Learning on ScreenThe History of Forgotten Television Drama in the UK
Dr Lez Cooke provides an introduction to anew project on the history of forgotten television drama in the UK.
About the author: Dr Cooke has been researching and writing about television drama since 2000 when he had a sabbatical to research the history of British television drama while working as a Principal Lecturer in Media Studies at Staffordshire University. That research was published three years later: British Television Drama: A History (BFI, 2003). His other publications include A Sense of Place: Regional British Television Drama, 1956-82 (MUP, 2012). He also co-edited, with Robin Nelson, an issue of Critical Studies in Television on ‘Television Archives: Accessing TV History’ (5/2, Autumn 2010).
This 3-year AHRC-funded research project is investigating ‘forgotten’ television dramas produced in the UK between 1946, when television resumed after the Second World War, to the arrival of Channel Four in 1982, when a new era in broadcasting began. The project started in September 2013 and will run until September 2016. The research team consists of Professor John Hill, Dr Lez Cooke and Dr Billy Smart, based in the Department of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London.
The project is designed to uncover a ‘lost’ history of British television drama by looking at productions that are largely unknown, perhaps because they were transmitted live and not recorded, or because they were recorded but subsequently wiped, junked, mislaid or lost. It will also examine dramas that exist, either in part (e.g. as individual episodes within a series or serial) or complete, but which have rarely been seen, if at all, since their original transmission.
What may be defined as ‘forgotten’ is, of course, a key question for the project. It could be argued that nothing is completely forgotten because there will always be someone, somewhere, who remembers a particular ‘forgotten’ drama, although as time passes the chances of someone remembering a live transmission such as J.B. Priestley’s The Rose and Crown (BBC, 1946) diminish. A glance through the extremely useful guides to British television drama published by Kaleidoscope, listing every television drama produced in Britain since 1936, reveals many ‘forgotten’ dramas that have not been seen or written about since they were first transmitted and which are ripe for rediscovery. In some cases there may be a good reason why a drama has not been seen since its first screening, such as it being shown live (the first telerecordings date from 1953, but the vast majority of drama shown before 1960 was not recorded). It may also be that a production has been ‘forgotten’ because it was not networked, or because it was poorly received, leading to it being wiped or junked, or stashed away in an archive, never to be seen again.
Origins of the project
The project had its origins in research I carried out for a previous AHRC project, Cultures of British Television Drama, 1960-82, involving Manchester Metropolitan University, Royal Holloway and the University of Reading. My contribution to that project was to research regional British television drama, with a particular focus on Granada Television in Manchester and BBC English Regions Drama, based at Pebble Mill in Birmingham. The research was written up as a PhD and subsequently published as A Sense of Place: Regional British television drama, 1956-82 (Manchester University Press, 2012). While Granada and BBC English Regions Drama were responsible for some very well-known dramas, such as Coronation Street, Brideshead Revisited, Penda’s Fen and Boys from the Blackstuff, those ‘canonic’ dramas were only the tip of an iceberg. Both Granada and English Regions Drama produced literally dozens of dramas that are much less well-known, many of which exist in the archives but have been forgotten about.
I began to think about a follow-up project that would involve further exploration of the back catalogues of Granada and BBC English Regions Drama and also to extend the research to other regional BBC production centres, such as Bristol and Manchester, and other regional ITV companies, such as Anglia, Southern, Tyne Tees, Westward and Yorkshire. These ideas evolved further when I teamed up with Professor John Hill to prepare an AHRC application specifically on the history of ‘forgotten TV drama’. The scale of the project grew and the focus on the English regions was extended to include Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales as a means of assessing whether there might be a correlation between the ‘forgotten’ and the ‘regional’ in television drama.
Objectives
The specific objectives of the project are:
to uncover a ‘lost’ history of forgotten television drama in the UK
to produce an alternative history of television drama in the UK that will add to our knowledge of television history, challenge ideas concerning the television drama ‘canon’ and encourage awareness of the regional diversity of television drama production
to collaborate with regional and national archives in order to establish the existence and availability of regionally-produced dramas in regional and national archives and to make this drama better-known and more accessible (through publications, public screenings and special events)
to produce case-studies of dramas (either single plays, series or serials) from regional ITV companies and regional BBC production centres in order to examine more closely the production, scheduling, reception and archiving of regionally-produced drama
to record interviews with selected production personnel who worked on regionally produced dramas that have since been ‘forgotten’.
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)
