Nigel Kneale: A Centenary Celebration

What a thrill to be at the Picturehouse Cinema in Crouch End yesterday, in the shadow of Alexandra Palace, for the centenary celebration of writer Thomas Nigel Kneale, born 28 April 1922 - and not 18 April as some parts of the internet insist. This point was made by MC Toby Hadoke in his opening introduction to the day's festivities. And that, I think, was the theme of the day: to get this right. All credit to everyone involved.

The first panel, "Nigel Kneale, Quatermass and the BBC", was chaired by Kneale biographer Andy Murray and featured Dick Fiddy from the BFI, Toby Hadoke and comedian Johnny Mains - the latter daring to admit that he doesn't much like Doctor Who. Kneale famously hated that series, but many of us got into Kneale's work via Doctor Who. I've been trying to puzzle out why, and think a lot of fandom - of anything - is trying to recapture the strong feelings of our past. For those thrilled and terrified by Doctor Who as kids, Kneale offers a grown-up version of those feelings, and - since he was so often borrowed from - an understanding of how they were kindled.

The panel was a good, breezy introduction to Kneale and the impact of his work on television in the 1950s, though a lot of the ground here was familiar to me from Toby's recent Radio 4 Extra programme, Remembering Nigel Kneale, and Cambridge Festival's "Televising the future: Nineteen Eighty-Four and the imagination of Nigel Kneale". I'd also just read Andrew Pixley's 1986 interview with Kneale.

Next up, we watched the extraordinary opening episode of The Quatermass Experiment from 1953 (available on the Quatermass Collection DVD set). It's a while since I'd last seen this, and I'd forgotten how blurry, clunky and techbnobabble-heavy its early scenes are as we watch serious, posh scientists at their desks in a tracking control room. But that soon gives way to the extraordinary sight of a house half-demolished by the world's first crewed space rocket. We see before the characters on screen that there's an old woman trapped in the exposed upstairs; she's played by Katie Johnson who two years later was the similarly dotty Mrs Wilberforce in The Ladykillers, only without her scene-stealing cat. It's just one of a number of well-observed comic characters enlivening the serious horror plot, adding a touch of realism - and fun - to the fantasy.

Having read The Intimate Screen by Jason Jacobs, I can understand why The Quatermass Experiment made such an impact: an original drama for television, rather than an adaptation of a stage play or book, that makes full use of the strengths of the medium to conjure an intimately creepy atmosphere. It's so busy, so populous, so nakedly ambitious - and all broadcast live. All these years later, it is thrilling. No wonder it stuck so powerfully with those who saw it at the time. As several panelists said, Quatermass was a thing that terrified our parents, that we first heard about from them decades afterwards - a folk memory of horror. (My mum says the girls at her school would make a lot of noise at the start of each episode, so the grown-ups in charge would not hear the warning of it not being suitable...)

Next up was Tom Baker in a bookish office to narrate Kneale's short story "The Photograph", in a 1978  episode of Late Night Story - a sort of grown-up Jackanory. It's an unsettling story about a sick child, but I was mostly struck by how little Baker blinked throughout what seemed to be a single take (and presumably involved him reading the story off an autocue). 

Then Douglas Weir discussed the the new restoration of Nineteen Eighty Four (1954). The audience gasped at a particular example showing Peter Cushing's Winston Smith walking through Hampstead. The version screened by BBC Four a few years ago had Cushing moving through what looked like silver fog; the restored version shows him moving between trees, individual leaves crisp and clear. (I'm on the new Blu-ray release, by the way, just about audible asking Toby Hadoke and Andy Murray the question about Kneale's never-made scripts.)

Next was the panel "From Taskerlands to Ringstone Round – Nigel Kneale in the 70s", chaired by Howard David Ingham with panelists William Fowler, Una McCormack and Andrew Screen. I've been guilty of overlooking Kneale's 1970s output - The Stone Tape (1972), which I'd at least seen, and the anthology series Beasts (1976), which I haven't yet. That led into a screening of Murrain, Kneale's contribution to a 1975 anthology, Against the Crowd (included on the DVD release of Beasts).

David Simeon - who sadly couldn't be at yesterday's event - plays a vet called to a small village by a farmer played by Bernard Lee from the James Bond films. The farmer has some sick pigs and his water supply has dried up, plus a young boy in the village has had something like flu for a month. The farmer and the villagers think this all the work of a local woman, played by Una Brandon-Jones (who I recognised at once as Mrs Parkin in Withnail & I). The villagers want the vet's help in dealing with her; he's determined to champion science over superstition, insisting that "We can't go back" to the old ways. It's a compelling piece: real, sometimes funny and increasingly sinister. With a start, I recognised some of the scenery: the Curious British Telly site says Murrain was recorded in Wildboarclough, not far from where I now live. A local film for this local person, indeed.

Then Matthew Sweet chaired a panel on "Kneale on Film" with panelists Jon Dear, Kim Newman and Vic Pratt. This covered a lot of stuff I didn't know about: Kneale's work on the movie version of stage plays Look Back in Anger (1959) and The Entertainer (1960), and the mutiny-at-sea story HMS Defiant (1962) - all a long way from the weird-thriller stuff. Because of that, I'd not been much interested; the panel made me want to look them out and understand the weird stuff in context. I want, too, to see his last work, a 1997 episode of legal drama Kavanagh QC.

A clip from the movie version of The Quatermass Xperiment ((1955) showed infected astronaut Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth) stalk a Little Girl (Jane Asher), who offers it imaginary cake. Asher then joined us to discuss this early role and her later, more prominent part in The Stone Tape (1972) - which was then shown in full. I'd seen this before, but it was fascinating to see beside Nimbos, who didn't know what was coming, and in the context of the day's other offering. Again what struck me was how funny it was, especially the visual gag of Reginald Marsh's hands being outlandish colours as he experiments with dyes. Toby Hadoke pointed out that Neil Wilson appears as a salt-of-the-earth security guard having been seen as a salt-of-the-earth policeman in The Quatermass Experiment, so I wonder how much Kneale consciously used the same actors over the years.

This was followed by a live reading of Kneale's 1952 radio play, You Must Listen. Mark Gatiss played the lawyer who has a new telephone installed in his office, only to find he can hear a young woman talking sauce to an unheard lover. Again, it's very funny, the lawyer embarrassed and outraged but the telephone staff all keen to listen in on this rude stuff. And then, as before, it becomes ever more sinister as we realise this saucy woman is an echo from the past. In that sense, it dovetails with The Stone Tape from 20 years later, and with elements of the other stuff we'd seen. How well chosen all these examples were; we could see we were engaged in an experiment ourselves, to trace the resonant echoes of Kneale.

By this time Nimbos and I were flagging as the short breaks between screenings had not been long enough for us to eat any food, and I was getting a bit wobbly. So we sadly missed the panel on “'The inventor of modern television': Kneale’s influences and Legacy" chaired by Jennifer Wallis with panelists Stephen Gallagher, Mark Gatiss, Andy Murray and Adam Scovell. The day ended with a screening of the movie Quatermass & The Pit (1967), and then much natter in the bar.

It was all a bit overwhelming. There was the sheer amount of stuff covered and shown, but also the way the selection encouraged us to tease out shared themes, techniques, stylistics. Then there was the visceral thrill of being in company, catching up with so many friends. I had a long drive home today, passing close to Wildboarclough and its Murrain, brain abuzz from things learned and spotted and argued. That's the thing about Kneale, who died in 2006, and the stuff he wrote that was largely screened long before I was born... 

It is potent. It is alive.

