After the first season, which began on Channel 4’s opening night (2 November 1982) with the Central ITV production Walter (Stephen Frears), the strand moved from Wednesdays to Thursday evenings where it remained for most of the decade. There were two seasons a year (autumn and spring) until 1985; thereafter, the advent of Film on Four International (which featured some of the channel’s growing number of co-financed European projects) saw the domestic season settle in springtime, where it remained an annual fixture until the early 1990s, interspersed with more international co-productions and seasons of commissioned work from Alan Fountain’s Independent Film and Video Department. In the 1990s it reverted to autumn/winter and was re-scheduled briefly to Sundays (season 11, 1991) and later to Tuesdays (seasons 12 (1992) and 14 (1994)), though 9pm remained its standard transmission time.Although, as Senior Commissioning Editor David Rose admitted, season composition remained largely a matter of whatever was ready and available, the strand’s identity grew stronger from the mid-1980s, reflecting the international theatrical success of some of its early hits. This self-confidence is illustrated in the pre-publicity for the 1987 season in the press information pack:

Film on Four remains the flagship of Channel 4’s fiction output, and is now accepted internationally as a major force in British cinema, with over 15 films in production each year … Tonight, Channel 4 launches its strongest-ever season of Film on Four: all 14 films were commissioned or co-financed by Channel 4; all have been seen in the cinema, and they include some of the most successful British films – with audiences and critics alike – of recent years. [1]

This strong showing included My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985), Cal (Pat O’Connor, 1984), Company of Wolves (Neil Jordan, 1984), Another Country (Marek Kanievska, 1984), Insignificance (Nicolas Roeg, 1985), A Zed and Two Noughts (Peter Greenaway, 1985), Letter to Brezhnev (Chris Bernard, 1985) and Caravaggio (Derek Jarman, 1986). It gained the highest ever viewing figures in Film on Four’s history.

By this time patterns were beginning to emerge, not just in the rotation of new Film on Four seasons with Film on Four International and the Independent Film and Video Department’s offerings, but with an awareness of film’s increasingly prominent role in the broadcaster’s brand identity. Once a year the channel screened repeat seasons of Film on Four, usually under the titles of Film on Four Take Two and Film on Four Extra, and these seasons give a sense of what the channel considered to be its most popular and influential films. When David Rose retired in 1990 his departure was marked with a season of films he had commissioned in his previous role as Head of English Regions Drama at BBC Pebble Mill.

In 1992 Channel 4’s first decade was marked by Film on Four with its ‘most extensive  season ever with the  television  premieres  of 16  feature  films,  many of them following  enormous  cinema  success  such  as Mike Leigh’s  award-winning  Life is Sweet  (which  opens  the  season  on  15  September);  Riff-Raff,  Ken Leach’s glorious  saga  of life  on  a  building  site  which  was  voted  European  Film of the  Year for  1991;  two  features  written and  directed  by  David  Hare,  Paris by  Night  and  Strapless; and  Stormy  Monday, the  Newcastle-based  thriller which  propelled  Mike Figgis to Hollywood.  Two of the  films  are  receiving world  premieres,  Ross  Cramer’s God on  the  Rocks and  the  latest  comedy  from writer  Jack  Rosenthal, Bye Bye Baby’.[2]  By this time also, the importance of Film on Four to the channel’s identity was clear: ‘This November is not only the tenth birthday of Channel 4 but also one of its most distinctive and enduring creations, Film on Four, the first and now widely emulated initiative by British television to underwrite feature films for release in the cinema as well as for television’.[3]

In January 1993, the channel continued the anniversary celebrations with a repeat season titled ‘Film on Four’s Greatest Hits’. The press packs stated that ‘This season  features  13  of the  most popular  and  successful  Film on  Fours to have  emerged over the  past decade  which  proves how closely  Channel  4  has been  associated  with the  biggest  recent  successes  of the  British film industry’.[4]  The season was representative of the diversity of successful films the channel funded, ranging from the obvious – such as My Beautiful Laundrette – to the more obscure, like Michael Radford’s Another Time, Another Place (1983). Also included were John Boorman’s Hope and Glory (1987), Stephen Frears’ Prick up your Ears (1987), Mike Newell’s biopic of Ruth Ellis, Dance with a Stranger (1985), and Terence Davies’ poetic period evocation Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988).

The autumn 1995 season of Film on Four was publicised in the press pack as being ‘the strongest Film on Four Premiere season in the 13-year history of the channel and the strand’, presumably because it included the most commercially successful British film of all time, Four Weddings and Funeral, and Howards End, which was well represented at the Academy Awards in 1993.[5] In the 1990s, Film on Four seasons tend to be organised around one or two big commercial hits – The Crying Game in 1994, Four Weddings and Howards End in 1995, The Madness of King George in 1996 and Trainspotting in 1997. But the types of film shown in the seasons remain largely the same in this decade – a mixture of low budget contemporary British social realism, art-house fare, European co-productions, and the period drama/literary adaptation.

By the mid-1990s, as the international theatrical profile of Channel 4 films grew ever more prominent the broadcast television strand worked in different way, despite the consistency in the mix. It served not simply to provide domestic viewers with the chance to see an eclectic range of new films on television, it drew of the prior success of its ‘tent-pole’ theatrical titles – flagged as ‘premières’ – to promote the channel brand itself. In launching the autumn 1997 season (17), the press pack trumpeted: ‘Film on Four celebrates its 15th anniversary with an exceptionally strong Première season, starting in late autumn with Danny Boyle’s hugely successful Trainspotting, and continuing into the new year with Secrets and Lies and Beautiful Thing’.[6]

When, in 1998, FilmFour Ltd became a quasi-independent producer and distributor, and the specialist film channel FilmFour was launched for subscribing cineastes, the fundamental tie between the Channel 4’s original film commissions and its broadcast strand was severed for good.

Laura Mayne and Justin Smith