BBC television drama
Encyclopedia
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
television dramas have been produced and broadcast since even before the public service company had an officially established television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
broadcasting
Broadcasting
Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...
network in the United Kingdom. As with any major broadcast network, drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
forms an important part of its schedule, with many of the BBC's top-rated programmes being from this genre.
From the 1950s through to the 1980s the BBC received much acclaim for the range and scope of its drama productions, producing series, serials and plays across a range of genres, from soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
to science-fiction
Science fiction on television
Science fiction first appeared on a television program during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Special effects and other production techniques allow creators to present a living visual image of an imaginary world not limited by the constraints of reality; this makes television an excellent medium...
to costume drama
Costume drama
A costume drama or period drama is a period piece in which elaborate costumes, sets and properties are featured in order to capture the ambiance of a particular era.The term is usually used in the context of film and television...
, with the 1970s in particular being regarded as a critical and cultural high point in terms of the quality of dramas being produced. In the 1990s, a time of change in the British television
British television
Public television broadcasting started in the United Kingdom in 1936, and now has a collection of free and subscription services over a variety of distribution media, through which there are over 480 channelsTaking the base Sky EPG TV Channels. A breakdown is impossible due to a) the number of...
industry, the department went through much internal confusion and external criticism, but since the beginning of the 21st century has begun to return to form with a run of critical and popular successes, despite continual accusations of the drama output and the BBC in general dumbing down
Dumbing down
Dumbing down is a pejorative term for a perceived trend to lower the intellectual content of literature, education, news, and other aspects of culture...
.
Many BBC productions have also been exported to and screened in other countries, particularly in the United States on the Public Broadcasting Service
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
(PBS) Masterpiece Theatre
Masterpiece Theatre
Masterpiece is a drama anthology television series produced by WGBH Boston. It premiered on Public Broadcasting Service on January 10, 1971, making it America's longest-running weekly prime time drama series. The series has presented numerous acclaimed British productions...
strand and latterly on the BBC's own BBC America
BBC America
BBC America is an American television network, owned and operated by BBC Worldwide, and available on both cable and satellite.-History:The channel launched on March 29, 1998, broadcasting comedy, drama and lifestyle programs from BBC Television and other British television broadcasters like ITV and...
cable
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
channel. Other major purchasers of BBC dramas include the BBC's equivalents in other Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
nations, such as Australia's ABC
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
, Canada's CBC
CBC Television
CBC Television is a Canadian television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster.Although the CBC is supported by public funding, the television network supplements this funding with commercial advertising revenue, in contrast to CBC Radio which are...
and Gibraltar's Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation (GBC).
Experimental broadcasting and the 1930s
Already an established national radioRadio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
broadcaster, the BBC began test transmissions with the new technology of television in 1929, working with John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird FRSE was a Scottish engineer and inventor of the world's first practical, publicly demonstrated television system, and also the world's first fully electronic colour television tube...
and using his primitive early apparatus. The following year, as part of one of these test transmissions, the BBC screened their first television drama production, an adaptation of the Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written...
's short play The Man With the Flower in His Mouth
The Man With The Flower In His Mouth
The Man With the Flower in His Mouth is a play by the Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello. It is particularly noteworthy for becoming, in 1930, the first piece of television drama ever to be produced in Britain, when a version was screened by the British Broadcasting Corporation as part of their...
.
Broadcast live
Live television
Live television refers to a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. From the early days of television until about 1958, live television was used heavily, except for filmed shows such as I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. Video tape did not exist until 1957...
at 3.30pm on 14 July 1930, the play was produced from a small studio in the Baird Company headquarters at 133 Long Acre, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. The play was chosen because of its confined setting, small cast and short length, and was directed by Val Gielgud
Val Gielgud
Val Henry Gielgud was an English actor, writer, director and broadcaster. He was a pioneer of radio drama for the BBC, and also directed the first ever drama to be produced in the newer medium of television....
, who was at the time the BBC's senior producer of radio drama. Because of the primitive 30-line camera technology, only one figure could be shown on screen at a time and the field of vision of the cameras was extremely restricted. The Prime Minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
of the day, Ramsay MacDonald
Ramsay MacDonald
James Ramsay MacDonald, PC, FRS was a British politician who was the first ever Labour Prime Minister, leading a minority government for two terms....
, watched the play with his family on the Baird Televisor
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
Baird had previously installed at their 10 Downing Street
10 Downing Street
10 Downing Street, colloquially known in the United Kingdom as "Number 10", is the headquarters of Her Majesty's Government and the official residence and office of the First Lord of the Treasury, who is now always the Prime Minister....
home. The reviewer for The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
newspaper commented that: "This afternoon on the roof of 133, Long Acre will prove to be a memorable one... The time for interest and curiosity is come, but the time for serious criticism of television plays, as plays, is not yet."
The BBC's test broadcasts continued throughout the early part of the decade as the quality of the medium improved. In 1936 the BBC launched the world's first "high-definition"—then defined as at least 240-lines — television channel, the BBC Television Service
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
, from studios in a specially converted wing of Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace is a building in North London, England. It stands in Alexandra Park, in an area between Hornsey, Muswell Hill and Wood Green...
in London. At the time of the channel's debut on 2 November 1936 there were only five television producer
Television producer
The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...
s responsible for the entire output. The producer selected to oversee drama was George More O'Ferrall
George More O'Ferrall
George More O'Ferrall was a British film and television director.-Selected filmography:*The Holly and the Ivy *Angels One Five *The Heart of the Matter...
, who had some experience with working in a visual medium as he was a former assistant director
Assistant director
The role of an Assistant director include tracking daily progress against the filming production schedule, arranging logistics, preparing daily call sheets, checking cast and crew, maintaining order on the set. They also have to take care of health and safety of the crew...
of film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s. This was unlike most of his colleagues, who came across from the BBC's radio services.
The first drama production to be mounted as a part of the new, regular service was a twenty-five-minute selection of scenes from the West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
play Marigold by L. Allen Harker and F. R. Pryor, produced by O'Ferrall with the original London Royalty Theatre
Royalty Theatre
The Royalty Theatre was a small London theatre situated at 73 Dean Street, Soho and opened on 25 May 1840 as Miss Kelly's Theatre and Dramatic School and finally closed to the public in 1938. The architect was Samuel Beazley, a resident in Soho Square, who also designed St James's Theatre, among...
cast. This was broadcast live from the Alexandra Palace studios on the evening of Friday 6 November 1936. Later BBC Television Head of Drama Shaun Sutton
Shaun Sutton
Shaun Alfred Graham Sutton OBE was an English television writer, director, producer and executive, who worked in the medium for nearly forty years from the 1950s to the 1990s...
wrote about the production for The Times in 1972. "It was probably little more than a photographed version of the stage production, with the camera lying well back to preserve the picture-frame convention of the theatre." Most initial drama efforts were of a similar scale; productions of selected dramatised 'scenes' or excerpts from popular novels and adaptations of stage plays, and a programme entitled Theatre Parade
Theatre Parade
Theatre Parade was a British television programme, one of the world's very first regular shows, running on the BBC Television Service from its inception in 1936 until 1938...
would regularly use original London theatre casts for re-enacting selected scenes.
