Learning on ScreenThe History of Forgotten Television Drama in the UK
Although it is impossible to be sure at this early stage what material the project will succeed in unearthing, preliminary research has identified a range of productions worthy of further investigation. These include: Granada Workshop (1957), five ‘experimental’ plays produced live (and not recorded) in Granada’s Manchester studios, which include the first television plays by John Hopkins, later responsible for many innovative plays at the BBC; Hilda Lessways (BBC, 1959), a six-part adaptation from Arnold Bennett’s Clayhanger trilogy, produced live (and not recorded) by BBC Midland, featuring Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins in their first television roles; Stewart Love’s The Sugar Cubes, produced in Belfast in 1961; They Don’t Make Summers Like They Used To (Anglia, 1963), one of the earliest TV dramas to be recorded on location, on video, directed by one of the relatively few women directors working in television in the 1960s; Trapped (STV, 1972), three plays produced in Glasgow by Scottish TV, two of which have survived; Second City Firsts (BBC2, 1973-78), a series of 53 half-hour plays produced by BBC English Regions Drama at Pebble Mill, barely half of which survive, which includes early work by Alan Bleasdale, Ian McEwan, Mary O’Malley and Willy Russell; and the BBC North West series, Sense of Place (1978-79), twelve filmed dramas that were only shown in the north west region, featuring little-known work by Bleasdale, Shelagh Delaney and Alan Garner.
Progress so far
Our Research Officer, Dr Billy Smart, has been busy compiling lists of regionally-produced dramas that will form the basis for our research and he has also spent several weeks at the BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham looking at Audience Research Reports in order to get a sense of how viewers responded to regionally-produced dramas. In February 2014 we held a regional symposium in Belfast to discuss some of the issues that the project raises regarding ‘forgotten’ television drama and the ‘canon’. In April 2014 I presented a paper at the BBC2 50th Anniversary conference on two early BBC2 series produced by John McGrath called Six (1964-65) and Five More (1966) which were shot on film and have not been seen for nearly fifty years. In June 2014 we will form a panel to present papers on forgotten English, Northern Irish and Scottish television dramas at the Screen conference in Glasgow. Future events will include a season of Forgotten Television Drama at BFI Southbank in 2015 and screenings of regionally-produced dramas at selected regional venues. Also in 2015 (22-24 April) we will hold a national conference on Forgotten Television Drama at Royal Holloway and we will publish a selection of articles from the conference in a special issue of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. We will also be writing articles on aspects of forgotten drama to be published in journals and on the project blog, and a book on ‘The History of Forgotten Television Drama in the UK’. We hope that there may also be a television programme on the subject of forgotten television drama.
We would be delighted to hear from anyone who has any information they would like to share with us about forgotten TV drama. For more information about the project please see the project website and blog:
http://forgottentelevisiondrama.wordpress.com
Lez Cooke
Senior Research Officer, Co-Investigator on ‘The History of Forgotten Television Drama in the UK’ (Lez.Cooke@rhul.ac.uk)