The Far Country, by Nevil Shute

This is a very odd love letter to Australia, begun soon after the author emigrated there in the summer of 1950 and published in 1952. I borrowed my mum's battered, second-hand first edition, long missing the original dust jacket and relinquishing its spine as I read it.

In Australia, sheep farmer Jack Dorman finally pays off decades of debt and - despite a large tax bill to come - realises he is now wealthy. His wife Jane is worried about her elderly Aunt Ethel back in England, who she's not seen in 32 years (when Ethel was the sole member of Jane's family to back her relationship with Jack). Jane intuits that Ethel is short of money, so the Dormans, who've regularly sent Ethel letters and cake mix, now send her £500.

Things are far worse than they could imagine, and Ethel is starving to death in her nice house in Ealing, having sold most of her furniture and anything else of value from her days abroad. Ethel's granddaughter, Jennifer Morton, finds her in this state and cares for the old woman in her last days. But the book is pretty blunt about what has done for this poor woman: having once lived a rather grand life in Petersfield and then as a dutiful wife of empire out in Burma, she's been left destitute and unnoticed by, er, the new National Health Service. The independence of India has also meant the end of her pension. It's as if no one was neglected before the NHS; that before the welfare state there was no need of welfare. Or perhaps there's something more sinister: that if only we still had an empire and people knew their place, this sort of thing wouldn't happen to someone of her class.

The war is also to blame, but the privations suffered in England - which are ever increasing, long after the end of the war - seem to be the fault of the post-war government so far as the author is concerned. Jennifer works for a ministry, and we're told,

"It was manifestly impossible for anyone who derided the Socialistic ideal to progress very far in the public service; if a young man aimed at promotion in her office he felt it necessary to declare a firm, almost a religious, belief in the principles of Socialism." (p. 91)

It's quite a claim, but really it's Shute who is being unfairly partisan. The sense is of an old, glorious England now lost to the awful unfairness of egalitarianism. Dying, Ethel tells Jennifer,

"It's not as if we were extravagant, Geoffrey and I. It's been a change that nobody could fight against, this going down and down. I've had such terrible thoughts for you, Jenny, that it would go on going down and down and when you are as old as I am ... you'll think how very rich you were when you were young." (p. 71)

When the old woman dies, Jennifer's father goes through her things and finds a telling document - a recipe for a cake given to Ethel on her wedding day.

"What a world to live in, and how ill they must have been! His eyes ran back to the ingredients. Two pounds of Jersey butter... eight weeks' ration for one person. The egg ration for one person for four months... Currants and sultanas in those quantities; mixed peel, that he had not seen for years. Half a pint of brandy, so plentiful that you could put half a pint into a cake, and think nothing of it. ... He had eaten such cakes when he was a young man before the war of 1914, but now he could hardly remember what a cake like that would taste like." (p. 77)

The irony, of course, is that this woman starved to death, with only the cake mix to sustain her.

Ethel leaves her new money to Jennifer, making the girl promise to use it to visit Jane in Australia, and perhaps look for a better life there - like the one Ethel once knew in England. The doctor who treated Ethel is also leaving the country for a better life but Jennifer has reservations about leaving her elderly parents. Others suggest Australia will "probably be all desert and black people" (p. 95), or make an economic case for the value of migrants as an investment made by a particular country.

"For eighteen years somebody in this country fed you and clothed you and educated you before you made any money, before you started earning. Say you cost an average two quid a week for that eighteen years. You've cost England close on two thousand pounds to produce. ... Suppose you go off to Canada. You're an asset worth two thousand quid that England gives to Canada as a free gift. If a hundred thousand like you were to go each year, it'ld be like England giving Canada a subsidy of two hundred million pounds a year. It's got to be thought about, this emigration." (p. 89)

Despite this, Jennifer sets off to Australia for a temporary visit, certain she will then return home. At 24, she has never eaten grilled steak until boarding the ship - which comes as a great surprise to the Australians (p. 135). She in turn thinks very highly of their modest work in farming and producing food. A lot is made of the virtue of hard graft. The Dorman's have become wealthy after 32 years of toil, and repeatedly say they're glad that wool prices will soon fall so that their children don't end up too indolent. At the end of the book, Jennifer is appalled by a man visiting a doctor in the NHS wants,

"medicine and a certificate exempting him from work because he couldn't wake up in the morning." (p. 314)

Yet on the very same page, Jennifer organises things so that the doctor in question can have more lunches and dinners away from his patients, helping him to bunk off. And then,

"She was staggered to find out how much her mother's illnesses had cost, how much her father had been paying out in life insurance premiums for her security (pp. 314-5)

- presumably under the old, unjust system that the NHS replaced.

In Australia, there is no desert and there are no aboriginal people, though migrants from eastern Europe are treated as a lower order. Jennifer is welcomed by the Dormans, and cannot persuade their young daughter that a trip to England will only be a disappointment. Then there's a serious accident and no doctor available to help two men desperately in need. Carl Zlinter, a Czech immigrant working the land, was a doctor in his own country before serving with the Nazis, but he is not allowed to practice in Australia without retraining for three years. With the men in desperate peril, Jennifer assists Zlinter in carrying out highly risky operations to save the two men's lives, but one of them doesn't survive.

As an inquest looks into this and threatens to deport Zlinter, he gets closer to Jennifer, and is also haunted by the discovery of a gravestone bearing his own name and place of origin. It's for a man who died some decades previously, on the cusp of living memory. Zlinter is soon on the trail of the surviving, elderly people who might have known his namesake and can shed light on his story...

This particularly struck a chord because I'm researching the life of David Whitaker, who in 1971 adapted this novel for Australian TV (broadcast on ABC in 1972). Just as with Zlinter, I've been tracking down surviving paperwork and trying to speak to now-elderly people who might remember my man. There are many parallels between The Far Country and Whitaker's life. In 1950, he was living with his family in Ealing, streets away from the fictional address of Aunt Ethel. The house may also have had relics from India, where Whitaker's mother was born. The age difference between Zlinter and Jennifer is similar to that between Whitaker and his first wife June Barry. As with Jennifer, June Barry returned to Australia leaving Whitaker to work in Australia, with a shadow over their future together...

In fact, for all Jennifer clearly falls for Australia, there is plenty here to count against moving to this far country. There's the boredom of life on the farms, especially for the lone women keeping homes there. There's palpable danger given the lack of qualified doctors and the frequent risks of fire. There's also the philistine culture. Zlinter isn't the only one whose skills are overlooked in Australia. He buys a painting of Jennifer from Stanislaus Shulkin, a plate layer on the railway line who was once professor of artistic studies at the University of Kaunas. 

Perhaps there's something here of the author: an engineer who also wrote novels, at once dirty-handed grafter and lofty man of arts. But surely it can't be a virtue to overlook the talents of Zlinter and Shulkin; it's squandering the investment, just as Shute argued before.

For all Australia offers a future to those prepared to work, Zlinter and Jennifer's happiness is secured by an inheritance that comes quite by chance and to which they're not entitled, requiring Zlinter to transact business with some slightly dodgy characters. He and Jennifer agree to keep the details secret - implicitly because they know that this is wrong. It's a necessary cheat because (just as with the Dormans), the rewards take a long time to win if they're to come at all. There are plenty of characters for whom things haven't worked out.

One reading of all this might be that Shute sets up an initial prejudice - bad old England against verdant, rich Australia - which he then proceeds to complicate and pick at, resulting in a richer, more complex portrait. But if so, the case is made in bad faith and the result is a very odd book.