An increasing number of full-length dramatised productions began to take place in the Alexandra Palace studios during 1937, with Journey's End
Journey's End
Journey's End is a 1928 drama, the seventh of English playwright R. C. Sherriff. It was first performed at the Apollo Theatre in London by the Incorporated Stage Society on 9 December 1928, starring a young Laurence Olivier, and soon moved to other West End theatres for a two-year run...
in November 1937 being a notable full-scale adaptation of a play. When television transmissions on Sundays began in March 1938, one Sunday per month would see the broadcast of a full-length Shakespeare play by actors from the Birmingham Repertory Theatre
Birmingham Repertory Theatre
Birmingham Repertory Theatre is a theatre and theatre company based on Centenary Square in Birmingham, England...
. Productions also become more technically advanced, with the use of film inserts on telecine
Telecine
Telecine is transferring motion picture film into video and is performed in a color suite. The term is also used to refer to the equipment used in the post-production process....
and more ambitious shooting, cutting and mixing, as opposed to televising the equivalent of a standard theatrical performance with unmoving cameras. Outside broadcast cameras were used to show thirty Territorial Army troops with two howitzer
Howitzer
A howitzer is a type of artillery piece characterized by a relatively short barrel and the use of comparatively small propellant charges to propel projectiles at relatively high trajectories, with a steep angle of descent...
s in the Alexandra Palace grounds for added effect in The White Chateau (1938), and boats on the Palace lake in scenes depicting the Zeebrugge Raid
Zeebrugge Raid
The Zeebrugge Raid, which took place on 23 April 1918, was an attempt by the British Royal Navy to neutralize the key Belgian port of Bruges-Zeebrugge...
in a World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
play.
The Times credited the ambition of BBC television drama in its review of a July 1938 modern dress version of Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar (play)
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, also known simply as Julius Caesar, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1599. It portrays the 44 BC conspiracy against...
, while also criticising some of the production's technical failings.
"From the moment when Mr. Sebastian ShawGreater praise was given by the same paper to Felicity's First Season, broadcast in September 1938 and, unusually for the time, written directly for television.Sebastian Shaw (actor)Sebastian Lewis Shaw was an English actor, director, novelist, playwright and poet. During his 65-year career, Shaw appeared in dozens of stage performances and more than 40 film and television productions....
and Mr. Anthony Ireland were discovered sitting at a café table, discussing the political situation over a glass of beer, looking like two Fascist officers, yet speaking the lines assigned to BrutusMarcus Junius BrutusMarcus Junius Brutus , often referred to as Brutus, was a politician of the late Roman Republic. After being adopted by his uncle he used the name Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus, but eventually returned to using his original name...
and CassiusGaius Cassius LonginusGaius Cassius Longinus was a Roman senator, a leading instigator of the plot to kill Julius Caesar, and the brother in-law of Marcus Junius Brutus.-Early life:...
, the attention of the audience was riveted... The penumbrascope, a device for providing a background by means of shadows, which came into play for the first time in this production, was used so carelessly that its edges were often visible. The essence of stagecraft is illusion, which must not be shattered by such accidents. CaesarJulius CaesarGaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
's ghost was also very unconvincing, nor did the handful of people listening to the funeral orations suggest an excited mob."
"The play relies on dialogue throughout, and there is a skilful use of film to suggest the journey to Scotland. While there are few characters and little change of scenery, enormous cocktail parties, balls, and jumble sales seemed to be in progress just out of sight. The result was something between a stage play and a film—that is to say, good television entertainment."
The overwhelming majority of BBC television drama produced during the 1930s consisted of adaptations of stage plays, but there were exceptions. These included the first multi-episodic drama serial
Serial (radio and television)
Serials are series of television programs and radio programs that rely on a continuing plot that unfolds in a sequential episode by episode fashion. Serials typically follow main story arcs that span entire television seasons or even the full run of the series, which distinguishes them from...
, Ann and Harold, a five-part story about a married couple which began showing on 12 July 1938. There was also Telecrime
Telecrime
Telecrime was a British drama series that aired on the BBC Television Service from 1938 to 1939 and in 1946. One of the first multi-episode drama series ever made, it is also one of the first television dramas written especially for television not adapted from theatre or radio...
, a series of ten- and twenty-minute plays which presented various crimes, with the viewers given enough clues to be able to solve themselves using the evidence shown on screen.
As with almost all programmes of the era, the live television broadcasts meant that no record of the drama productions were kept outside of photographs, scripts and press reviews. BBC Programme Organiser Cecil Madden later claimed that they had experimented with telerecording a production of The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Scarlet Pimpernel is a play and adventure novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, set during the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution. The story is a precursor to the "disguised superhero" tales such as Zorro and Batman....
, but were ordered by film director Alexander Korda
Alexander Korda
Sir Alexander Korda was a Hungarian-born British producer and film director. He was a leading figure in the British film industry, the founder of London Films and the owner of British Lion Films, a film distributing company.-Life and career:The elder brother of filmmakers Zoltán Korda and Vincent...
to destroy the print as he felt it infringed his film rights.
Despite the difficulties and challenges its production often presented, drama had become a central part of the BBC's television schedules; a BBC audience research survey conducted in 1937 found that 90% of those replying generally enjoyed the drama productions, a figure equalled only by outside broadcasts. In Christmas week 1938, drama accounted for fourteen of the twenty-two hours of programming broadcast. By the following year, drama programming had fifteen producers working on it, compared to nine for all other types of programmes combined.
In 1939, the total audience for the BBC's programmes had grown to an estimated audience of 100,000 viewers, watching on 20,000 television sets. However, BBC television broadcasting ceased on 1 September 1939 in anticipation of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The station remained off-air for the duration of the conflict. The British Government were afraid that the VHF transmission signals would act as a guiding beacon for German bombers targeting central London, and the technicians and engineers of the service would in any case be needed for war efforts such as the radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
programme.
The return of television and the 1950s
John Robinson (actor)
John Robinson was an English actor, who was particularly active in the theatre. Mostly cast in minor and supporting roles in film and television, he is best remembered for being the second actor to play the famous television science-fiction role of Professor Bernard Quatermass, in the 1955 BBC...
and Joan Marion
Joan Marion
Joan Marion was an Australian-born film actress.-Selected filmography:* The River House Ghost * The Stolen Necklace * The Melody-Maker * Lord of the Manor...
and broadcast on 25 August 1939, less than a week before the service was placed on hiatus.
