Editing That Was the Week That Was (section)

==Reception==
Prime Minister [[Harold Macmillan]] was initially supportive of the programme, chastising Postmaster General [[Reginald Bevins]] for threatening to "do something about it".<ref>{{cite news| url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/2516511.stm | work=BBC News | title=BBC marks TW3 anniversary | date=26 November 2002}}</ref> However, the BBC received many complaints from organisations and establishment figures. [[Lord Aldington]], vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, wrote to BBC director-general [[Hugh Greene]] that Frost had a hatred of the prime minister which "he finds impossible to control". The programme also attracted complaints from the [[Boy Scout Association]] about an item questioning the sexuality of its founder [[Lord Baden-Powell]], and from the government of Cyprus which claimed that a joke about their ruler [[Archbishop Makarios]] was a "gross violation of internationally accepted ethics".<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1554790/Tories-helped-take-TW3-off-the-air.html | work=The Daily Telegraph | first=Chris | last=Hastings | title=Tories helped take TW3 off the air | date=17 June 2007}}</ref>

Historians have identified ''TW3'' as breaking ground in comedy and broadcasting. Graham McCann said that it challenged the "convention that television should not acknowledge that it is television; the show made no attempt to hide its cameras, allowed the microphone boom to intrude, and often revealed other nuts and bolts of studio technology."{{sfn|McCann|2006|pages=313–314}} This was unusual in the 1960s and gave the programme a modern feel.<ref name="ImageDissectors">{{cite web|url=http://www.imagedissectors.com/article/77 |title=TV Trends: Conspicuous Cameras |publisher=Image Dissectors |date=8 June 2010 |access-date=1 September 2013}}</ref> ''TW3'' also flouted conventions by adopting "a relaxed attitude to its running time", and "it seemed to last just as long as it wanted".{{sfn|McCann|2006|pages=313–314}}

The programme was taken off the air at short notice in December 1963  with the explanation that "1964 is a General Election year".