Brian Parker, who died on 8 December 2020, had a long and eclectic career in television, initially as an actor and then as director of a wide variety of television drama, including popular series such as the BBC’s Softly Softly (from 1966-71) and The Troubleshooters (1966-68), YorkshireTelevision’s Hadleigh (1969-71), Granada Television’s Crown Court (1973-77) and […]
The third screening in our season of Forgotten Black TV Drama at BFI Southbank, on Monday 11 February at 6.00pm, is a double bill of plays written by Barry Reckord who came to Britain from Jamaica in 1950 to study at Cambridge University and wrote plays for the theatre and television from the early 50s […]
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 […]
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). […]
I first met David Rose, who died on 26 January 2017 at the age of 92, at a conference celebrating the work of John McGrath, at Royal Holloway, University of London in April 2002. David had, of course, worked with John McGrath and Troy Kennedy Martin, who was also at the conference, on Z Cars […]
Philip Saville’s remarkable career as an actor, director, writer and producer in film and television spanned 60 years, his first credits as an actor dating from 1948, while his last credit as a director was 2009. He made his first appearances on stage and screen while studying at RADA and University College London, after which […]
When the film and television producer Barry Hanson died in June 2016 Christopher Hampton wrote an obituary for the Guardian which highlighted Hanson’s best-known productions: The Naked Civil Servant (1975) and The Long Good Friday (1980), referring also to Hanson’s work at the Royal Court Theatre and Hull Arts Centre in the late 1960s, but […]
Our ‘TV’s Forgotten Dramas’ season at BFI Southbank opens on 3 February with a screening of two plays from the Second City Firsts series, Alan Bleasdale’s Early to Bed (1975) and Ian McEwan’s Jack Flea’s Birthday Celebration (1976), followed by a panel discussion with Alison Steadman, former Commisioning Editor of Drama at Channel 4 Peter […]