Gielgud was an unpopular choice with many in the television service, with the channel's controller, Norman Collins
Norman Collins
Norman Collins was a British writer, and later a radio and television executive, who became one of the major figures behind the establishment of the Independent Television network in the UK...
, protesting that "Anything less than complete familiarity with all aspects of television production will mean... that the Head of Television Drama is an amateur." Gielgud himself felt that television drama was too influenced by the cinema and ought to be closer to its radio equivalent, with television plays being more like illustrated radio broadcasts than independent entities in and of themselves. Gielgud eventually returned to radio, being replaced as Head of Drama by his assistant, the experienced producer Michael Barry, in 1952.
One important move that had occurred under Gielgud was the establishment in 1950 of the Script Department, and the hiring of the television service's first in-house staff drama writers, Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale was a British screenwriter from the Isle of Man. Active in television, film, radio drama and prose fiction, he wrote professionally for over fifty years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and was twice nominated for the British Film Award for Best Screenplay...
and Philip Mackie
Philip Mackie
Philip Mackie was a British film and television screenwriter. He was born in Salford in Lancashire, England...
. Barry later expanded the Script Department and installed the experienced film producer Donald Wilson as its head in 1955. Television was now developing beyond simply adapting stories from other media into creating its own originally written productions. It was also becoming a high-profile medium, with national coverage and viewing figures now running into the millions, helped by the explosion of interest due to the live televising of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
in the summer of 1953.
That same year, Barry invested the majority of his original scripting budget into a six-part science-fiction serial
Science fiction on television
Science fiction first appeared on a television program during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Special effects and other production techniques allow creators to present a living visual image of an imaginary world not limited by the constraints of reality; this makes television an excellent medium...
written by Kneale and directed by Rudolph Cartier
Rudolph Cartier
Rudolph Cartier was an Austrian television director, filmmaker, screenwriter and producer who worked predominantly in British television, exclusively for the BBC...
, an Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n-born director who was establishing a reputation as the television service's most inventive practitioner. Entitled The Quatermass Experiment
The Quatermass Experiment
The Quatermass Experiment is a British science-fiction serial broadcast by BBC Television in the summer of 1953 and re-staged by BBC Four in 2005. Set in the near future against the background of a British space programme, it tells the story of the first manned flight into space, overseen by...
, the serial
Serial (radio and television)
Serials are series of television programs and radio programs that rely on a continuing plot that unfolds in a sequential episode by episode fashion. Serials typically follow main story arcs that span entire television seasons or even the full run of the series, which distinguishes them from...
(miniseries
Miniseries
A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...
in American terminology) was a huge success and went a long way towards popularising the form, where one story is told over a short number of episodes, on British television: it is still one of the most popular drama formats in the medium to this day. Kneale and Cartier went on to be responsible for two sequel serials and many other highly successful and popular productions over the course of the decade, drawing many viewers to their programmes with their characteristic blend of horror and allegorical science fiction.
It was they who were responsible for the 1954 adaptation of George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four (TV programme)
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a British television adaptation of the novel of the same name by George Orwell, originally broadcast on BBC Television in December 1954. The production proved to be hugely controversial, with questions asked in Parliament and many viewer complaints over its supposed...
, the second performance of which drew the largest television audience since the coronation, some seven million viewers, and is one of the earliest surviving dramas in the archive. The telerecording process had by now been perfected for capturing live broadcasts for repeat and overseas sales, although it was not until the early 1960s that the majority of BBC dramas were prerecorded on the new technology of videotape
Videotape
A videotape is a recording of images and sounds on to magnetic tape as opposed to film stock or random access digital media. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram...
. The BBC, unlike American broadcasters, only gradually produced dramas shot entirely on film
Film stock
Film stock is photographic film on which filmmaking of motion pictures are shot and reproduced. The equivalent in television production is video tape.-1889–1899:...
from the 1960s onwards; ITV's filmed series were in the minority, and most of the commercial channel's drama productions were made in the same 'hybrid' form as those of the BBC. Filmed sequences would be mounted for external scenes which would be pre-shot and inserted into productions at relevant points, later being inserted into shows at the video editing stage. "These sequences bought time for the more elaborate costume changes or scene set-ups, but also served to 'open out' the action," as the British Film Institute explained on its Screenonline website in 2004.
The BBC suffered during the second half of the 1950s from the rise of the ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
network, which had debuted in 1955 and rapidly begun to take away audience share from the Corporation as its coverage spread nationally. Despite popular hits such as the police drama series Dixon of Dock Green
Dixon of Dock Green
Dixon of Dock Green was a popular BBC television series that ran from 1955 to 1976, and later a radio series. Despite being a drama series, it was initially produced by the BBC's light entertainment department.-Overview:...
and soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
The Grove Family
The Grove Family
The Grove Family is a British television soap opera, generally regarded as the first of its kind broadcast in the UK, made and transmitted by BBC Television from 1954 to 1957...
, the BBC was seen as being more highbrow, lacking the popular common touch of the commercial network. One of the major figures in commercial television drama of the late 1950s and early 1960s was Canadian producer Sydney Newman
Sydney Newman
Sydney Cecil Newman, OC was a Canadian film and television producer, who played a pioneering role in British television drama from the late 1950s to the late 1960s...
, the Head of Drama at ABC Television
Associated British Corporation
Associated British Corporation was one of a number of commercial television companies established in the United Kingdom during the 1950s by cinema chain companies in an attempt to safeguard their business by becoming involved with television which was taking away their cinema audiences.In this...
responsible for such programmes as Armchair Theatre
Armchair Theatre
Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series, which ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television after 1968....
and The Avengers
The Avengers (TV series)
The Avengers is a spy-fi British television series set in the 1960s Britain. The Avengers initially focused on Dr. David Keel and his assistant John Steed . Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants...
. In December 1962, keen to turn around the fortunes of their own drama department, the BBC invited Newman to replace the retiring Barry as Head of Drama, and he accepted, keen on the idea of transforming what he saw as the staid, docile image of BBC drama.
The 'golden age' of BBC drama
Even before Newman's arrival, some BBC producers were attempting to break the mould, with Elwyn JonesElwyn Jones (writer)
Elwyn Jones was a British television writer and producer, whose best-known work was perhaps the co-creation of the famous police drama series Z-Cars for BBC Television in 1962...
, Troy Kennedy Martin
Troy Kennedy Martin
Troy Kennedy Martin was a Scottish-born film and television screenwriter best known for creating the long running BBC TV police series Z-Cars, and for the award-winning 1985 anti-nuclear drama Edge of Darkness...
and Allan Prior
Allan Prior
Allan Prior was an English television scriptwriter and novelist, who wrote over 300 television episodes from the 1950s onwards....
