OLIVER WAKE
Writer: Nigel Kneale; Director: Michael Elliott
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.1 This article is an attempt to redress that imbalance slightly.
Continue reading “Mrs Wickens in the Fall (1957)”
Sunday-Night Theatre: ‘Mrs Wickens in the Fall’, BBC, tx. 8 September 1957. The text was published in: Michael Barry (editor), The Television Playwright (London: Michael Joseph Ltd, 1960), p. 150. ↩