Fans first noticed that whereas US episodes are 44 minutes long, ours are NEVER that. Some episodes clock in at under 40 minutes! However, part of that time difference is due to the different tv systems. The US NTSC video system runs slightly slower and when US videotaped programmes are transferred to our PAL system, they are speeded up. As well as shortening the running time, this also makes everyone speak a bit quicker and with a higher pitched voice! This is most noticable when you hear the Xena theme tune in a totally different key - assuming you have a reasonable musical ear!
Despite this difference however, there were indeed some heavily edited episodes, the worst offender being Sky during its first showing of series one and two. The aim of this page is to list the cuts that were made to each episode. This is a complicated business as some episodes have been shown 4 times on UK tv, twice each by Sky and Channel 5. And in some cases it seems like there are 4 different versions! While I have seen much of S3 onwards uncut, I have not seen all of S1 and 2 uncut, so please do email me if you know of any cuts to UK broadcast episodes that I have missed.
Thanks to Sarah, Lariel, Jasper, Linda and Julian, the first guest contributors of things I missed!
(Dec 99) Cuts to C5's movie length The Debt added by Julian.
There are varying degrees of spoiler here so beware....
= heavily cut.
= quite a few cuts.
= one or two cuts.