's landmark police drama series Z-Cars
Z-Cars
Z-Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby in the outskirts of Liverpool in Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.-Origins:The series was developed by...
shaking up the image of television police dramas and becoming an enormous popular success from 1962 onwards. Newman, however, restructured the entire department, dividing the unwieldy drama group into three separate divisions: series, for on-going continuing dramas with self-contained episodes; serials, for stories told over multi-episode runs, or programmes which were made up of a series of serials; and plays, for any kind of drama one-offs, an area Newman was especially keen on following the success of Armchair Theatre at ABC.
Huw Wheldon
Sir Huw Pyrs Wheldon OBE MC was a BBC broadcaster and executive.Wheldon was born in Prestatyn, Wales and educated at Friars School, Bangor. His father, Sir Wynn Wheldon, was a prominent educationalist, who had been awarded the DSO for gallantry in the First World War...
's famous edict to "make the good popular and the popular good," once stating: "damn the upper classes! They don't even own televisions!" While he did personally create populist family-entertainment-based dramas such as Adam Adamant Lives!
Adam Adamant Lives!
Adam Adamant Lives! is a British television series which ran from 1966 to 1967 on the BBC. Proposing that an adventurer born in 1867 had been revived from hibernation in 1966, the show was a comedy adventure that took a satirical look at life in the 1960s through the eyes of an Edwardian .- Character...
and the incredibly long-running science-fiction series Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
, he also attempted to create drama that was socially relevant to those who were watching, initiating The Wednesday Play
The Wednesday Play
The Wednesday Play was an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. Every week's play was usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured...
anthology strand to present contemporary dramas with a social background the resonance. Says Screenonline of this development, "It was from this artistic high of the 'golden age' of British TV drama (this 'agitational contemporaneity', as Newman coined it) that a new generation of TV playwrights emerged."
The Wednesday Play proved to be a breeding ground for acclaimed and sometimes controversial writers such as Dennis Potter
Dennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective. His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.-Biography:Dennis Potter was born...
and directors such as Ken Loach
Ken Loach
Kenneth "Ken" Loach is a Palme D'Or winning English film and television director.He is known for his naturalistic, social realist directing style and for his socialist beliefs, which are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as homelessness , labour rights and child abuse at the...
, but sometimes Newman's desire to create biting, cutting drama could land the Corporation in trouble. This was particularly the case with 1965's The War Game
The War Game
The War Game is a 1965 television documentary-style drama depicting the effects of nuclear war on Britain. Written, directed, and produced by Peter Watkins for the BBC's The Wednesday Play anthology series, it caused dismay within the BBC and in government and was withdrawn from television...
by Peter Watkins
Peter Watkins
Peter Watkins is an English film and television director. He was born in Norbiton, Surrey, lived in Sweden, Canada and Lithuania for many years, and now lives in France. He is one of the pioneers of docudrama. His movies, pacifist and radical, strongly review the limit of classic documentary and...
, which depicted a fictional nuclear attack on the UK and the consequences of such, and was banned by the BBC under pressure from the government. It was eventually screened on television in 1985.
Newman's reign saw a large number of popular and critically acclaimed dramas go out on the BBC, with Doctor Who, Z-Cars, Doctor Finlay's Casebook
Dr. Finlay
Dr. Finlay is a fictional character, the hero of a series of stories by Scottish author A. J. Cronin.-History:The stories were used as the basis for the long-running BBC television programme, Dr. Finlay's Casebook, screened from 1962 to 1971, and radio series . Based on Cronin's novella entitled...
and the epic The Forsyte Saga
The Forsyte Saga (1967 series)
The Forsyte Saga is a 1967 BBC television adaptation of John Galsworthy's series of The Forsyte Saga novels, and its sequel trilogy A Modern Comedy...
picking up viewers while the likes of The Wednesday Play and Theatre 625
Theatre 625
Theatre 625 is a British television drama anthology series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC2 from 1964 to 1968. It was one of the first regular programmes in the line-up of the channel, and the title referred to its production and transmission being in the higher-definition 625-line...
presented challenging ideas to the audience. Newman left the staff of the BBC once his five-year contract expired in 1967, departing for an unsuccessful attempt to break into the film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
industry. He was replaced by Head of Serials Shaun Sutton
Shaun Sutton
Shaun Alfred Graham Sutton OBE was an English television writer, director, producer and executive, who worked in the medium for nearly forty years from the 1950s to the 1990s...
, initially on an acting basis combined with his existing role, but permanently from 1969.
Play for Today
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted...
in 1970; later in the decade the BBC began a run of producing every single Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
play, a run which Sutton himself would later take over the producer's role on following his departure from the Head of Drama position in the early 1980s.
Popular dramas such as Doctor Who and Z-Cars continued into the new decade, and were joined by costume dramas following The Forsyte Saga such as The Pallisers
The Pallisers
The Pallisers is a 1974 BBC television adaptation of Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels.-Cast :*Anthony Ainley: Rev. Emilius*Terence Alexander: Lord George*Anthony Andrews: Lord Silverbridge*Sarah Badel: Lizzie Eustace...
, The Onedin Line
The Onedin Line
The Onedin Line is a BBC television drama series which ran from 1971 to 1980. The series was created by Cyril Abraham.The series is set in Liverpool from 1860 to 1886 and deals with the rise of a shipping line, the Onedin Line, named after its owner James Onedin...
and Poldark
Poldark
Poldark is a BBC television series based on the novels written by Winston Graham which was first transmitted in the UK between 1975 and 1977.-Outline:...
. Family-audience based period dramas, often adaptations such as The Eagle of the Ninth
The Eagle of the Ninth
The Eagle of the Ninth is a historical adventure novel for children written by Rosemary Sutcliff and published in 1954. The story is set in Roman Britain in the 2nd century AD, after the building of Hadrian's Wall....
(1977), were popular on Sunday afternoons, with the 'Classic Serial' strand which ran there becoming something of an institution until the early 1990s. Another success between 1973 and 1977 was the popular Warship
Warship (TV series)
Warship was a popular British television drama series produced by the BBC between 1973 and 1977. It was also dubbed into Dutch and broadcast in the Netherlands as Alle hens...
drama series, filmed with a documentary-like look for forty-five episodes over four seasons on a Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
frigate
Frigate
A frigate is any of several types of warship, the term having been used for ships of various sizes and roles over the last few centuries.In the 17th century, the term was used for any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description often used being "frigate-built"...
. Along with many BBC dramas of the decade, Warship was also very successful in countries such as Ireland and Australia.
There were also failures, however. The epic Churchill's People
Churchill's People
Churchill's People is series of 26 historical dramas produced by the BBC, based on Winston Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. They were first broadcast on BBC1 in 1974 and 1975....
, twenty-six fifty-minute episodes based around Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples is a four-volume history of Britain and its former colonies and possessions throughout the world, written by Winston Churchill, covering the period from Caesar's invasions of Britain to the beginning of the First World War...
