British Television Drama

Biographical essay by Oliver Wake

The BBC’s appointment of Sydney Newman as their head of drama in 1962 was the opening act of what some perceive as a ‘golden age’ of British television drama. However, this is not how it appeared to everybody at the time, and the alienating effect of Newman’s ‘new broom’ should be remembered. Perhaps the most outspoken casualty of Newman’s arrival was Don Taylor, a highly successful producer/director who found himself stifled and, he alleged, blacklisted by Newman.

From humble working-class origins in East London, Taylor (30 June 1936-11 November 2003) won a scholarship to grammar school, and then to Oxford in 1955. There he studied literature and became involved with student theatre, both acting and directing. He secured the notable coup of directing the first production of John Osborne’s Epitaph for George Dillon in 1957. Graduating in 1958, he joined the Oxford Playhouse as assistant to the theatre’s director, Frank Hauser. Although he was effectively an errand boy, Taylor found the experience of the theatrical life invaluable. After six months, Hauser pushed Taylor out, telling him: ‘Sell your body if necessary, but find some way of your own to write and direct.’¹ A spell as a supply teacher followed while Taylor failed to break into the theatre.  Read more... (5341 words, 2 images, estimated 21:22 mins reading time)

Blog Essay by Dave Rolinson

For me, Doctor Who literally is a fairy tale. It’s not really science fiction. It’s not set in space, it’s set under your bed. – Steven Moffat¹

If you look at the stories I’ve written so far I suppose I might be slightly more at the fairy-tale and Tim Burton end of Doctor Who, whereas Russell is probably more at the blockbuster and Superman end of the show. – Steven Moffat²

Here are a few thoughts on the ideas at work in The Eleventh Hour, the first episode of the 2010 season of Doctor Who. It’s not a straight ‘review’, because there are enough of those on the internet already. But it’s also not the type of researched essay you expect from this site, because I’m interested in the episode’s ambiguities and the thoughts circulating in my head after seeing it, and don’t want to re-watch the episode to death or wait until the end of the season when some of those ideas will have been resolved. This piece will discuss the ideas relating to the ‘storybook quality’ that new lead writer Steven Moffat has talked about³, think about how style and imagery support characterisation and theme, and work out why my mind has made associations with the classic Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger film A Matter of Life and Death (1946). This piece contains spoilers, and, unlike other essays on this site, you will need to have seen the episode to know what I’m talking about.  Read more... (4521 words, 11 images, estimated 18:05 mins reading time)

Biographical essay by Oliver Wake

When people talk about the pioneers of television writing in Britain, they inevitably mention those who made their reputations in the 1960s, like Dennis Potter and John Hopkins. However, in the 1950s, Iain MacCormick was recognised as the first writer to make a name specifically from original television writing in Britain. This essay is an attempt to explain who he was, why his work was notable and why he is now so obscure.

MacCormick was a Scot who had been living in Australia when the Second World War began. He served with the Australian army, reaching the rank of Captain before being captured in 1941. He spent the next four years as a prisoner of war, during which time he took up writing, completing a number of plays. Two of these, Stairway to the Stars and Call Back the Night, were produced in London simultaneously in 1945. MacCormick settled in England, becoming the director of an advertising agency (although he gave this up in 1951 to concentrate on writing).¹ MacCormick’s 1949 stage play The Beautiful World was a tragedy set in post-war Berlin, based on a true story. It concerned the political and personal conflicts which arise when the daughter of a Communist takes a Social Democrat as her boyfriend. This form of ideological melodrama, informed by the turbulent politics of the mid-twentieth century, is characteristic of much of MacCormick’s television work.  Read more... (3938 words, 1 image, estimated 15:45 mins reading time)

Biographical essay by Oliver Wake

As a producer, director and writer of British television drama, James MacTaggart (1928-1974) was responsible for numerous stylistic experiments and technical innovations in the medium from the early 1960s until the mid-1970s. In a 15 year television career, he was responsible for over 120 television plays or episodes, a number that would have been much greater had it not been for his premature death.

