Adaptations of Charles Dickens on British television 1948-2023: A Chronology

A new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations starts at nine o’clock on BBC One tonight. This will be the seventh time that the novel has been serialized for British television, with previous versions in 1959, 1967, 1981, 1991, 1999 and 2011 (all BBC productions apart from HTV/ ITV in 1991). One interesting feature of […]

Philip Martin (1938-2020) Part Three: Peter Ansorge on script editing Gangsters (BBC 1976-78), plus contributions from David Edgar and David Rudkin.

 Introduction by Tom May  While Philip Martin’s television drama work might be justifiably termed as non-naturalistic, experimental, postmodernism or popular modernism, his can also simply be described as a truly original voice.[1]   I only encountered Philip near the end of his well-lived life, via the technological apparatus of Zoom I conducted two interviews in the summer […]

Philip Martin (1938-2020) Part One: Philip Martin on Gangsters (BBC Play for Today, 1975, and series, 1976-78)

Philip Martin, who died last December, was the author of two Play for Todays – Gangsters (1975, which subsequently spun off into two BBC series, 1976-78) and The Remainder Man (1982). Forgotten Television Drama pays tribute by publishing an article in three parts, drawn from extensive interviews with Martin conducted by Tom May last year. […]