• Me on Requiem for a Wren, by Nevil Shute

Sci-fi Bulletin interview re Mary Whitehouse

Samira and I were interviewed by Paul Simpson at Sci-fi Bulletin about our recent Radio 4 documentary, Disgusted, Mary Whitehouse. 

• Archive on Four: Interview: Samira Ahmed and Simon Guerrier
• Our documentary: Disgusted, Mary Whitehouse

This week, BBC Four has also broadcast a very good two-part TV documentary on the same subject, Banned! The Mary Whitehouse Story. Having spent weeks going through the archives looking for good material, it's interesting to see which bits of old footage they've used - and the different choices / potential afforded by telling a story visually.

A Survey of Television, by Stuart Hood

I mentioned Stuart Hood in my last post because I recently saw him in an episode of the BBC's Talkback from 7 November 1967, with six members of the public - including Mary Whitehouse - responding to this passage from his then recently published book:

"If one works in television one most reconcile oneself to the fact that the bulk of audience reaction is from cranks, from the unstable, the hysterical and sick." (p. 38)

For all the caustic tone, Hood's point was that those making television for a mass popular audience really need a sense of that audience's responses, but the means of gauging a reaction are limited. Viewing figures, audience surveys and correspondence can rarely explain the success or otherwise of a programme, let alone offer practical advice on how to improve. Programme makers are more often led by instinct. Committees of public opinion only resulted in bland television no one wanted to watch.

"Committees are uncreative." (p. 49)

Hood was Controller of BBC Television between 1961 and 1964, then moved to the ITV franchise Rediffusion. His survey of the medium is full of fascinating detail and more of that caustic wit. 

"Scottish Television serves the 4 million people of the Scottish industrial belt, which contains - to judge by the programmes they watch - the most uncritical body of viewers in the British Isles." (p. 25).

On the facts, it's interesting to read that there were, he thought in 1967, 

"some one hundred and ten countries with television service (p. 4),

up from four in 1946. He details how these were, at the time of writing, organised in groups: the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) with associate members from the American networks, Australia and South Africa plus new nations such as Malawi, Chad and Congo; its mirror opposite International Radio and Television Organisation (OIRT) comprising East European countries, Cuba, the Republic of Mali, the Korean People's Republic, China, the United Arab Emirates and the People's Democratic Republic of Vietnam; the Asian Broadcasting Union (ABU); the African Radio and Television Organisation (URNTA). Seeing the members helped me understand why, for example, Doctor Who sold to particular countries and not to others.

Sales could also be affected by cultural differences.

"Maigret was judged unacceptable by the [American] networks not because of the English accents (although they are a stumbling block) nor because of the foreign setting, but because of little incidents which betrayed a different set of television mores. Thus when Maigret had occasion to cross-examine a girl in a maison de passe it was found surprising that no moral attitude was taken towards the little tart. Nymphomania, lesbianism, drug addiction were touched on and accepted as facts of life, neither swept under the carpet nor magnified out of proportion in the context of the plot. Added to all these was the incident in which Maigret and Lucas stood in a courtyard, saw a light come on in a window, watched and waited to be rewarded by hearing the cistern of a lavatory flush." (p. 139)

Hood is even more withering of programmes that do sell to the US: he thought The Saint and The Avengers "anodyne" mid-Atlantic fare, the "triumph" of selling to the American networks,

“only slightly tarnished by the fact that these series have usually been used as cheap summer replacements.” (p. 140)

He's even less impressed by programmes coming the other way: Batman is "subliterate" (p. 160).

For all he is withering about shows he clearly doesn't like, he's good on the way that the structure, tone and content of programmes is set by the structures imposed on television by technology, politics and other forces. He begins with the physics of television itself and the varying methods of producing a moving picture at a distance, and how that dictated form. During the General Strike of 1926, the Government wished to "commandeer the BBC as an instrument of propaganda", which John Reith fiercely opposed.

"His victory was one of the crucial moments in the history of British broadcasting. Both BBC and ITV benefit from his stand to this day." (p. 168)

Then, of Hood's own time at the BBC, there's the way subtle differences between the Royal Charter and the Television Act 1954 dictated the output of the BBC and ITV respectively. Under the Act, the Independent Television Authority - overseeing ITV - had to ensure that,

"nothing is included in the programmes [of an ITV franchise] which offends against good taste or decency (a question-begging phrase) or is likely to encourage or incite crime or lead to disorder or to be offensive to public feeling or which contains any offensive representation of or reference to a living person." (p. 20)

The last part effectively meant that ITV could not engage in the satire craze of the early 1960s: the BBC could screen That Was The Week That Was; on ITV, "it would have been a breach of the Act."

Hood mentions TW3 eight times in the book, suggesting his own reckoning of its significance. There are multiple entries for police series Maigret and business drama The Plane Makers, and for sitcoms Steptoe and Son and Till Death Us Do Part. Surprisingly, there is no mention of other innovative and successful programmes created in Hood's time as Controller: Doctor Who, Top of the Pops and Play School. Perhaps he didn't think much of them; perhaps their significance only became clear when they'd been running for decades.

Hood has plenty to say about sitcoms. In his view, 

"the medium [of television] is a voracious consumer of talent and turns. A comic who might in the [music or variety] halls hope to maintain himself with a polished routine changing little over the years, embellished a little, spiced with topicality, finds that his material is used up in the course of a couple of television appearances. The comic requires a team of writers to supply him with gags, and invention" (p. 152)

The sitcom is a vehicle to enable this: effectively providing the comic performer with a structure for new material based on a familiar form. But whereas drama is innovative, sometimes uncomfortable or shocking, sitcom is part of a type of television altogether more safe. 

"Light entertainment is the most conservative department of television.” (p. 151)

He defines light entertainment as, 

“comedy, quiz games, light musical productions, pop programmes, outside broadcasts from night clubs and variety theatres. Its traditions are mainly drawn from the halls or from radio. They have been adopted television presentation but fundamentally the sequence of song, dance, spot comedian is unchanged.” (ibid)

Perhaps that's why he doesn't think Top of the Pops worthy of a mention. But I also think it's to do with his politics. He had been a member of the Communist Party and was later a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party, and Hood reviewed Asa Briggs' history of the BBC of this period for International Socialism. At the beginning of his Survey of Television, he suggests why a country such as apartheid South Africa may have been slow to embrace TV:

“Television is a great educator. Besides who knows what remarks the coloured citizens of the Republic might feel free to make in the privacy of their homes about the white people on the screen?”  (p. 5)

He's interested, then, in television as progressives, a medium of necessary change. And light entertainment,

“is a non-political tradition. Political satire has been traditionally avoided… It is more likely to be dictated by a determined political neutrality. Much of TV variety is of this inoffensive, traditional nature. It is popular and professionally presented and fundamentally unintellectual.” (p. 152)

This, I think, is why Hood devotes a lot to the advances in news and educational programming - the role of television in explaining politics and shaping the world. It's not that light entertainment couldn't be technically sophisticated - even groundbreaking. I've always heard The Black and White Minstrel Show spoken of in terms of embarrassment, a show that should have been cancelled long before 1978. It's odd to think of it as having been innovative and exciting.

