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1970s 1980s BBC English Regions Drama BBC North East BBC North West Experimental drama

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 […]

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1970s 1980s Women Writers

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 […]

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1960s 1970s 1980s Directors Half-Hour Play

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: […]

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1960s 1970s 1980s Actors Directors Half-Hour Play Writers

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 […]

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1980s Channel 4 David Rose

Channel 4 Drama, 1982-91

This list of Channel 4 drama was first compiled in 2007 when I was researching a paper on the first ten years of C4’s drama for a conference at BFI Southbank to mark Channel 4’s 25th anniversary. I amended the list in 2019 when I co-curated a season of Forgotten Black Television Drama at BFI […]

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1980s Channel 4 David Rose

Channel 4 Drama – The Early Years

  As we approach the 40th anniversary of Channel 4 on 2 November 2022 – an anniversary which is being marked by a two-day conference at BFI Southbank on 23-24 September – it seems timely to look again at the early years of Channel 4 in the 1980s when a remarkably diverse array of drama […]

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1970s 1980s BBC BBC drama Play For Today

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 […]

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1970s 1980s BBC Play For Today

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 […]

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1970s 1980s BBC Ken Trodd Play For Today Producers

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 […]

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1970s 1980s BBC drama Play For Today

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 […]