate casts and crews worked on two sets of episodes in different studios. It was usually necessary to do this at least once a year in order to have a week off over Christmas and can usually be spotted in January every year. Occasionally it happens more than once-there's another example in April of this year(1976)-for various reasons e.g catching up after strikes. It's usually easy to spot as the number of regulars for the weeks in question is smaller than usual and obviously almost completely different casts for two consecutive weeks. I say almost as occasionally an actor may appear briefly in a scene with the "other "cast,for a plot reason. In this case Maggie Jones features in 1564 and 1565,and also features in 1567- necessary to facilitate her exit in 1568-69. Usually the entire cast will be working on a double banking week,but in this example no fewer than six of the regulars don't feature in either week which is exceptional as there were only 20 regulars at this point.

Of course,nowadays,there's always at least three different units working on the programme at any given time.