British Television Drama

This work discusses the varied history of British television drama from its beginnings on the BBC in the 1930s and 40s to its position at the beginning of the 21st century and the multi-channel digital era.

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For the first time in one volume, the varied history of British television drama is considered from its beginnings on the BBC in the 1930s and 1940s to its position at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as television enters a multi-channel digital era. This book examines the significant developments during sixty years of British television drama, including: live television drama before the 1960s, including the legendary Nineteen Eighty-Four, the important shift to pre-recorded and filmed drama in the 1960s and 1970s, the impact of ITV's populist drama series (Emergency - Ward Ten, Coronation Street) and single play strands like Armchair Theatre, the new wave of 1960s BBC drama (including the ground-breaking The Wednesday Play), ITV telefantasies of the 1960s (The Avengers, The Prisoner), the controversial drama-documentaries of the 1960s and 1970s (The War Game, Law and Order), the responses to Thatcherism in the 1980s (Boys from the Blackstuff, Edge of Darkness), the heritage dramas of the 1980s and 1990s (from Brideshead Revisited to Pride and Prejudice) and concluding with stylish 1990s dramas such as Queer as Folk, Between the Lines, This Life and Cold Feet.
The book is organised chronologically in six chapters, each of which contains a detailed case study of one seminal drama, and concludes with an assessment of the changes in British television drama over its eventful history, examining the accusation that there has been a decline in the production of radical and progressive drama in the last twenty years. Of particular relevance to students of television drama this accessible history will be of value to anyone interested in the rich history of British television and modern drama.