, was deemed unbroadcastable by Sutton after he had viewed the initial episodes, but so much time and money had been invested in huge pre-transmission publicity that the BBC had no choice but to show the plays, to critical derision and tiny viewing figures. Never again would a fifty-minute series be given a run as long as twenty-six episodes, for fear of being too committed to a project: runs of thirteen became the norm, although in later years even this began to be considered quite long. Plays such as Dennis Potter's Brimstone and Treacle
Brimstone and Treacle
-Potter on Brimstone and Treacle:In 1978, Potter said:I had written Brimstone and Treacle in difficult personal circumstances. Years of acute psoriatic arthropathy—unpleasantly affecting skin and joints—had not only taken their toll in physical damage but had also, and perhaps inevitably, mediated...
and Roy Minton
Roy Minton
Roy Minton is an English playwright best known for Scum and his other work with Alan Clarke. He is notable for having written over 30 one-off scripts for London Weekend Television, Rediffusion, BBC, ATV, Granada, Thames Television and Yorkshire Television, including Sling Your Hook, Horace, Funny...
's Scum were not broadcast at all due to fears over their content at the highest levels of the BBC, although despite this Potter continued to write landmark drama serials and one-offs for the Corporation throughout the rest of the decade and into the 1980s. Both Brimstone and Treacle and Scum were eventually transmitted some years later.
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
described it in their 2004 obituary of Sutton. Or in the words of the Royal Television Society
Royal Television Society
The Royal Television Society is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present and future. It is the oldest television society in the world...
, "...an era that championed new writers, young directors and challenging drama. The amazing diversity... helped to make it the golden age of broadcasting."
However, despite this high esteem, the television drama of the era does not fully exist in the archives. Most of the live
Live television
Live television refers to a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. From the early days of television until about 1958, live television was used heavily, except for filmed shows such as I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. Video tape did not exist until 1957...
output was not recorded at all, and a large amount of material from the 1960s and early 1970s was wiped
Wiping
Wiping or junking is a colloquial term for action taken by radio and television production and broadcasting companies, in which old audiotapes, videotapes, and telerecordings , are erased, reused, or destroyed after several uses...
once it had been repeated the number of times contractually allowed, or when it was of no further use for overseas sales. This practice continued in the early years of colour television, although by 1978 the BBC had realised the historical value of its archive and ceased the wiping process. However, by this stage many series were completely missing – United!
United!
United! was a British television series which was produced by the BBC between 1965 and 1967, and was broadcast twice-weekly on BBC1.The series followed the fortunes of a fictional second division football team, Brentwich United...
, a football
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
-based soap opera which ran from 1965 to 1967 has no episodes existing at all. Others have large gaps; Dixon of Dock Green has only about thirty of its more than four hundred episodes surviving from its twenty year run.
Changing attitudes in the 1980s and beyond
Following Sutton's departure from the Head of Drama role in 1981 and his return to front-line producing duties in the Shakespeare cycle, his place as Head of Drama was taken by Graeme MacDonaldGraeme MacDonald
Graeme MacDonald was a British television producer and executive....
. MacDonald had been Head of Serials and later Head of Series & Serials under Sutton, with the two departments having been merged in 1980, remaining so for most of the decade before separating again at the end of it. MacDonald maintained the status quo, and was only Head of Drama for a short time before he was promoted again to run a channel as Controller of BBC2
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
. He was succeeded in turn by his own Head of Series & Serials, Jonathan Powell.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a 1974 British spy novel by John le Carré, featuring George Smiley. Smiley is a middle-aged, taciturn, perspicacious intelligence expert in forced retirement. He is recalled to hunt down a Soviet mole in the "Circus", the highest echelon of the Secret Intelligence...
(1979) and its sequel Smiley's People
Smiley's People
Smiley's People is a spy novel by John le Carré, published in 1979. Featuring British master-spy George Smiley, it is the third and final novel of the "Karla Trilogy", following Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy...
(1982), and he very much favoured this form of short-run, self-contained filmed serial over longer-running videotaped drama series. It was under his aegis, therefore, that the BBC produced some of its highest-quality examples of this type of drama, of particular note being 1985's Edge of Darkness
Edge of Darkness
Edge of Darkness is a British television drama serial, produced by BBC Television in association with Lionheart Television International and originally broadcast in six fifty-five minute episodes in late 1985...
by Troy Kennedy Martin
Troy Kennedy Martin
Troy Kennedy Martin was a Scottish-born film and television screenwriter best known for creating the long running BBC TV police series Z-Cars, and for the award-winning 1985 anti-nuclear drama Edge of Darkness...
, and the following year's Dennis Potter piece The Singing Detective
The Singing Detective
The Singing Detective is a BBC television miniseries written by Dennis Potter, which stars Michael Gambon, and was directed by Jon Amiel. The six episodes were "Skin", "Heat", "Lovely Days", "Clues", "Pitter Patter" and "Who Done It"....
, both regarded as seminal BBC drama productions. "A gripping, innovative six-part drama which fully deserves its cult status and many awards," was the British Film Institute's verdict on Edge of Darkness in 2000.
Powell also oversaw the rise of more populist continuing drama series, however, encouraged by the ratings-chasing strategy of the then Controller of BBC1
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
, his friend Michael Grade
Michael Grade
Michael Ian Grade, Baron Grade of Yarmouth CBE is a British broadcast executive and businessman. He was BBC chairman from 2004 to 2006 and executive chairman of ITV plc from 2007 to 2009.-Early life:...
. It was during Powell's tenure that the BBC launched the twice-weekly soap opera EastEnders
EastEnders
EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...
(1985–present) and the medical drama Casualty (1986–present), both of which remain linchpins of the BBC One schedule today and the highest-rated drama productions on BBC television. Indeed, EastEnders achieved phenomenal success in its early years, its Christmas Day 1986 episode earning a massive 30.15 million viewers, the highest British television audience of the 1980s.Aside from these continuing dramas, based in one major location and shot entirely on videotape and thus comparatively cheap to make, longer runs of drama series became rare, with short series of six or eight episodes becoming the norm.
The single play, in its original studio-based form, also began to disappear from the schedules, with the final series of Play for Today airing in 1984, and the last single drama recorded at Television Centre being Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 1 is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written no later than 1597. It is the second play in Shakespeare's tetralogy dealing with the successive reigns of Richard II, Henry IV , and Henry V...
in 1995. The BBC was envious of the success of its rival Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
's newly formed film arm, which had seen made-for-television one-offs such as Stephen Frears
Stephen Frears
Stephen Arthur Frears is an English film director.-Early life:Frears was born in Leicester, England to Ruth M., a social worker, and Dr Russell E. Frears, a general practitioner and accountant. He did not find out that his mother was Jewish until he was in his late 20s...
' My Beautiful Laundrette
My Beautiful Laundrette
My Beautiful Laundrette is a 1985 British comedy-drama film directed by Stephen Frears from a screenplay by Hanif Kureishi. The story is set in London during the period when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, as shown through the complex—and often comical—relationships...