"When The Black and White Minstrel Show won the Golden Rose of Montreux in 1959 there were some European representatives who doubted whether their audiences could follow the speedy cutting and rhythm of the camera work. Such sophistication is now general." (p. 169)

Compare that to the reactionary culture of the news:

"On one point only it seems unlikely that the BBC or ITN will take a step forward - by employing a woman to read the news. For one short period the BBC did employ a woman announcer who was at once intelligent and good looking; but the weight of masculine prejudice among her colleagues was too powerful and the experiment had to be discontinued. So too was ITN's experiment in the use of newscasters in the sense of men who write their own copy and then read it in front of the camera." (p. 108)

This all makes it sound like Hood's survey is of where television has been, but much of this is about where it is going next. He's concerned about TV schedules programmed not by humans but by "crystal clock and computer" (p. 84). There's stuff about the practicalities of 625-line television, brought in by the BBC the year Hood was writing, and the impact of more channels, of colour TV, of satellite broadcasting. The striking thing, in retrospect, and the irony given Hood's politics and predilections, is how conservative he was about the future we've seen come to pass.

Think of the BBC's new promo to mark its centenary this year, #ThisIsOurBBC: the rich variety of programming showcased, the social contract with the audience and nation, news and light entertainment mixed in with the drama, the whole thing posited as direct engagement with the audience, a two-way conversation. I think, from working on our documentary about Mary Whitehouse, that she had a media savvy understanding of the power of television. Ironically, Stuart Hood lacked the same faith.

The Franchise Affair, by Josephine Tey

I've been meaning to get to this mystery novel for years. The Dr is a fan of Josephine Tey, and also of Nicola Upson's series of novels in which Tey is herself the detective. 

Some time ago, we watched the 1988 TV version of The Franchise Affair, which was the last TV work overseen by Terrance Dicks and the second of two adaptations of Tey that he produced for the BBC's "Classic Serials", effectively putting this mystery writer in the same bracket as Dickens, Bronte and Thackeray. I wonder why, of all mystery writers, Dicks chose her to make canonical... 

Robert Blair is a partner in a legal firm whose "business is mostly wills, conveyancing, and services", based in the smallish town of Milford. One morning he's rung up by Marion Sharpe he has seen around the town and asked to sit in on an interview with the police. Blair heads to the Franchise, a sizeable house now past its prime, which Sharpe and her mother have recently inherited and where they live in genteel poverty. Then the police arrive with a 16 year-old girl covered in bruises. She says the Sharpes kidnapped her, held her hostage for weeks, and inflicted ruthless beatings...

It's refreshing to have a mystery that's not a murder, and the general feel of the book is unsettling intrigue. It's as much about how the neighbourhood reacts to these two women from the Franchise, and there are plenty of shrewd observations, such as when Blair speaks to a waitress. 

"'We were all discussing that case on Friday [says the waitress]. Imagine beating her half to death like that.'

'Then you think they did?' [asks Blair.]

She looked puzzled. 'The paper says they did.'

'No, the paper reports what the girl said.'

She obviously did not follow that. This was the democracy we deified.

'They wouldn't print a story like that if it wasn't true. It would be as much as their life's worth. You a detective?'

'Part time,' Robert said.

'How much an hour do you get for that?'

'Not nearly enough.'

'No, I suppose not. Haven't got a union, I suppose. You don't get your rights in this world unless you have a union.'

'Too true,' said Robert. 'Let me have my bill, will you?'

'Your check, yes." (p. 130.)

In this, there are hints of a generational divide, and an inrush of Americanisation, perhaps the result of the recent war. The book was first published in 1948 (mine is a battered copy from the following year), but there's little on the war specifically - no mention of Blair having served, for example, or that some of people's strange behaviour may be the shadow of trauma.

In fact, it's all rather lightly played, and straightforward. Blair remains convinced of the Sharpes' innocence and even falls for Marion. I was braced for some last twist or reversal that never came. It's a comic novel in many ways, with something of Wodehouse in the reactions of Blair's maiden aunt.

"A fortnight ago you would never have dreamed of putting a parcel of fish down on polished mahogany and forgetting all about it." (p. 162)

But I really felt for the Sharpes, facing prosecution and a violent response from their neighbours. I think that may be because I'm also deep in research at the moment about a real court case, the one brought 40 years ago by Mary Whitehouse against the director of the National Theatre production, The Romans in Britain - of which more anon.

And so I think the thing that really lingers from this is Marion Sharpe's sympathy at the end of the novel for the mother of her accuser, a connection felt across the gulf of the two sides.

Starlight Days, by Cecil Madden

Cecil Madden was "the world's first television producer", according to the cover of this memoir edited by his granddaughter, Jennifer Lewis and published in 2007, 20 years after his death. Madden begins with that first broadcast: having been in BBC Radio since 1932, in 1936 he was given nine days' notice to put together the very first television programme, made at Alexandra Palace and seen on TV sets demonstrated at the Radio Show at Radiolympia from 26 August.

“I decided to put on a variety show, and there was no time to waste. I phoned a songwriter, Ronald Hill, and commissioned a new song. He came up at once with ‘Here’s Looking at You!’ a title that was an inspiration. Titles are very important and I decided that our whole show should be called ‘Here’s Looking at You’. This move intrigued the press and cheered the radio industry.” (p. 8)

There were 20 performances of this show, running until 5 September. Madden then produced the magazine programme Picture Post, broadcast on 8 October. Television began officially on 2 November, though Madden recalls of that opening night,

“Frankly, it was pretty dull.” (p. 72)

What follows is a not always chronological memoir of those early days, battling to make the new medium exciting and inventive. Staff swapped roles, taking turns to direct as,

“it brought endless new ideas and trained everybody” (p. 71)

There's lots here I'd already gleaned from The Intimate Screen about the intimacy that TV provided between programme maker and viewer, but this is a first-hand account, much of it listing productions and the people involved, some of it not listed on IMDB. Madden says that,

“Planning the television schedule there was never any doubt in my mind that the emphasis should be on drama.” (p. 74)

‘A play a day’ was the target we set ourselves at the outset, and so it turned out. The process nearly killed everyone. But this was something I was particularly proud of.” (p. 104)

He says the first TV drama was Marigold (featuring John Bailey), and the first whole play - rather than just an excerpt - was Priestly's When We Were Married in 1938. The regular Sunday-Night Play began that same year and was still running in 1963. The first weekly drama was Ann and Harold.  

There's a little on what makes a good drama, such as this observation from GK Chesterton in a letter he wrote to Madden:

“Those who despise detective stories are so stupid they do no even see what is wrong with detective stories. There is no reason why a shocker should not deal with the highest spiritual problem; where it will always, perhaps, fall short of the first rank is in this, that in a great story the characters make the story: in a detective story the story makes the characters. It is made up backwards. Many police novels are quite good, the characters real, the conversation convincing. But the characters have been created to do something, preferably something atrocious, and the convincing talk leads up up to a conviction.” (p. 63)

By the time war started - and the television service stopped - there were 30,000 sets in viewers' homes (p. 117). During the war, Madden returned to radio, broadcasting to the world from the underground Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly, where he was also air-raid warden. There, Madden discovered 10 year-old Petula Clark (p. 158), discovered and named the Beverley Sisters (p. 232) and was the last civilian to see Glenn Miller alive (p. 236). (In other firsts, he was also responsible for the first signature tune used on radio, which he devised as a way to hide the cough with which an unnamed presenter always started (p. 57)).

There are plenty of insights about wartime London: the social mix of people in the shelters, the poor laying down beside those in fur coats (p. 145); the stables near the Windmill Theatre in the centre of town, with horses that needed rescuing during a raid (p. 169); the incongruous image of Vera Lynn bedding down on a mattress in the makeshift underground studio for a nap ahead of a 2am broadcast (p. 155).