MacTaggart was born in Glasgow, where he remained for a university education. After his National Service he made a career as an actor, ‘of high skill’ according to The Times, in theatre, radio and television.¹ Having acted for them regularly, MacTaggart joined BBC Scotland as a General Programme Producer in radio in the 1950s, working on magazine programmes and several major dramas. He subsequently moved into television as a Drama Production Assistant at the BBC’s Glasgow studios, despite some sinister rumblings about his suitability within the Corporation’s Appointments department.² By 1958 he had become a television director, with early work including instalments of the topical magazine Compass.³ He soon moved into drama, where he was credited as producer, as the roles of producer and director on television plays were combined under the one title.  Read more... (3969 words, 1 image, estimated 15:53 mins reading time)

Essay by Matthew Bailey

Plato and Hazel Blears do not often make it into the same sentence but they do share a common concern: from ancient Greece to the Salford Chipmunk, the arts have troubled the polis.

Admittedly Hazel Blears is not as extreme in her views as Plato, who sought to banish poets from his Republic for fear of their deleterious effect on the citizenry. Nonetheless Blears, speaking last year when still a Minister, expressed her worries about the corrosive effect of fictional accounts of politics and politicians on this country. Wondering why people might be deterred from participation in politics, she ruminated that one factor might be its portrayal on our TV screens. While Americans enjoy a tradition of uplifting political narratives from Mr Smith Goes to Washington to The West Wing, by contrast the British, she argued, are served with a diet of either the incompetent (Yes, Minister) or Machiavellian (House of Cards); two tendencies synthesized today in The Thick of It where clueless ministers are the playthings of conniving spin doctor Malcolm Tucker.

This Atlantic divide between American reverence and British cynicism is a commonly recognised one, although in truth both nations’ traditions of political fiction are more nuanced than this division suggests. However, the questions Blears raises are interesting and have been seized upon by a number other commentators. There clearly is a difference between the ethos emanating from the Bartlett White House and the sweary, headless chickens that inhabit DoSAC in The Thick of It. So does scabrous British political fiction pose a danger to democracy, as Blears and others have suggested?

Biographical essay by Oliver Wake

Although rarely discussed now, Michael Barry (1910-1988) had an important role in the development of British television drama. As a producer before and immediately after the Second World War and subsequently as the BBC’s first Head of Television Drama, he helped shape the new medium in its formative years.

After spells as a student of agriculture and an actor, Barry turned to theatre production, enjoying three successful years as the Croydon Repertory Theatre’s artistic producer. He was taken on as a producer by the BBC’s television service in 1938, just its third year of regular broadcasting, and reported to the modest facilities of its Alexandra Palace studios in North London.¹ As in radio, the BBC at that time did not recognise the independent role of director, so Barry’s work as producer also involved artistic aspects now more associated with directors.

In his first play, The Marvellous History of St Bernard (1938)², Barry experimented by varying camera lenses and playing with focus as part of a career-long quest to achieve a sense of ‘vitality’ on screen, which saw him pioneer new techniques and push standards³. An early success was his ‘charming’ reduced adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (1938).⁴ With pre-recording technology still decades away, these productions were transmitted live, with ‘repeats’ that involved performing the piece again. The rapid production rate of early television saw Barry produce a score of plays over the next fifteen months, a hectic schedule which encouraged Barry to favour plays already familiar from his own stage productions, despite his own concerns about their suitability for television.  Read more... (3906 words, 3 images, estimated 15:37 mins reading time)

Essay by Oliver Wake

There are many reasons why a television series may languish in obscurity, perhaps primarily because it simply does not merit any interest. However, this is not the case with ABC’s 1962 series Out of this World – British television’s first science fiction anthology – which suffers due to two factors independent of the programme itself. Only one episode is known to exist, leaving little scope for re-evaluation, and the series has long been overshadowed by its celebrated longer-running BBC cousin Out of the Unknown. However, Out of this World is not just worthy of attention as a curiosity, but as an original and successful series in its own right.

By 1962, ABC was already the most prolific of the ITV companies in the production of science fiction. In 1960-61 they had produced Malcolm Hulke and Eric Paice’s children’s serial Target Luna and its three Pathfinders (in Space, to Mars, to Venus) sequels. Many juvenile science fiction adventures in the same mould, such as City… and Secret Beneath the Sea, followed over the next few years. ABC also made adult science fiction, with its prestigious drama anthology Armchair Theatre producing a number of examples of the genre, both original teleplays and adaptations of on pre-existing works. The former, such as I Can Destroy the Sun (1958) and The Man Out There (1961), were the more interesting, often being inspired by contemporary subjects, usually the space race or cold war tensions. Clearly both the resources and, more importantly, the inclination, for adult science fiction were present at ABC, but never had they come together to form a regular series.  Read more... (3144 words, 1 image, estimated 12:35 mins reading time)