(1985) gain cinematic releases to considerable success. New strands such as Screen One
Screen One
Screen One is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 between 1989 to 1993.Following the demise of the BBC's Play For Today which ran from 1970 to 1984, producer Kenneth Trodd was asked to formulate a new series of one-off television dramas...
and Screen Two concentrated on short runs of all-film, cinematic-style one-off dramas, with the most successful of these being Anthony Minghella
Anthony Minghella
Anthony Minghella, CBE was an English film director, playwright and screenwriter. He was Chairman of the Board of Governors at the British Film Institute between 2003 and 2007....
's Truly, Madly, Deeply
Truly, Madly, Deeply
Truly, Madly, Deeply is a 1990 film made for the BBC's Screen Two series.-Overview:The film was written and directed by Anthony Minghella and stars Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman. Minghella said he wrote the script specifically as “a vehicle for [Stevenson] to express all her talents...
(Screen Two, 1990) which became a successful film released to cinemas. (Screen One and Two ran until 1994.)
The Plays department eventually disappeared altogether, being replaced latterly with a 'Head of Film & Single Drama' position with autonomous powers for investing in feature film production, co-commissioning television one-offs with the Head of Drama. This interest in film production is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that both of Powell's successors as Head of Drama, Mark Shivas
Mark Shivas
Mark Shivas was a British television producer, film producer and executive. He began his career at BBC Television in the 1960s, and quickly became one of the department's noted producers...
(1988–93) and Charles Denton
Charles Denton (television and film producer)
Charles Denton is a British film and television producer and executive.He first worked for the BBC as a documentary filmmaker for five years from 1963, before he left the corporation to go freelance...
(1993–96), went on to work in the film industry after leaving the position.
Jonathan Powell's attempt to repeat the success of EastEnders in 1992, when he had become Controller of BBC One, led to one of the BBC's most notorious and costly failures. Eldorado was set in the British expatriate
Expatriate
An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
community in Spain, created by the same team of Julia Smith
Julia Smith
Julia Smith was an English television director and producer.- Early career :London-born Smith became involved in television production when she directed the series Suspense in 1962...
and Tony Holland
Tony Holland
Anthony John "Tony" Holland was an English television screenwriter best known as a writer and co-creator of the BBC soap opera EastEnders.-Early career:...
who had come up with EastEnders. The costly soap opera, hugely maligned by critics and the victim of a viewer backlash against the massive advertising campaign the BBC had undertaken to promote it, was scrapped by Powell's successor Alan Yentob
Alan Yentob
Alan Yentob is a British television executive and presenter who has worked throughout his career at the BBC.-Early life:...
after less than a year's run, under pressure from the Director-General of the BBC
Director-General of the BBC
The Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation is chief executive and editor-in-chief of the BBC.The position was formerly appointed by the Board of Governors of the BBC and is now appointed by the BBC Trust....
John Birt.
The 1990s saw a rise in the popularity of costume drama adaptations of literary classics, mostly adapted by the acclaimed screenwriter Andrew Davies
Andrew Davies (writer)
Andrew Wynford Davies is a British author and screenwriter. He was made a Fellow of BAFTA in 2002.-Education and early career:...
. One of the most successful of these was a 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
's Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice (1995 TV serial)
Pride and Prejudice is a six-episode 1995 British television drama, adapted by Andrew Davies from Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice. Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth starred as Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Produced by Sue Birtwistle and directed by Simon Langton, the serial was a BBC...
, starring Colin Firth
Colin Firth
SirColin Andrew Firth, CBE is a British film, television, and theatre actor. Firth gained wide public attention in the 1990s for his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice...
and Jennifer Ehle
Jennifer Ehle
Jennifer Ehle is an American actress of stage and screen. She is known for her BAFTA winning role as Elizabeth Bennet in the 1995 mini-series Pride and Prejudice.-Early life:...
. Contemporary social drama, a BBC signature style since the 1960s, remained in the form of landmark productions such as Our Friends in the North
Our Friends in the North
Our Friends in the North is a British television drama serial, produced by the BBC and originally broadcast in nine episodes on BBC Two in early 1996...
(1996), but it was notable that this was transmitted on the more niche BBC Two channel rather than the mainstream BBC One as might well have been the case in previous decades.
There was criticism of the department's commissioning process in some quarters, which was seen as being overly intricate and bureaucratic. As The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
described: "Lengthy agonising over whether the BBC1 saga Seaforth would be given a second series (eventually, it wasn't) further encouraged the view that the BBC's management floor is full of desks where the buck does not so much stop as hang around for a few months." Further problems emerged for the drama department after the departure of Charles Denton as its Head in May 1996. He was briefly replaced on a temporary basis by Ruth Caleb, the Head of Drama at BBC Wales
BBC Wales
BBC Cymru Wales is a division of the British Broadcasting Corporation for Wales. Based at Broadcasting House in the Llandaff area of Cardiff, it directly employs over 1200 people, and produces a broad range of television, radio and online services in both the Welsh and English languages.Outside...
. However, Caleb had no interest in taking the job on a permanent basis, and after a six-month attachment left the post at the end of the year. With no suitable candidate to take the job on a full-time basis having been found, Director of Television Alan Yentob
Alan Yentob
Alan Yentob is a British television executive and presenter who has worked throughout his career at the BBC.-Early life:...
was forced to oversee the department, again on a temporary basis.
Christopher Bland
Sir Christopher Buchan Bland is a British businessman and politician. He was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC from 1996 to 2001, when he took up a position as Chairman of British Telecommunications plc...
criticising the amount of time it was taking to find a new Head of Department, stating publicly that: "There aren't a lot of people who are pre-eminently qualified and able to do the biggest job in drama. That's the difficulty." . Experienced BBC Drama staff such as Michael Wearing
Michael Wearing
Michael Wearing is a British television producer, who has spent much of his career working on various drama productions for the BBC. He is best known as the producer of the highly-acclaimed serials Boys from the Blackstuff and Edge of Darkness , which created for him a reputation as one of...
(Head of Serials) were leaving the department, which was seen to be in trouble after the failure of hugely expensive productions such as the historical drama Rhodes in 1996. "Many in the drama business, and not just BBC insiders, are worried about the hand-over of creative say to the controllers, low morale and the lack of a head," The Guardian reported in December 1996. Finally in June 1997 Colin Adams was appointed as the new Head of Drama. Adams was a surprising choice, his previous role at the Corporation having been as Head of Northern Broadcasting. However, he was essentially an administrator and seen by Drama staff as a temporary appointment.
In 1997 the BBC approached Mal Young
Mal Young
Mal Young is a British television producer and executive producer.-Background:His initial career was in the Graphic Design industry, and it was not until the age of 27 that he began working in television, on the acclaimed Channel 4 soap opera Brookside.Working on the show for nearly a decade, he...