Madden tells his own "bomb story", of being caught in a raid in south London where, with hat, umbrella and gas mask, he hurled himself over a garden fence and thus survived. But, he says, everyone had such bomb stories - and he collected them from people he worked with and shares them here. It's a remarkable collection of first-hand accounts of strange, scary moments - but it occurs to me that people looking up family history or doing other research wouldn't think to check a memoir of TV production, which doesn't have an index. So here is a list of those people whose bomb stories Madden gives from p. 165 onwards, in the hope this blog post then turns up in searches:

Margaret McGrath (showgirl and actress); Charmian Innes (comedienne); Joan Jay (soubrette and dancer); Valerie Tandy (dancer and comedienne); Bob Lecardo (acrobat); Frank Dei (organist); Alan Bixter (pianist and accompanist); Sandy Rowan (comedian); Nick Tanner and Norah Crawford (veterans of wartime entertainment touring with BEF); Fred Wildon (“old-timer” and concert party manager); Gaby Rogers (composer, arranger, pianist); Vicki Powell (actress, dancer, singer); Penniston Miles (musician); Jack May (comedian); Nat Allen (band leader, accordion and bass player); Mary Barlow (revue singer); Jack Warman (character comedian).

After the war, Madden returned to TV. He had a short stint on children's television, working at the newly acquired Lime Grove Studios, and was then from 1951 Assistant to the Controller of Television Programmes - he describes this as being "kicked upstairs". He was still talent spotting: it's not listed here, but I know from other research that he got Delphi Lawrence her first work in TV. His memoir says he was the first person to suggest that TV should cover sport, leading to Sportsview (p. 283); he was also directly involved in the televising of an excerpt from Look Back in Anger, despite the trepidation of the play's writer and director, and this was just one of a number of stage productions that were "made" by TV. For more on this, see John Wyver's piece on Cecil Madden's memoir for Screen Plays - Theatre Plays on British Television.

Sadly, Madden's account rather tails off towards the end. There's alas no assessment of his achievements or the changes in television - or culture more generally - which I'd hoped for. There's little on the transformation in the medium brought by ITV (though it does get a mention), or in BBC drama under Sydney Newman (who is not mentioned at all). I'd hoped for something on how the old guard responded to or felt about these seismic shifts. Oh well.

Madden left the BBC in late 1964 at the same time as controller Stuart Hood. An obituary included as a coda says he then set up BAFTA. A postscript from Madden's daughter adds that the Beverley Sisters continued to visit him in old age - and that they always dressed the same.

Misfits, by Michaela Coel

This short book is an extended version of Michaela Coel's 2018 MacTaggart lecture, an outsider's view of the television industry,. I'd seen that at the time but it's interesting to revisit given the stuff on early British television that I've been reading (The Intimate Screen and Writing for Television (1955)), about the variety, the diversity, of what gets put on TV - and who decides what gets put there.

Coel charts her life growing up on an estate opposite the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland, one of many striking juxtapositions. There's violence at school, she drops out of college and then ends up writing bits of her life and perspective that get the attention of Channel 4. This leads to her extraordinary Chewing Gum and, after a horrific assault, the even more extraordinary I Will Destroy You. She learns lessons, gets things wrong, and some of her experience is harrowing. Yet, bold, defiantly, she endeavours to be honest, to open things up: her point being that Television will only get its house in order if we can be transparent.

It's an often funny, often very uncomfortable read. Coel is a brilliant writer. An early passage about moths seems to lose its way - but it's a kind of promise, just as when a TV drama opens "cold" on something odd and unclear. It's the writer asking for the trust of the viewer/reader that all will be explained. The final pages, when Coel returns to the moths, will echo in my head for some time. 

There's lots here to mull over, not least her call to arms to put the wrong things right: "What part can I play? What can I contribute or say to help?" (p. 98). And I'm struck by her response to the relative imbalance of power between creatives and those in charge.

"I've often been told by people in our industry that many producers, in many companies, 'test the waters' to see what they can get away with. I told them the opposite of what I'd learned in drama school: the only power we have is the power to say 'no'." (p. 64)

I've often heard something like this said in relation to the choices we make as writers about what to write, a recognition of our relative lack of power when producers and commissioning editors are the ones who decide what to green light. All we can do to steer our careers is to decline an invitation when it doesn't feel right, to take a small step backwards.

Coel's version is about stepping forward. 

Writing for Television, by Sir Basil Bartlett

Following yesterday’s post about The Intimate Screen and British Television up to 1955, I read this short guide to Writing for Television from 1955 written by Sir Basil Bartlett, who is listed on the cover as “Drama Script Supervisor [for the] BBC Television Service”, this credit prefixed on the inside with the word “formerly.”

It’s a rather nice little hardback, originally sold for 9s 6d, and “was written at the request of the BBC,” says the blurb on the inside front flap. Although the author “assumes that the reader has already had some experience in writing”, this “severely practical book is for a wider circle than the professional writer only” and will “appeal to the ordinary reader who likes to know how the machinery works”. It was one of a number of practical guides published by George Allen and Unwin, with adverts on the back cover for An Introduction to Journalism by EH Butler and Play Production for Amateurs by Eric Bradwell, and ads inside for Write What You Mean by RW Bell and Technical Literature - Its Preparation and Presentation by GE Williams. 

Bartlett provides 76 pages of notes intended, he says, "for the professional writer” (p. 9), and assumes that he (always "he") comes from the theatre. "Basically, Television is a by-product of the theatre," he tells us (p. 11). Indeed, of the up to 90 scripts received by the Drama Department each week, “the majority … are still in stage-play form” (p. 48) rather than being written especially for Television.

“The Drama Department has a dual function. On the one hand it has been for many years a repertory theatre. Week after week it presents to viewers Television versions of outstanding theatre plays by authors of all nationalities and all generations. On the other hand it has a growing and gladly undertaken responsibility for finding new work by new authors and giving it an airing.” (p. 48) 

There was not a 50/50 split between the two, and Bartlett is also aware of the ratio changing. Of the up to ninety submissions received by the Drama Department each week, “The majority of scripts submitted are still in stage-play form,” (p. 48) but in 1950 the Drama Department produced 105 plays, 95 of them adaptations of established stage plays; in 1954, of a “similar” total, just 30 were established stage plays, the rest either adaptations of new plays, novels or short stories - or, good gracious, “new plays written expressly for the medium” (p. 49). In addition to this, the department produced four serials. 

To aid the would-be writer of TV, Bartlett provides extracts from 10 notable TV productions, which - like The Intimate Screen - are evidence of the sophistication and ambition of early TV. For my own reference, they are: 

• The Small Victory by Iain MacCormick (tx 11 June 1954) 
• Return to Living written and produced by Caryl Doncaster (tx 16 February 1954) - 
• The Emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill and produced by Alvin Rakoff; his first TV play (tx 7 July 1953),  
• The Comedy of Errors adapted as a musical by Lionel Harris and Robert McNab, with music by Julian Slade (tx 20 May 1954) 
• Shout Aloud Salvation by Michael Barry and Charles Terrot - "something of a landmark in Television history [as] it was one of the very earliest attempts to write a full-scale play specially for the medium." Bartlett, p. 101 (tx 15 April 1951)
• The Bespoke Overcoat by Wolf Mankowitz (tx 17 February 1954)
• The Disagreeable Man adapted by CE Webber from the novel by Henry Cecil, and "designed to be played entirely with BP [back projection] plates. It was specially chosen to show off Television technique on the occasion of the visit of Her Majesty the Queen to Lime Grove Studios", Bartlett p. 108 (tx 28 October 1953) 
• Episode 4 of The Six Proud Walkers by Donald Wilson (tx 4 August 1954) 
• 1984 by George Orwell, adapted by Nigel Kneale - "A piece of technical virtuosity [and] probably the best script ever written for the Television Drama Department," Bartlett p. 116 (tx 12 December 1954) 
• The Eye of a Gypsy by Lorca, (tx 17 October 1952) 

Strikingly, Bartlett doesn’t encourage writers to write material expressly for TV. With fees for single performance of an original play at £120, and £60 for a repeat, he admits that “an author … can scarcely make a living out of Television, even if he writes ten plays a year and gets them all accepted" (p. 71) - even if the expansion of television and the development of TV craft may mean increased fees in future. There’s mention of sales abroad, but at this stage he’s talking about selling a script that can then be reproduced, rather than a recording of a BBC-made play.

