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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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). […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
Forgotten Television Drama