, best known for producing Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
-set Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
soap Brookside
Brookside
Brookside is a defunct British soap opera set in Liverpool, England. The series began on the launch night of Channel 4 on 2 November 1982, and ran for 21 years until 4 November 2003...
, to head up the Drama Series section of the in-house Drama Department, which had become something of a poisoned chalice with many Controllers departing in quick succession. As Controller of Continuing Drama Series, Young oversaw the move to volume production and also commissioned a new medical Series, Holby City
Holby City
Holby City, stylised as Holby Ci+y, is a British medical drama television series that airs weekly on BBC One.The series was created by Tony McHale and Mal Young as a spin-off from the established BBC medical drama Casualty, and premiered on 12 January 1999...
. By the time Young left the BBC to join 19 Television Limited
19 Entertainment
19 Entertainment, based in Los Angeles, United States, is a creator and producer of entertainment properties based around the areas of Music and Television / Film, including American Idol in the United States, Pop Idol in the United Kingdom as well as versions of the Idol series in more than...
as head of Drama in December 2004, the BBC had increased Series production to nearly 300 hours per annum, including EastEnders
EastEnders
EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...
at four times a week, Holby City for 52 episodes, Casualty for 48 episodes. Volume Series production was a controversial move because it took a large part of the Drama budget away from original production and contributed to accusations of "dumbing down" its programming. "The decision to show EastEnders four nights a week, followed by Holby City has left the corporation open to accusations that the BBC1 schedule has been cleared for a diet of 'precinct pulp'," reported The Guardian in 2003.
The modern era
As of 2010, the current Commissioner of Drama at the BBC is Ben StephensonBen Stephenson
Ben Stephenson is an English television executive, who has been controller of drama commissioning at the BBC since September 2008.-Early life:Stephenson attended The Hewett School in Norwich before studying at Manchester University.-Television:...
. Working with Stephenson are: Head of Series & Serials Kate Harwood
Kate Harwood
Kate Harwood is a British television producer. She is currently the Head of Series and Serials at the BBC.-Early life:Kate graduated from the University of Birmingham with a degree in Drama before becoming an Arts Council Trainee director with Century Theatre and then Literary Manager of the Royal...
and Controller of Continuing (i.e. year-round) Drama Series John Yorke (who also acts as Head of Drama for the BBC's in-house production arm), with David Thompson of Film & Single Drama overseeing one-offs. Sarah Brandist and Polly Hill are the commissioning editors for independently-produced drama programming.
Tranter's era from 2000–06 saw a return to longer-run episode series, with programmes such as Spooks
Spooks
Spooks is a British television drama series that originally aired on BBC One from 13 May 2002 – 23 October 2011, consisting of 10 series. The title is a popular colloquialism for spies, as the series follows the work of a group of MI5 officers based at the service's Thames House headquarters, in a...
being given longer second runs following successful debut seasons. Recent years have also seen a huge increase in continuing drama output, with EastEnders gaining a fourth weekly episode to add to the third added during the mid-1990s, and Casualty and its spin-off series Holby City
Holby City
Holby City, stylised as Holby Ci+y, is a British medical drama television series that airs weekly on BBC One.The series was created by Tony McHale and Mal Young as a spin-off from the established BBC medical drama Casualty, and premiered on 12 January 1999...
(1999–present) turning from regular seasonal shows to year-round soap opera-style productions. These moves have been criticised in some quarters for filling the market with insubstantial populist dramas at the expense of 'quality' prestige pieces, although there have been several notable drama serial successes, such as Paul Abbott
Paul Abbott
Paul Abbott is a BAFTA award-winning English television screenwriter and producer. Abbott has become one of the most critically and commercially successful television writers working in Britain today, following his work on many popular series, including Coronation Street, Cracker and Shameless,...
's State of Play (2003) and the historical drama Charles II: The Power and The Passion
Charles II: The Power and The Passion
Charles II: The Power and the Passion is an award-winning British television mini-series, broadcast on BBC One in 2003, and produced by the BBC in association with the A&E Network in the United States...
(BBC Northern Ireland
BBC Northern Ireland
BBC Northern Ireland is the main public service broadcaster in Northern Ireland.The organisation is one of the three national regions of the BBC, together with BBC Scotland and BBC Wales. Based at Broadcasting House, Belfast, it provides television, radio, online and interactive television content...
- 2004).
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
in the North of England
Northern England
Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North or the North Country, is a cultural region of England. It is not an official government region, but rather an informal amalgamation of counties. The southern extent of the region is roughly the River Trent, while the North is bordered...
to break away from the perceived London bias (although, ironically, it was shot in the BBC's London studios), and in 1971 an English Regions Drama Department had been established at BBC Birmingham
BBC Birmingham
BBC Birmingham is one of the oldest regional arms of the BBC, located in Birmingham, West Midlands. It was the first region outside of London to start broadcasting both the corporation's radio and television transmissions, the latter from the Sutton Coldfield television transmitter...
headed by David Rose
David Rose (producer)
David E. Rose is a retired television producer and commissioning editor.Following war service as a RAF pilot of Lancaster Bombers on 34 missions, he trained as an actor at the Guildhall School of Drama, but following graduation pursued a career in stage management...
with a remit for making 'regional drama', gaining a major success with Alan Bleasdale
Alan Bleasdale
Alan Bleasdale is an English television dramatist, best known for writing several social realist drama serials based on the lives of ordinary people.The Bleasdales live in prescot,liverpool,wales and london.-Early life:Bleasdale is an only child; his father worked in a food factory and his mother...
's Boys from the Blackstuff
Boys from the Blackstuff
Boys from the Blackstuff is a British television drama series of five episodes, originally transmitted from 10 October to 7 November 1982 on BBC2....
in 1982. In the modern era, however, the separate BBC branches in Scotland, Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
and Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
all have their own drama departments with Heads of Drama who have autonomous commissioning powers, both for in-house production and co-production with or commissioning from independents.
Although some of these shows are purely for regional consumption, such as BBC Scotland
BBC Scotland
BBC Scotland is a constituent part of the British Broadcasting Corporation, the publicly-funded broadcaster of the United Kingdom. It is, in effect, the national broadcaster for Scotland, having a considerable amount of autonomy from the BBC's London headquarters, and is run by the BBC Trust, who...
's River City
River City
River City is a Scottish television soap opera, first broadcast in Scotland on BBC Scotland on 24 September 2002. River City storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional district of Shieldinch in Glasgow...
and BBC Wales' Belonging, many programmes networked nationally on BBC One and Two are made in 'the nations', with perhaps the highest profile being the current BBC Wales
BBC Wales
BBC Cymru Wales is a division of the British Broadcasting Corporation for Wales. Based at Broadcasting House in the Llandaff area of Cardiff, it directly employs over 1200 people, and produces a broad range of television, radio and online services in both the Welsh and English languages.Outside...
revival of Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
. The larger English regions also produce drama productions of their own, with BBC Birmingham providing the detective drama Dalziel and Pascoe
Dalziel and Pascoe (BBC TV series)
Dalziel and Pascoe is a popular British television crime drama based on the Dalziel and Pascoe books by Reginald Hill, which was first broadcast in March 1996. It is set in Yorkshire, and is about two detectives...
