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Here we provide answers for all those outstanding DT questions! |
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1. What was Dream Team? |
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Dream Team was a British television series with it's production overseen by Hewland International and aired on the Sky One channel between 1997 and 2007. It was one of the earliest examples of 'subscription' television drama, arriving at a time when Sky television was the leading source in the genre and the established platforms of today such as Netflix and Amazon Prime were years from arriving. A unique identity to hold, Dream Team wasn't the first UK-made drama to crack this particular market, that accolade belonging to British Satellite Broadcasting's Galaxy Channel soap "Jupiter Moon" in 1990, a show only curtailed by the merger of it's network BSB with Sky television. Seven years later, Dream Team began it's life on Sky One in the soap opera format, with two twice weekly episodes (typically Tuesday and Thursday evenings) broadcast in the half-hour format. This continued for the first three seasons and 200 episodes, from which the show was reformatted into a prime-time one hour drama weekly on Sunday nights where it remained for it's next seven seasons until it's final 419th episode.
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2. What was Harchester United? |
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Harchester United was the fictional Premier League football club featured in the series, known by their nickname "The Dragons" and club motto 'Contende Ad Caelum' meaning Strive for the Skies and/or Be The Best. It's geographical location was north of Birmingham and Coventry, and two miles east of Tamworth, a Midlands setting chosen so as not to alienate football fans from either the North or South. It's filming locations however, started with Watford F.C's Vicarage Road doubling as HUFC's Addison Road for the show's first two seasons (1997-99) with a move to a new stadium, The Dragon's Lair seeing Millwall F.C's The New Den becoming The Dragon's home for the next eight seasons until it's end. So one could say the real Harchester United is still there! For more on the history of the club, check out our page Harchester Timeline. |
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3. Why was the show cancelled back in 2006/7? |
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Same old story of a new controller, this time at Sky One, coming in and wanting to allocate the money spent on DT for their own new programmes. A regular nature of "stamping their own mark" rather than continue old programmes. Reports however at the time that it was solely down to poor ratings were not true, and generally in the autumn period the show was the top rated programme on Sunday nights before the prime time/cult American imports returned to the channel from January onwards. |
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4. Is the show repeated? |
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Throughout the time Dream Team was on air, it would have frequent repeats of past seasons, mostly covering Seasons 3-10. For a year after the show's end, repeats like this continued on Sky One and it's sister channels of the time Two and Three, but the actual last television showing of an episode came in September 2008, on the actual day Sky's HD format went into broadcast. Since then it has come to light that the licensing to the Premier League match footage used in the show for "Harchester" games would need to be renewed for a new repeat run, which may prove costly and be the factor in why such a run hasn't been seen on screens. |
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5. Are there different reasons for why there was no DVD release? |
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Yes. In recent years we have learned a 'public selling rights' clause was not included in contracts during the time of production. A reason for this may have been that in 1997 VHS was still the norm, and series' with a high turnover of episodes as DT had particularly in it's first three seasons, didn't generally have a full commercial VHS release. Whereas by the time Hewland's sister-show Mile High arrived by which point DT was in it's sixth season, the DVD disc had made storage for a high volume of material easier, and could go towards explaining why MH made it to DVD and DT did not. There is this, and also the heavy music track listing which would have required rights payments and if unable to get clearance, possibly a rather large amount of editing out of tracks. |
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6. How can we see the show now? |
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There are several YouTube channels which house the series, mostly a full Season 3-10, to view. The first link has the available Season 1 and 2 episodes. https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDragonsLairHarchester/playlists https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp5dWiqTdOnngIXdmQ9JIlw/playlists https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8h-J03L47-qsbjeagBgW5w/playlists https://www.dailymotion.com/HarchesterUnited We run a backup folder in case any of the above episodes become unavailable, where they can be downloaded to view in MP4 file https://www.sendspace.com/folder/tsl52f A special thanks to these uploaders and our fellow former DT website owners at harchesterunited.org, harchesterunited.com (formally Harchester.TV) and harchester.net whose dedicated work in taping, keeping, and then sharing the episodes they collected has allowed DT to be seen and have a legacy beyond Sky's last showing of the series in 2008. Thank you to the former YT account outTHERE85 who shared the most recent missing episode 2.42.
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7. With so many "missing" episodes from the first two seasons, is the show easy to get into? |
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It is unfortunate that during the first two seasons of the show, we'll see an episode and then the next, or even a chunk of following episodes aren't available. This relates to how Seasons 1 and 2 never received a full repeat beyond their original week of being screened, and what was repeated was a "60 of the Best" special across the summer schedule before Season 3 premiered. We've put together as much information we can find to help fill in blanks in our Seasons 1 and 2 episode guides: Season 2
Seasons 3-10 are represented in full however, and Season 3 Episode 1 in particular marks an almost new beginning for the show, with the club moving to a new stadium and the only story really carried through from the period beforehand is the Wembley shooting whose two main episodes are available to see. |
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8. Where are the best places now to get hold of Dream Team / Harchester United shirts and memorabilia? |
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With over a decade now since the last official HUFC shirts were printed, the outlets to find them have become more scarse. However, eBay remains the most popular destination with a view of you never know what will turn up. Also Classic Football Shirts have a page of results which has new additions from time to time.
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