Categories
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 […]

Categories
1970s Actors Alan Sharp BBC drama Irene Shubik Play For Today Ray Davies Writers

Play for Today: The Long Distance Piano Player

By Simon Farquhar Written by Alan Sharp, produced by Irene Shubik and directed by Philip Saville. Broadcast on BBC1 at 9.20pm on 15th October 1970. ‘Men with Something to Say,’ was the fanfare Radio Times headline in the week that BBC 1 launched Play for Today. Alan Sharp, John Osborne, Dennis Potter, Clive Exton and […]

Categories
1970s Actors BBC David Edgar Patti Love Play For Today Writers

Play for Today: Baby Love

By Tom May Written by David Edgar, directed by Barry Davis and produced by Kenith Trodd. Broadcast on BBC1 at 9.25pm on Thursday 7 November 1974 David Edgar’s Baby Love is a significant addition to the Play for Today strand; it is an edgy, archetypally ‘underdog’-centred drama that addresses difficult, emotive issues. Directed by Barry […]

Categories
1960s 1970s 1980s Actors BBC BBC Scotland Billy Smart Douglas Camfield Maurice Roëves Obituary Sutherland's Law

Maurice Roëves (1937-2020)

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 […]

Categories
1970s Actors Barry Hanson BBC English Regions Drama Brian Parker David Halliwell David Rose Joyce Hawkins Play For Today Regional Drama

Play for Today: Steps Back

Written by David Halliwell, directed by Brian Parker and produced by David Rose. Broadcast on BBC1 at 9.25pm on Monday 14 May 1973 Steps Back was the second Play for Today by David Halliwell, broadcast six months after Triple Exposure (6 November 1972), his only other Play for Today. Halliwell was, and probably still is, […]

Categories
1970s 1980s Actors BBC BBC drama Conferences Events John Hill Phil Redmond School drama

40 years of Grange Hill

Set in a London comprehensive school, Grange Hill was first broadcast on 8 February 1978. Although initially conceived as a nine-part series, the programme proved to be so popular that it carried on until 2008. It also earned a reputation for its realism and willingness to tackle difficult subjects – from bullying and truancy to […]

Categories
1970s Actors BBC English Regions Drama BBC Pebble Mill Directors Events Interviews Producers Regional Drama Second City Firsts

Second City Firsts – Panel Discussion

Second City Firsts (BBC2, 1973-78) Panel Discussion with Philip Jackson (PJ), Tara Prem (TP), Philip Saville (PS) and Jack Shepherd (JS) chaired by Lez Cooke (LC) Television Drama: The Forgotten, the Lost and the Neglected Conference Royal Holloway, University of London 23 April 2015 LC: Welcome to this session on Second City Firsts (BBC2, 1973-78). […]

Categories
1970s Actors BBC Billy Smart Cedric Messina Directors Edward Fox Events John Galsworthy Loyalties Play of the Month Rudolph Cartier

‘Forgotten Television Dramas 2’ at BFI Southbank: ‘Play of the Month: Loyalties’ (BBC 1976)

Our second ‘Forgotten Television Dramas’ season concludes at 3.15 on Sunday afternoon with a screening of John Galsworthy’s ‘Loyalties’, unseen since 1976. The screening will be introduced by actor Edward Fox. Along with his many film and theatre credits over the last fifty years, two of Edward’s television appearances made soon after Loyalties demonstrate his […]

Categories
1970s Actors Arthur Hopcraft BFI David Edgar Directors Events Forgotten Television Drama Granada Television John Hill Writers

‘Forgotten Dramas 2’ at BFI Southbank: ‘The Eagle Has Landed’ and ‘The Nearly Man’

Our Forgotten Dramas season continues on Monday 13 February at 6.20 pm in NFT2 with a double bill of 1970s political dramas, made by Granada, at which we will be very pleased to welcome the director of The Nearly Man, John Irvin, and the script-editor of The Eagle Has Landed, Jonathan Powell.  The Eagle Has […]

Categories
1970s Actors BBC Billy Smart Cedric Messina Directors Geraldine McEwan Play of the Month The Magistrate

Finding a fragment of a lost television drama: The last seven minutes of ‘Play of the Month: The Magistrate’ (BBC1 20 December 1972)

Researching old television drama is often an archaeological process. When programmes don’t survive, a trained historian and theorist can sometimes pick up (and hopefully convey) some idea of what they might have been like through secondary sources.