A new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations starts at nine o’clock on BBC One tonight. This will be the seventh time that the novel has been serialized for British television, with previous versions in 1959, 1967, 1981, 1991, 1999 and 2011 (all BBC productions apart from HTV/ ITV in 1991). One interesting feature of […]
Fay Weldon, who died on Wednesday, was an exceptionally prolific writer of television drama up until the end of the last century. Two programmes have regularly been mentioned in the coverage of her life – her work on Upstairs, Downstairs (LWT/ ITV 1971-75), including writing the first episode, and her sensational serial adaptation of her […]
Introduction by Tom May While Philip Martin’s television drama work might be justifiably termed as non-naturalistic, experimental, postmodernism or popular modernism, his can also simply be described as a truly original voice.[1] I only encountered Philip near the end of his well-lived life, via the technological apparatus of Zoom I conducted two interviews in the summer […]
Philip Martin, who died last December, was the author of two Play for Todays – Gangsters (1975, which subsequently spun off into two BBC series, 1976-78) and The Remainder Man (1982). Forgotten Television Drama pays tribute by publishing an article in three parts, drawn from extensive interviews with Martin conducted by Tom May last year. […]
Philip Martin, who died last December, was the author of two Play for Todays – Gangsters (1975, which subsequently spun off into two BBC series, 1976-78) and The Remainder Man (1982). Forgotten Television Drama pays tribute by publishing an article in three parts, drawn from extensive interviews with Martin conducted by Tom May last year. […]
I had the good fortune to interview the actor Maurice Roëves (who has died at the age of 83) on two occasions. Maurice had an extraordinarily prolific 55-year career in film, theatre and especially television, the span and range of which (“beginning with an episode of Doctor Finlay’s Casebook in 1966 and concluding with a […]
Terrance Dicks (1935-2019) will forever be synonymous with Doctor Who (BBC 1963-89, 1996, 2005-present) for which he was script editor from 1968-74, instrumental in the introduction of Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, the earthbound military UNIT storylines and the creation of the Master. After departing as script editor he continued writing for Doctor Who over […]
The eighth title in our ‘Forgotten TV Drama’ range has been announced. For Maddie With Love (ATV 1980) is released by Network on April 15. Hard-hitting and unsentimental, For Maddie With Love is the story of a woman who knows she is dying and, in doing so, rediscovers the love she has for her husband […]
Our ‘Drama She Wrote’ season at BFI Southbank concludes on Monday with an 8.40 screening of two 1970s plays from BBC Birmingham. The BBC Birmingham connection has been an unexpected occurence as, despite being catalogued, our billed second play (Jill Laurimore’s 1973 ATV drama Family Tree) turned out not to survive in the ITV archive! The […]
Our ‘Drama She Wrote’ season of neglected TV plays by women writers continues at BFI Southbank at 3.20 on Saturday 6 October with two 1970s ITV dramas about fathers and daughters (featuring a host of familiar TV faces including June Brown, Leslie Dwyer, Cheryl Hall, Nigel Havers, Jane Wymark and Pauline Yates). Rooms (Thames/ ITV […]
Forgotten Television Drama