Instead, Bartlett is entirely pragmatic about using Television to further a career on the stage.

“The BBC Television Service is, however, an excellent try-out theatre. And it is on this basis that it should be considered.” (p. 70)

He gives six reasons: “First, he will get his play knocked into shape by experienced script-writers and directors.” Television also affords better casting and production that a small-stage try-out, and the author will get his name known to millions, who might then go see a stage version, and he’ll have the value of newspaper coverage - all while retaining the rights. Elsewhere, Bartlett tells us that - at BBC Television at least - “the standards of the theatre prevail” as “Television respects the author’s integrity”. Indeed, “once an author’s work has been accepted it becomes the sole purpose of the director, actors and technicians to see that it is project as well as is humanly feasible on to the screen.” (pp. 14-15.)

Yet the sense is that the author would have little involvement at all in the televisual elements of screening works primarily conceived for the stage.

“The adaptation of stage plays, old and new, is normally undertaken by BBC staff writers and directors, and outside writers are rarely called in to adapt the work of their playwright colleagues. Most plays, after all, require no more than rigorous pruning, a little transposition of scenes and a general opening up.” (p. 43) 

Of course, an increased focus on original plays written especially for the screen would obviate this kind of work, and I wonder how much that influenced the decision of Sydney Newman, when he became Head of Drama at the beginning of 1963, to close the Script Department entirely.

That the BBC produced some 105 plays each year helped clarify something for me: why the BBC had a regular run of Sunday-Night and Tuesday-Night plays. It was all down to limited studio space.

“A BBC Television play is rehearsed for either two or three weeks according to its complexity. Most of the rehearsals take place in outside rehearsal rooms, and the cast spends only two days, including transmission day, in the Television studio.” (p. 62)

So Studio D at Lime Grove would have Saturday and Sunday booked for the live Sunday-night play; Monday and Tuesday would be for the live Tuesday-night play; Wednesday and Thursday would then be given over to a repeat performance of the Sunday-night play - implicitly, affording it more value than a play shown just once on Tuesday. (As we saw in The Intimate Screen, it was the Thursday-night repeats that got recorded, where examples survive.) The studio was therefore free on a Friday, when a smaller production such as a half-hour serial might be fitted in.

When it began in 1963, Doctor Who was recorded in Studio D on consecutive Friday evenings. This series-of-serials was possible, surely, because by that time, more prestigious dramas were being recorded in the new Television Centre, freeing up space - but the structures and schedules remained.

Then there’s the kind of material suitable for TV. For all Bartlett underlines the connections to theatre rather than film (“Stage plays and Television plays are living things, whereas films are in cans”, p. 14), he has to admit a major difference.

“One of the biggest problems facing the Television writer is that his public is so elusive. [Whereas a playwright can see the audience,] “The Television writer, on the other hand, is writing in a vacuum. He has a potential public of many millions. But he can never be sure, at any given moment, that those millions have not switched off.” (pp. 26-27)

Even so, he tells us,

“The viewer is the average man. And what he wants is to be told a story which he can both enjoy and understand.” (p. 27)

And he warns that,

“the majority of viewers have no theatrical background. Many of them have never been in a theatre in their lives.” (p. 28 )

This was, of course, an insight often ascribed to Sydney Newman but is fundamental to the medium years before he even came to the UK.

So much of the book is about Television as a modern, technological medium but Bartlett’s warnings on subject material firmly place this in history:

"Although not liable to censorship by the Lord Chamberlain it [the BBC] is compelled, by the nature of its Charter, to exercise a strict internal censorship of its own. This amounts to no more than a sense of responsibility for what is shown to the family and seen in the home. Thus there is no place in BBC programmes for plays that might normally be produced in private theatre clubs. And any author who has an urge to write a play on a distasteful theme--rape, for example, or incest or abortion--would be better advised not to write it for Television. ... The BBC must also be cautious about plays with a strong political content. ... In addition, there is a quite natural ban on the portrayal of the Royal Family in fictional programmes.” (p. 18)

That said, I held my breath when he raised the issue of writing aimed at minorities - but it wasn’t at all what I expected:

“If he [the author] decides to throw caution to the winds and write deliberately for a minority audience, for the hard core of better-educated viewers, he must remember that the BBC Television Service puts out a single programme and that the time allotted to minorities is considerably less than is possible, for example, on Sound radio, which has three channels. And the competition for the few minority spaces on Television is a stiff one.” (p. 29)

It’s a case for accessible, popular television - a grounded, universal TV - very much in Newman’s line.

There’s much more, such as on the popular appeal offered by regular characters and situations in serials and series - though, “With its single programme and shortage of studio space the BBC Television Service cannot embark very frequently on a series.” (p. 42). And there’s a fantastic chapter that takes us through the day of a live recording, explaining everyone’s roles and giving a sense of the tension, and the author getting in everyone’s way, which dovetail’s nicely with the account in Alvin Rakoff’s new memoir.

And then, at the end, Bartlett concludes with something that’s a cognitive leap forward. Though, “People are inclined to be snobbish about Television Drama and to regard it as a slightly disreputable member of the theatrical family” (p. 73), “In the future the theatre will, I believe, have a lot to learn from Television.” (p. 74). He means in doing away with the frame of the stage play - footlights and the proscenium arch - to get up close to, even inside a subject’s head.

“It is an intimate medium and well suited to this task.” (p. 76)

As we saw yesterday, he was right - and much sooner than he can have expected. He's a key witness, on the cusp of revolution.

The Intimate Screen, by Jason Jacobs

Recommended to me by my friend Dr Una McCormack, The Intimate Screen - Early British Television Drama, published by Oxford in 2000, covers the period 1936 to 1955, and is fascinating.

Jacobs sets out his intention to “revise significantly, rather than refute completely” (p. 3) the model suggested by Gardner and Wyver, that:

“The first phase [of Television drama], primarily under the aegis of the BBC, was one of the last sustained gasps of a paternalistic Reithian project to bring ‘the best of British culture’ to a grateful and eager audience—a mission of middle-class enlightenment. Thus in its early days TV drama picked up the predominant patterns, concerns and style of both repertory theatre and radio drama (as well as many of their personnel, and their distinct training and working practices) and consisted of televised stage plays, ‘faithfully’ and tediously broadcast from the theatre, or reconstructed in the studio, even down to intervals, prosceniums and curtains.” (Gardner C and Wyver J, ‘The Single Play from Reithian Reverence to Cost-Accounting and Censorship’, and ‘The Single Play: An Afterword’, Screen 24/4-5 (1983), cited in Jacobs, p. 3.) 

Gardner and Wyver were not alone in seeing “a respect for theatre” (Jacobs, p. 7) as “blocking” the liberation of new forms of drama which came in, they felt, for two reasons: with the creation of ITV in 1955 and Sydney Newman starting work in British television in 1958. 

