I noticed the thread on the cut episodes of Only Fools and Horses so I’d thought I’d ask anyone if they know if any of the Heartbeat DVDs have been cut, because from the episodes I’ve seen on youtube they appear to have been. I have most of the original early series episodes on tape recorded back in the early-mid 90s when they were shown on ITV, and most of the all the later series are all from the original broadcasts too.

Having early recording of any show is a good way of knowing whether any DVD releases have been subjected to cuts, either music changes or trimmed scenes. I noticed in a series 2 episode “End of the Line”, that there is a brief cut at the beginning for some apparent reason.

Here’s the DVD rip version on youtube (the cut is at the 2:44 mark)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS56ZCvmHvA&t=166s

And here’s the Britbox version with the short scene uncut (at the 2:37 mark)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9OHNf60THM&t=202s

Now, my initial thoughts where that the person who has uploaded it has cut the part out and redubbed a different music track over, but considering all the DVD versions use Beatles cover songs or different songs entirely to the original broadcast songs (in some episodes Jimi Hendrix songs have been changed) I don’t know someone would redub the track with another cover song if they were trying to avoid a copyright strike. Plus I have download this episode outside of youtube (won’t say where) of a higher quality and this scene is still cut. An early recording I have of this episodee from ITV in 1994 has this scene included, but it appears this has been cut on the DVD release. I can’t confirm this as I haven’t seen the actual UK release.