Television play
Encyclopedia
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
ming genre in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, with a shorter span in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The genre was often associated with the social realist
Social realism
Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...
-influenced British drama style known as "kitchen sink realism
Kitchen sink realism
Kitchen sink realism is a term coined to describe a British cultural movement which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose 'heroes' usually could be described as angry young men...
", which depicted the social issues facing working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
families. 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....
(ABC
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...
, later Thames
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
, 1956–1974), 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...
(BBC
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...
, 1964–1970) and Play for Today
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...
(BBC, 1970–1984) received praise from critics for their quality. In the United States, television plays were seen mainly from 1948 to 1961, the period of live TV dramas which framed the Golden Age of Television
Golden Age of Television
The Golden Age of Television in the United States began sometime in the late 1940s and extended to the late 1950s or early 1960s.-Evolutions of drama on television:...
.
The term 'television play' is a partial misnomer. Although the earliest works were marked by television drama drawing on its theatrical roots, with live performances telecast from the television studio, a shift towards shooting on film occurred in the late 1970s, utilising techniques and working methods common in the cinema, but use of the term has persisted.
Armchair Theatre: 1956–1974
Armchair Theatre was a BritishUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
drama anthology series, which ran on 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 from 1956 until 1968 in its original form, and was intermittently resurrected in the following few years until 1973. The Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
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...
, who was ABC's Head of Drama from 1958 to 1962, turned Armchair Theatre into a vehicle for the generation of 'Angry Young Men
Angry young men
The "angry young men" were a group of mostly working and middle class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leading members included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis.The phrase was originally coined by the Royal Court Theatre's press officer to promote John...
' who tackled many difficult and controversial subjects in the realistic 'kitchen sink
Kitchen sink realism
Kitchen sink realism is a term coined to describe a British cultural movement which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose 'heroes' usually could be described as angry young men...
' style.
The programme was networked nationally on 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...
on Sunday evenings, and often drew large audiences. Over 450 plays were made and broadcast under the Armchair... banner from 1956 to 1980. Among the best-known plays were No Trams to Lime Street
No Trams to Lime Street
No Trams to Lime Street is a 1959 British television play, written by the Welsh playwright Alun Owen for the Armchair Theatre anthology series. Produced by the Associated British Corporation for transmission on the ITV network, the play was broadcast on 18 October 1959...
(1959) by Alun Owen
Alun Owen
Alun Owen was a British screenwriter, predominantly active in television, but best remembered by a wider audience for writing the screenplay of The Beatles' debut feature film A Hard Day's Night ....
, and A Night Out
A Night Out (play)
A Night Out is a play written by Harold Pinter in 1959.- Plot and overview :Albert Stokes, a loner in his late twenties lives with his emotionally-suffocating mother and works in an office...
(1960) by Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
.
Armchair Theatre was an important influence over later similar programmes such as the BBC
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...
's 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...
(1964–1970). This latter programme was initiated by 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...
as a deliberate attempt to echo the success of Armchair Theatre after he had moved to the BBC in 1963.
The Wednesday Play: 1964–1970
The Wednesday Play ran on BBC1BBC 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 1964 to 1970 originated by 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...
, by now the head of BBC Drama, with the policy of commissioned plays being "relevant to the lives of a mainstream popular audience." The goal was to find or commission work that "would be fast...telling an exciting narrative sparely" using material "that would more accurately reflect the experience of the audience." The series' producers, including James MacTaggart
James MacTaggart
James MacTaggart was a Scottish born television producer, director and writer.After an initial career as an actor, MacTaggart worked for BBC Radio in Scotland before moving into television, relocating to London around 1961...
, hired "fresh new writers", whose new ideas led to the teleplay garnering "the reputation for 'controversy' and 'outrage'." He also wanted to get away from the BBC's reputation of producing very 'safe' and unchallenging drama programmes, to produce something with more bite and vigour.
The series gained a reputation for presenting original contemporary social dramas, although adaptations from other sources also featured, and brought political issues to the attention of a mass audience. Director 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...
made two highly regarded plays for the series: an adaptation of Nell Dunn
Nell Dunn
-Early years:Dunn was born in London and educated at a convent, which she left at the age of fourteen. Although she came from an upper class background, in 1959 she moved to Battersea and made friends in the neighbourhood and worked for a time in a sweets factory...
's Up the Junction
Up the Junction
Up the Junction is a 1963 novel by Nell Dunn that depicts contemporary life in the industrial slums of Battersea near Clapham Junction.The book uses colloquial speech, and its portrayal of petty thieving, sexual encounters, births, deaths and back-street abortion provided a view of life that was...
(1965) and Cathy Come Home
Cathy Come Home
Cathy Come Home is a 1966 BBC television play by Jeremy Sandford, produced by Tony Garnett and directed by Ken Loach, about homelessness. An industry poll rated it as the best British television drama ever made. Filmed in a gritty, realistic drama documentary style, it was first broadcast on 16...
(1966), the documentary-style drama of a homeless young couple's attempt to keep their children. The Wednesday Play came to an end in 1970 when the transmission day changed, and the series morphed into Play for Today
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...
.
Play for Today: 1970–1984
Play for Today was a British televisionBritish 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...
anthology drama series, produced by the BBC
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...
and transmitted on 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...
from 1970 to 1984. Over 300 original plays, most between an hour and ninety minutes in length, were transmitted during the fourteen-year period the series aired. Play for Today featured gritty contemporary social realist dramas
Social realism
Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...
, historical pieces, fantasies, biopics and science-fiction. Most pieces were written directly for television, but there were also occasional adaptations of novels and stage plays.
Some well remembered plays from the series included Mike Leigh
Mike Leigh
Michael "Mike" Leigh, OBE is a British writer and director of film and theatre. He studied theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and studied further at the Camberwell School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design. He began as a theatre director and playwright in the mid 1960s...
's Nuts in May
Nuts in May
Nuts in May is a television film devised and directed by Mike Leigh, originally broadcast as part of the BBC's Play for Today series on 13 January 1976. It is the comical story of a nature-loving and rather self-righteous couple's exhausting battle to enjoy what they perceive to be the idyllic...
(1976) and Abigail's Party
Abigail's Party
Abigail's Party is a play for stage and television written and directed in 1977 by Mike Leigh. It is a suburban situation comedy of manners, and a satire on the aspirations and tastes of the new middle class that emerged in Britain in the 1970s...
(1977), which examined the dysfunctional interactions between neighbours and married couples. Some plays, such as Rumpole of the Bailey
Rumpole of the Bailey
Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer which starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an ageing London barrister who defends any and all clients...
, were later made into series.
Decline of genre: mid-1980s
Television plays became less common from the 1980s, because of a trend in 1980s television drama towards the television film which might receive limited cinema screenings before being shown on Channel 4Channel 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...
. Another factor was a greater reliance on continuing series of the police or medical genres in a growing multi-channel environment. Nonetheless, television plays were regarded as a benchmark of high-quality British television
Quality television
Quality television is a term used by television scholars, television critics, and broadcasting advocacy groups to describe a genre or style of television programming that they argue is of higher quality, due to its subject matter, style, or content...
drama.
Further reading
- Evans, Jeff. The Penguin TV Companion (1st ed.). LondonLondonLondon 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...
: Penguin BooksPenguin BooksPenguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
. 2001. ISBN 0-14-051467-8. - Vahimagi, Tise. British Television: An Illustrated Guide. OxfordOxfordThe city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
. Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
/ British Film InstituteBritish Film InstituteThe British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
. 1994. ISBN 0-19-818336-4.
External links
- Mark Duguid "The Television Play", BFI screenonline article