“Along came this man with the dream of putting the story of ordinary people and of our times, the contemporary times, on the screen, and doing this with quality, and giving writers freedom to write … This natural force blew through the corridors of television and blew a lot of the cobwebs out. That man probably had a greater influence on the development of television than anyone else.” (Ted Willis, speaking on the 1987 Channel 4 documentary And Now For Your Sunday Night Dramatic Entertainment, cited in Jacobs, p. 7)

Jacobs argues that many of the supposed innovations of this “second phase” — a focus on original plays written especially for television, working class subjects, moving the cameras, cutting, location filming etc — had a long pedigree in television already, and that the medium had always aimed at a kind of intimacy with the viewer which set it entirely apart from film, radio and the stage.

As he goes on, that “intimacy” was readily discussed in the press and the BBC’s internal paperwork, and understood in a number of different ways: the intimacy of watching in your own home (rather than dressing up to go out to the theatre), usually on your own or with just a few other members of the household (not a whole theatre audience); the intimacy of softer spoken voices as actors did not need to project to the back of the theatre; the intimacy of live drama, where the audience was witness to events happening in real time (and things might go wrong at any moment); the intimacy of small studio spaces and the close-up… 

“Intimacy meant the revelation and display of the character’s inner feelings and emotions, effected by a close-up style of multi-camera studio production.” (p. 8)

The sense is that the practicalities of television - in licensing material to put on screen, the limited studio and technical facilities, the smallness of the TV screen, and it being in people’s homes - shaped the kind of drama that was screened, the way it was framed and the audience’s response. The aesthetics of TV drama came from how it was made.

One major issue in exploring all this is that so little TV survives from the first phase: Although recording — and thus retaining — TV programmes wasn’t readily available in the UK until about 1958 (p. 4), 

"by 1947 it was technically possible to record television on film so, theoretically, there should be a complete record of programmes from here onwards. Instead, for the pre-1955 period, we have two episodes of The Quatermass Experiment, the 1953 televising of the Coronation, an adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four, a selection of children's programmes from the early 1950s, and some sporting events (Test Match cricket, some football)." (p. 10) 

Just as in histories of the theatre (and in the sort of Doctor Who archaeology I’m involved in), these missing performances are pieced together from surviving paperwork, recollections and photographs, partial records rather than the full story. Jacobs is excellent at this: each chapter gives the broad context before moving into case studies on particular plays, detailing — as much as is possible — how they were staged and framed.

Some details are fascinating: instantaneous “cutting” from one camera to another was not possible until 1946; until then, “mixing” between two shots could “take up to eight seconds”, requiring great skill on the part of the crew, with some scripts specially written to accommodate the delay (pp. 46-47). There's lots of the limits of what could be achieved, and how small, gradual improvements in technology could change the feel of drama.

In fact, more recordings exist than Jacob suggests: there are surviving bits of pre-recorded material from the 1930s, and the earliest surviving “full” TV drama is It Is Midnight, Dr Schweitzer (tx 22 February 1953) - “full” because the surviving version is the shorter repeat; the original longer version was not recorded. It's striking that all these surviving dramas of the period - Schweitzer, Quatermass and 1984 - were produced by the same person, Rudolph Cartier. As Jacobs details in a 15-page case study on 1984, Cartier was extremely adept and lauded in his time for pushing what TV drama could do — though Jacobs argues that Cartier was selecting from a range of already established techniques rather than originating them entirely. But the retention of Cartier’s work isn't necessarily evidence of him being held in special esteem.

For one thing, other plays were recorded but not retained. The Broken Jug (tx 24 August 1953, produced/directed by Hal Burton) and The 23rd Mission (tx 11 November 1953, produced by Ian Atkins, directed by Julian Amyes) were, says Jacobs, both pre-recorded rather than broadcast live — marked as such in Radio Times, though without any reason being given, annoyingly.

Then there was the issue of copyright. The BBC often had rights to transmit a live adaptation of a theatre play, as an ephemeral performance, but not to retain it in any physical form. In some cases, the corporation was required to destroy recordings, such as a 1939 production of The Scarlet Pimpernel).

"One solution to the copyright problem was to commission original plays for television. The setting up of a script unit in early 1950, and the hiring of Nigel Kneale and Philip Mackie as staff scriptwriters, can be seen as an attempt to generate fresh drama, and drama which could be recorded and owned by the BBC. This would not have been an issue before telerecording when television programmes simply could not be thought of as material commodities [or tradable goods]." (p. 12).

The suggestion is that The Quatermass Experiment was selected for recording over other plays of the period because Kneale was on staff and the production was written especially for television. There were still complications: Jacobs also reports issues over the pre-filming of trailers for The Quatermass Experiment because there was no agreement in place with the actors’ union Equity. An agreement was reached, and also a deal whereby only the repeat performance of a play would be recorded, guaranteeing actors two performance fees (p. 113).

Then, in a footnote about the controversy over the political content in 1950 play Party Manners and its  repeat being cancelled, Jacobs adds that,

"The BBC were keen to demonstrate that they were not prone to state control, so much so that when similar controversy erupted around Nineteen Eighty-Four the BBC repeated the play in the face of considerable parliamentary criticism. It was the repeat which was telerecorded." (p. 96n)

So was Nineteen Eighty-Four recorded — and survives today — because of the controversy?

There's some stuff about the BBC's penchant for "Horror Plays" after the Second World War, perhaps reflecting the mood of the BBC staff — and the nation — who had been in service, but also acknowledging that TV suited the creation of eerie atmospheres and, as a letter to Radio Times in 1948 put it, "actors and actresses like to have 'close-ups' of registered horror" (p. 99).

In his case study on 1984, Jacobs suggests that in expanding what TV could do — using location filming to expand the scale of the story — Cartier turned the intimacy of television on its head. As Cartier himself said, the Michael Anderson film version of 1984 made a year after his own version, 

“could not recapture the impact of the TV transmission … It was decidedly different in the TV viewer’s own home, where cold eyes stared from the small screen straight at him, casting into the viewer’s heart the same chill that the characters in the play experienced whenever they heard his voice coming from their ‘watching’ TV screens.” (Cartier, ‘A Foot in Both Camps’, Films and Filming 4/12 (September 1958), p. 10. Cited in Jacobs, p. 138) 

This was surely reversing the usual, "cosy" intimacy of television to invade the viewer’s home — and the reason the drama proved so effective and shocking. Jacobs cites glowing reviews in the press and the “mostly hostile” letters to the BBC which “criticised the play on the grounds of obscenity”, thought it “‘unsuitable for the vast audience’ or talked about it in terms of ‘pollution’: such productions could be bad for people.” (p. 155)

Jacobs concludes with the fact that Sydney Newman was, in 1956, taken to see the Royal Court's stage production of Look Back in Anger by John Osborne. I’m not sure that date is correct, or that Jacobs is quite right in his analysis here. It’s worth putting this in context.

"In [his work at] the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Newman had witnessed, and had also contributed to, the remarkable flowering of the dramatic arts on television in North America, in which new writers, new actors, and new directors had all played their parts. He also recognised that television was a mass medium of nothing; that because of cultural inequalities most of the audience had little experience of the theatre but much of the cinema; that television drama should reflect and comment on the world familiar mass audience. The story goes that Michael Barry, then head of BBC drama, took Newman to see Osborne's Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court Theatre. That play, with its unusual worm's-eye view of society and its derisive radicalism, seemed to Newman the dazzling light on the road to Damascus; more accurately, it summed up what he had come to believe about drama..." (Bernard Sendall, Independent Television in Britain (1982), cited in Television Drama: An Introduction by David Self, p. 49.)

