Rediscovering the Half-Hour Play: Experimental Half-Hours

The Forgotten Television Drama season, ‘Rediscovering the Half-Hour Play’, continues at BFI Southbank on Saturday 27 May 2023 with three plays that illustrate the ways in which the half-hour play has been utilised as a vehicle for experimentation. Following on from the showcase of work from the Regions in the previous session, it is perhaps […]

Rediscovering the Half-Hour Play: From the Regions

The Forgotten Television Drama season, ‘Rediscovering the Half-Hour Play’, continues at BFI Southbank on Saturday 20 May 2023 with a selection of plays from the Regions. The smaller ITV companies and regional BBC production centres did not always have the budgets to produce full-length plays or series but they produced a significant number of half-hour […]

Rediscovering the Half-Hour Play: Women Writers

The Forgotten Television Drama season, ‘Rediscovering the Half-Hour Play’, continues at BFI Southbank on Sunday 14 May 2023 with a session looking at the contribution made by women to the half-hour play. The achievement of women writers has been undervalued in television drama, but the half-hour play gave many women their first opportunity to write for […]

Rediscovering the Half-Hour Play: Early Work by Well-Known Writers

The Forgotten Television Drama season, ‘Rediscovering the Half-Hour Play’, continues at BFI Southbank on Sunday 7 May 2023 with a session looking at early work by three writers who went on to produce landmark television drama: John Mortimer, Dennis Potter and Andrew Davies. As with directors, producers and script editors the half-hour play provided a […]

Rediscovering the Half-Hour Play: Novice Directors

Our Half-Hour Play season at BFI Southbank gets under way on Wednesday 3 May with a session on Novice Directors. The half-hour play has always provided a great training ground for new and emerging talent. In this selection we feature three plays directed by figures who went on to enjoy great international success. Half-Hour Story: […]

Forgotten Television Drama – Rediscovering the Half-Hour Play

We are pleased to announce a new season of Forgotten Television Drama at BFI Soutbank in May 2023. Curated by Lez Cooke this new season, the first since Forgotten Black TV Drama in 2019, provides an opportunity to rediscover a lost form of TV drama: the half-hour television play. Once prevalent on British television, the […]

Play for Today’s Title Sequences

By Tom May During its run from 1970 until 1984, the one-off drama series Play for Today employed seven different title sequences. In my article for the Special Issue on ‘Play for Today at 50’ for the Journal of British Cinema and Television , I provide a historical analysis of these. Focusing on how the […]

Play for Today: The Top 21

This is the conclusion of a series of posts in which we have published selections of ‘top’ Plays for Today by a range of writers, researchers and media professionals. The brief was that such lists should not necessarily consist of what were considered to be the ‘best’ Plays for Today but could also include personal […]

My Plays for Today: Ken Trodd

This is the last in a series of posts in which we publish the ‘top’ Plays for Today identified by a range of writers, researchers and media professionals. The brief was that such lists should not necessarily consist of what were considered to be the ‘best’ Plays for Today but could also include personal favourites, or […]

My Ten Plays for Today: John Hill

This is the latest in a series of posts in which we publish the ‘top ten’ or ‘top five’ Plays for Today identified by a range of writers, researchers and media professionals. The brief was that such lists should not necessarily consist of what were considered to be the ‘best’ Plays for Today but could […]