Time was when the TV play, or 'teleplay', was the jewel in
television's crown. Strands like ABC's (later Thames') Armchair Theatre
(1956-74) and the BBC's The Wednesday Play (1964-70) and Play for
Today (1970-84) were held in high esteem by
broadcasters, writers and critics, and regularly attracted huge audiences.
During the 1980s and '90s, however, the form went into decline as broadcasters
favoured series or serials set in police, medical or period settings - the
dependable 'cops, docs and frocks'.
Early drama on television consisted largely of existing stage plays -
classical or contemporary - either performed live in the studio or filmed on
stage; the remainder consisted mostly of adaptations of classic literary sources. By the 1950s, as the medium's audience began to mushroom, the demand for original material grew. In 1951 the BBC, for the first time, established a unit of staff writers. Among its first intake was Nigel Kneale, who found himself at the centre of one of British TV's first major controversies with his adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954), starring Peter Cushing as Orwell's hapless hero, Winston Smith. The brutality of the torture sequences led to outrage and questions in parliament.
In the early days, broadcasts were live, and the inability to record
transmissions meant that if a repeat was called for, cast and crew had to be
reassembled for a second live performance. Because TV drama in this period was so dependent on stage actors, Sundays, when the theatres were closed, became its natural home: well into the 1960s, Armchair Theatre was still describing
itself as "your Sunday night dramatic entertainment".
A product of the early days of ITV - and a manifestation of the new channel's anxiety to demonstrate its cultural credentials - Armchair Theatre heralded a new kind of television drama. Sydney Newman, lured from Canada in 1958, took steps to
encourage new talent, and the series was soon home to young directors like
Philip Saville and Ted Kotcheff and writers like Alun Owen
('Lena, O My Lena', 1960; 'The Rose Affair', 1961), Clive Exton ('The
Trial of Dr Fancy', 1964) and Robert Muller ('Afternoon of a
Nymph', 1962), whose early works chimed with the 'angry young man' school then
so influential in film and theatre. In 1960, Armchair Theatre broadcast
Harold Pinter's first work for television, 'A Night Out'.
After Armchair Theatre suffered scheduling changes, Newman left
ABC in 1963 to become the BBC's Head of Drama. One of his early innovations was
The Wednesday Play, which likewise became a breeding ground for new talent, including directors Ken Loach and Alan Clarke, producers Tony Garnett,
Jimmy MacTaggart and Irene Shubik, and writers Jeremy Sandford, David Mercer,
Tony Parker and Dennis Potter. The series coincided with a push by programme
makers to persuade a reluctant BBC to let them leave the studio and film on the
streets.
'Up the Junction', directed by Loach from a script by Nell Dunn, drew critical acclaim, but this was nothing to that of 'Cathy Come Home' (1966), a
powerful drama about homelessness - shot largely on film using handheld 16mm cameras and directed by Loach from a script by Sandford - which was a sensation
in its day and has had a lasting impact: in 2000, it was voted Britain's
greatest ever television programme. Other standouts included Potter's 'Nigel
Barton' plays and Mercer's 'A Suitable Case for Treatment' (1965).
But one of the most innovative BBC dramas of the early 1960s was commissioned
not for Drama but Documentary. Peter Watkins' Culloden (1964) was
a powerful recreation of the massacre of the Jacobites at the hands of the
English in 1746, and the subsequent ransacking of the Highlands. Watkins
mixed dramatic reconstruction with pseudo-documentary techniques, including
'vox pop' interviews with soldiers and civilians. This blurring of drama and
documentary forms became one of the hallmarks of progressive television drama,
further explored in Watkins' next venture, The War Game. An explosive
evocation of a nuclear attack on Britain and its consequences, it was so
powerful that the BBC refused to show it for 20 years.
As the '70s began, The Wednesday Play moved to Thursday and became Play for
Today. Alongside now familiar names like Loach and Potter, Play for Today
introduced new names like Mike Leigh and Jack Rosenthal. Highlights included
Leigh's 'Nuts in May' (1976) and 'Abigail's Party' (1977), Sandford's 'Edna, the
Inebriate Woman' (1971), Rosenthal's 'Bar Mitzvah Boy' (1976), Potter's 'Blue
Remembered Hills' (1979) and John McGrath's passionate and very distinctive 'The
Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil' (1975). Roy Minton's bleak and angry
'Scum' suffered a similar fate to The War Game, and was eventually remade for
the big screen.
By the mid '70s, single drama had largely disappeared from ITV, although
there were a few exceptions, notably Philip Mackie's poignant The Naked Civil
Servant (1975) and Jack Rosenthal's witty The Knowledge (1979).
In the early 1980s, the genre went into decline with the end of Play for Today, hastened by its comparatively high cost and the decision of writers like Dennis Potter to embrace the relative freedom of a four or six-part serial format - what Potter described as the 'TV novel'. Many hoped that the arrival of Channel 4 in 1982, with its remit to cater to minority tastes, might revive the genre, and early offerings like Walter (1982) and its First
Love strand - which included the acclaimed 'P'Tang Yang Kipperbang'
and 'Those Glory, Glory Days' (both 1983) - seemed to confirm this. But the
channel's decision to move into feature film production, particularly after the
surprise success of My Beautiful Laundrette (d. Stephen Frears,
1985), appeared to sound the death knell for the TV play.
But the genre never quite went away. Although it has never had a long term slot since the Play for Today, and the word 'play' is about as
fashionable as wide collars and tank tops, the single drama still turns up in
the schedules, and still has the power to surprise and impress. Jimmy McGovern's
Hillsborough (1996), about the 1989 football stadium tragedy, demonstrated the unique impact the form can achieve when dealing with a specific issue, as did the more recent Gas Attack (Channel 4, 2001), about racist attacks on
Glasgow asylum seekers, and the award-winning Out of Control (BBC, 2002), a harrowing exposé of Britain's young offenders' institutions which was at least as powerful as 'Scum', a quarter-century earlier.
In the past, the TV play has spawned several successful series and serials: Callan (ITV, 1967-72), Rumpole of the Bailey (ITV, 1978-79; 1983;
1987-88; 1991-92), The Sweeney (ITV, 1975-78) and Boys from the
Blackstuff (BBC, 1983) all had their origins in one-offs. But it has been
more than a testing ground for other, 'higher' forms of drama. The long-running strands, particularly, gave opportunities to numerous young writers and directors new to television, while the 60-90 minute format allowed them to
develop a distinctive voice without the pressure of sustaining a multi-part
drama. Perhaps most importantly, the TV play, at its height, encompassed a huge
diversity of themes and styles, beyond the endlessly reworked formulae that have come to dominate mainstream TV drama today.
Mark Duguid
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