, daytime soap opera Doctors and anthology series The Afternoon Play for national consumption, for example.
From 1999 until 2006, the BBC also had a new in-house drama division, BBC Fictionlab, which specialised in producing dramas for the corporation's digital stations, particularly BBC Four
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
. Notable Fictionlab productions for BBC Four included The Alan Clark Diaries
Alan Clark
Alan Kenneth Mackenzie Clark was a British Conservative MP and diarist. He served as a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher's governments at the Departments of Employment, Trade, and Defence, and became a privy counsellor in 1991...
(2003), a live re-make of The Quatermass Experiment
The Quatermass Experiment
The Quatermass Experiment is a British science-fiction serial broadcast by BBC Television in the summer of 1953 and re-staged by BBC Four in 2005. Set in the near future against the background of a British space programme, it tells the story of the first manned flight into space, overseen by...
(2005) and the biopic Kenneth Tynan - In Praise of Hardcore
Kenneth Tynan
Kenneth Peacock Tynan was an influential and often controversial English theatre critic and writer.-Early life:...
(2005). Several of these have later seen analogue transmission on BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
. However, in January 2006 the BBC announced that Fictionlab was to be disbanded, as the digital channels were now well established and no longer needed a specialised drama production unit.
Children's drama
The BBC has established a strong reputation in the field of children's drama, although children's dramas are almost universally commissioned and / or produced by the BBC's Children's DepartmentCBBC
CBBC is one of two brand names used for the BBC's children's television strands. Between 1985 and 2002, CBBC was the name given to all the BBC's programmes on TV for children aged under 14...
rather than the Drama Department itself. There are however occasional crossovers - Doctor Who, for example, would commonly be regarded as a children's or family programme, but has always been produced by the main Drama Department.
Throughout much of the department's history, the emphasis has been on continuing productions of short-run drama serials, including adaptations of classic children's literature such as Little Lord Fauntleroy
Little Lord Fauntleroy
Little Lord Fauntleroy is the first children's novel written by English playwright and author Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was originally published as a serial in the St. Nicholas Magazine between November 1885 and October 1886, then as a book by Scribner's in 1886...
, as well as made-for-television productions. Science-fiction has been a popular theme, from Stranger from Space (1951–52) through to the likes of Dark Season
Dark Season
Dark Season is a British science-fiction television serial for adolescents, screened on BBC1 in late 1991. Comprising six twenty-five minute episodes, the two linked three-part stories tell the adventures of three teenagers and their battle to save their school and their classmates from the actions...
(1991) and Century Falls
Century Falls
Century Falls is a British cross-genre series broadcast in six twenty-five minute episodes on BBC One in early 1993. Written by Russell T Davies, it tells the story of teenager Tess Hunter and her mother, who move to the seemingly idyllic rural village of Century Falls, only to find that it hides...
(1993). Since the middle of the 1980s, children's dramas - with the exception of the Sunday evening 'classics' slot - have almost always been screened in the weekday BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
3pm-5.30pm Children's BBC (CBBC) strand.
Longer continuing drama series became common from the late 1970s, spearheaded by the 1978 launch of the popular school-set drama series Grange Hill. Created by Liverpudlian
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
dramatist Phil Redmond
Phil Redmond
Phil Redmond CBE is an English television producer and screenwriter.He is well-known for creating several popular television series such as Grange Hill , Brookside and Hollyoaks...
, the intention of the programme was to present issues relevant to children in a realistic manner, showing characters in a modern Comprehensive school
Comprehensive school
A comprehensive school is a state school that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude. This is in contrast to the selective school system, where admission is restricted on the basis of a selection criteria. The term is commonly used in relation to the United...
and concentrating on the issues facing children in such schools. The series was a huge success, and in 1989 a similar programme, Byker Grove
Byker Grove
Byker Grove was a British television series which aired between 1989 and 2006 and was created by Adele Rose. The show was broadcast at 5.10pm after Newsround on CBBC on BBC One...
, set in a youth club
Youth club
A youth club or youth social club is a place where young people can meet and enjoy activities such as football, soccer, basketball, table tennis, or video games, and other religious, sports activities are frequently sponsored by a community center....
, was launched by the BBC's North-Eastern arm and screened on Children's BBC.
From the 1990s onwards, in common with BBC programming in other genres, children's drama has often been commissioned from independent producers as well as being made in-house. Grange Hill switched to independent production after twenty-five years as an in-house programme in 2003, when production was taken over by Mersey Television
Mersey Television
Lime Pictures, formerly known as Mersey Television, is a British television production company, founded by producer and writer Phil Redmond in the early 1980s....
, the company established by the programme's creator Phil Redmond in the early 1980s. Co-productions with foreign broadcasters are also common, with BBC Scotland
BBC Scotland
BBC Scotland is a constituent part of the British Broadcasting Corporation, the publicly-funded broadcaster of the United Kingdom. It is, in effect, the national broadcaster for Scotland, having a considerable amount of autonomy from the BBC's London headquarters, and is run by the BBC Trust, who...
's successful 2004 fantasy drama Shoebox Zoo
Shoebox Zoo
Shoebox Zoo is a children's fantasy TV series made in a collaboration between BBC Scotland and various Canadian television companies. It is mostly live-action, but with CGI used for the animal figurines. It was first broadcast in 2004 by CBBC...
being made in collaboration with the Canadian company Blueprint Entertainment.
As of 2005, the BBC continues to broadcast children's drama, usually in the weekday afternoon CBBC slot, but also occasional Sunday early evening / late afternoon prestige productions such as the adaptation of Kidnapped (April 2005). As of July 2005, the Head of Children's Drama is Jon East.
See also
- BroadcastingBroadcastingBroadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...
- Timeline of the BBCTimeline of the BBC- 1920s :* 1922** 18 October - The British Broadcasting Company is formed.** 14 November - First BBC broadcasts from London .** 15 November - First broadcasts from Birmingham and Manchester ....
- List of BBC television programming
Further reading
- Georgina BornGeorgina BornGeorgina Born is a British academic, anthropologist and musician. As a musician she is known as Georgie Born, but in academic circles she does not use the diminutive form.-Background:...
(2004) Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC, Secker and Warburg, ISBN 0-436-20562-9, An anthropological study of the internal workings of several BBC departments (mainly) in the mid-1990s, including the Drama department.
External links
- Memorable TV Encyclopaedia of TV Shows
- The Man With the Flower in His Mouth the first British television play
- Screenonline
- British Film Institute