Essay by Oliver Wake

The work of Nigel Kneale is held in high regard by television drama enthusiasts, and by those with an interest in the science fiction and horror genres especially. His scriptwriting work, spanning five decades, produced a number of prophetic, macabre and disturbing pieces that have lingered long in the minds of viewers. It was these productions which made Kneale’s reputation, yet he wrote a great deal more besides. It would be a shame to ignore Kneale’s work in the discipline that we could call, perhaps pretentiously, ‘straight’ or ‘serious’ drama, much of which is as powerful and worthy of discussion as his better known material. One of these dramas is Mrs Wickens in the Fall from 1957, a play which has received little attention despite the script having been published in a 1960 compendium of television plays. This article is an attempt to redress that imbalance slightly.

Mrs Wickens in the Fall was Kneale’s first original teleplay having resigned his position as a staff writer with the BBC’s Script Unit. It was also the author’s first original non-fantasy drama for television, his only other original works being the first two Quatermass serials and 1955’s ‘yeti’ mystery The Creature. The difference in style, form and subject from all his earlier pieces is interesting, denoting a conscious effort on Kneale’s part to attempt something fresh. It is not, however, the beginning of a new era for Kneale; he would provide a third Quatermass serial the following year and continue to refine his unique brand of science fiction over the next decade. As such, Mrs Wickens in the Fall is something of an oddity in the Nigel Kneale canon.  Read more... (5102 words, 1 image, estimated 20:24 mins reading time)

Essay by John Wheatcroft

Political drama which carries a left-wing punch can usually expect to find a few dissenters among the majority of journalists – or at least their employers – for whom such views are anathema; it’s easy to review the politics rather than the art. It’s a huge testimony to Alan Plater’s skill as a dramatist that A Very British Coup was received with equal acclaim by commentators from every shade of the political spectrum. Plater believes that the right-wing press can sometimes be more generous than the left, so long as they understand that no attempt is being made to convert them.¹

The three-part Channel 4 dramatisation² of Chris Mullin’s 1982 novel of the same name, A Very British Coup is about the election of a genuinely socialist government, headed by former steel worker Harry Perkins (Ray McAnally). The drama is hardly a call to arms to vote Labour, because, as Plater points out, no government has ever pursued such an agenda.³ However, Perkins proves to be a different kettle of fish, as even his opponents such as Secret Service head Sir Percy Browne (Alan MacNaughton) have to admit, and he will not be deflected. Perkins continues on his socialist path with something as close to total integrity as politics allows. This makes A Very British Coup quite different from many left-leaning dramas, as Mark Lawson remarked: ‘Political drama on television tends to pursue the view that Labour leaders willingly surrender their beliefs in power. A Very British Coup is about something darker, the theft of good intentions.’⁴

Essay by Dave Rolinson

The probability of total destruction increases with time and, in the course of the months and years throughout which we are told to expect the Cold War to continue, it becomes almost a certainty’¹.

The War Game is one of television’s most notorious banned programmes. A harrowing dramatised documentary portraying the after-effects of nuclear holocaust and calling for public education in nuclear deterrent policy, it was made by the BBC for 1965 broadcast but was not transmitted for twenty years. Among the reasons given for the ban were its brutally graphic scenes, its apparent left-wing bias and its controversial fusion of journalistic fact and hugely alarmist fiction, although there is now evidence that it fell victim to the political suppression of nuclear discussion that was happening at the time across all media. Its director, Peter Watkins, quit the BBC and fought to get it a cinema release abroad, resulting in critical acclaim and a Best Documentary Oscar. After its eventual transmission in 1985, critics agreed that the BBC had suppressed one of the greatest dramas ever made.

That The War Game got made at all testifies to the reputation that Waatkins had acquired at the BBC. After making a number of short films including The Forgotten Faces (1961), an award-winning portrayal of the 1956 Hungarian uprising – he made a brilliant BBC debut with Culloden(1964)². This dramatisation of the genocide of the Highland Scots in 1745 was shot as if a news crew had been present at the time, a stunning intermingling of drama and documentary made – like The War Game – by the documentary department. Although Culloden was controversial, it won Watkins a British Screen Writers Guild award and much critical acclaim hailing a true television pioneer.