Jacobs thinks it ironic that Newman was taken to the play by Michael Barry of all people, the man whom Newman would replace at the BBC and, “inspired” by the revolution in theatre they had witnessed together, radically overhaul TV drama. (Jacobs also says it was ironic that Look Back in Anger was not particularly successful on stage until an extract was broadcast on television.)

But that surely isn’t quite right. Another Canadian immigrant, Alvin Rakoff, claims in his new memoir that he was offered a job at the Royal Court by Tony Richardson, having both worked together as director-producers at the BBC. Rakoff turned down the offer, "then watched as the Royal Court went on to to revolutionise British theatre when it produced Look Back in Anger." The implication is that Rakoff was offered the job - and the chance to work on developing that play - because of the work he had already done in TV. Indeed, he says the "revolution" in theatre was “started by television writers who were the first to show more interest in ‘the man on the Clapham bus’ than the ladies’ tea party at the vicarage.” (I'm Just the Guy Who Says Action, p. 111). 

Fusing that with Jacobs, the implication is that Obsorne's play was riffing on the intimacy, the psychological insight, that was by now characteristic of TV, and intrinsic to the practicalities involved in televising drama. The "second phase" of TV drama ushered in by Newman was not, then, some radical new form but the recognition of strengths and virtues in the now mature TV medium. In that sense, it was more building on what had gone before than breaking from tradition.

Doctor Who Magazine #570

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine has lots on the imminent new TV series with lots of exclusive access to cast and crew.

There's also bits from me. Deputy editor Peter Ware read my post here about Alvin Rakoff's new memoir and asked me to interview him about it. There's another Sufficient Data infographic, illustrated by Ben Morris and this time tracking the Sixth Doctor's efforts to pilot the TARDIS to particular destinations. And  I get a name-check in the nice review of the new Blu-ray release of The Evil of the Daleks.

ETA Alan Barnes' feature on the episode Blink also cites my 2017 interview with writer Steven Moffat.

I’m Just the Guy Who Says Action, by Alvin Rakoff

At the end of this fascinating, moving memoir, the TV and film director Alvin Rakoff recalls a final conversation with his dying wife, the actress Jacqueline Hill. She wanted him to tell her about the holidays they’d enjoyed, such as exploring Spain and Portugal in a dilapidated old car.

“The past, as I said, is a sunshine memory. I ranted on. Embellishing certain characters, exaggerating minor problems, emphasising funny moments, trying hard to remain focused on storytelling.” (p. 170)

The implication, surely, is that much of the rest of the book has been gilded. And yet the thing that strikes me is how packed it is with telling, honest detail. It’s largely about the production of a live TV drama, Requiem For A Heavyweight, in 1957, and Rakoff giving Sean Connery his first leading role (with a small role for Michael Caine, too). The play, he says, is now lost to the ether: a scratchy audio recording of most of it survives, as well as some photographs and the camera script full of Rakoff’s notes on how it should be staged and framed. YouTube also has the original, US version - directed by Ralph Nelson and with Jack Palance in the lead role.  

But the book is less an effort to recreate the lost production as to share a vivid sense of the thrill and terror of making it, what it cost Rakoff and his leading lady and then-girlfriend Hill emotionally, and - for all its success - the uncertain time that followed. How extraordinary the commissioning process seems today. Roughly every eight weeks, Rakoff would be summoned to see Michael Barry, “HDTel” or Head of Drama for the BBC’s sole TV station. Even the description of Barry’s office is striking:

“Curtains forever drawn. One dim bulb from a desk lamp, the only source of light. Presumably so he could more readily monitor the output from the nearby studios, relayed through the dark-wooded set in the corner. He himself wore his customary alpaca jacket over armband-hitched shirt sleeves. Complete, of course, with a tie.” (p. 151)

“He would give me a broadcast date. Nothing more. And as I would leave his office he always added, ‘A comedy would be good. A comedy would fit well into the schedule. See if you can find a comedy.’ Neither I nor any of his other subordinates managed to find many comedies. I would go away. Find a play. Buy it. Print it. Cast it. Involve a designer. Consult make-up, hair, wardrobe. Rehearse. Work out a camera script. … Then into the studios for broadcast. Live. Collapse with crew and cast for a few drinks after the show. The next day I would be back in Michael’s office and he would praise what I had done - usually - or tell me - a rarity - if he hadn’t liked it. … The meeting would again end with him telling me the date of my next commitment. And as I got to the door, the inevitable phrase came, ‘See if you can find a comedy.’ The routine was cyclical.” (p. 34)

Then, after Requiem, when Rakoff is too exhausted to commit immediately to the next production, Barry treats it as betrayal and pretty much casts him adrift - at least, for a time. Rakoff picks up with the noted film producer Michael Balcon, who seems to wield just as extraordinary power and hold just as powerful grudges.

There are plenty of insights into the mechanics of making TV at the time - the cameras, the politics, the personalities to be juggled, the impact of that work. For example, he notes how Look Back in Anger revolutionised British theatre when it was first staged by the Royal Court in 1956.

“A revolution, incidentally, started by television writers who were the first to show more interest in ‘the man on the Clapham bus’ than the ladies’ tea party at the vicarage.” (p. 111)

We follow the production of Requiem through casting and rehearsals, into Studio D at Lime Grove Studios, where there was so little space that one set had to be constructed around the moving actors as the play was broadcast live. Tension mounts as rehearsal after rehearsal fails to get this trick shot right, just one of a hundred stresses to contend with - the account of the live performance makes exhilarating reading. But it’s the details that make it so vivid: the etiquette of getting rounds in for the crew in the British Prince pub down the road, or of Connery bringing his then girlfriend to sit in on rehearsals, of Rakoff and Hill keeping emotionally distant while working together, of the crisis in their relationship.

It’s often very honest - about their sex life and about other people’s bad behaviour - and there’s an edge to some of the humour, Rakoff and Hill finding a couple of incidents comic that I felt more disturbing. But then perhaps that’s the gilding. When Rakoff is comforting his very ill wife with tales of that perfect 11-week holiday in 1960, she makes a typically insightful remark.

“Only poor people can afford [such] long holidays … Nobody wanted us back here.” (p. 170.)

See also:

• Alvin Rakoff interviewed about the book on The Film Programme, August 2021
• Jaqueline Hill: A Life in Pictures, the short documentary by me and Thomas Guerrier, in which we spoke to Rakoff at his home, is included on the 2011 DVD of Doctor Who story Meglos and the more recent Season 18 Collection.
• Jaqueline Hill: A Future in Five Minutes, a biography by my friend Louise Bremner
• Me on Sean Connery’s film roles in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s

Directing Doctor Who

The latest special edition of Doctor Who Magazine is devoted to directing. It includes my interview with Rachel Talalay about directing 2017's Twice Upon a Time. Rachel has spoken at length about her work on Doctor Who  - such as to the Radio Free Skaro podcast, in her own instagram posts and now in her YouTube series  How I Directed This - but we found some new areas to explore.

On Countdown

Excitingly (and surreally), I was mentioned on today's edition of TV quiz show Countdown. Some 15 minutes in, host Nick Hewer asks Samira Ahmed - who is in Dictionary Corner this week - about being on the editorial review board of the official Doctor Who Magazine. 

You can watch the clip, but Samira replies:

"The magazine is for fans - and fans of all ages, including a lot of people who grew up watching the original run going back to the 60s. There haven't been that many new episodes over the last year or so, as you can imagine, so a lot of the magazine is doing features on the past. The idea is that you review it to make sure it's appropriate for BBC content and for its audience. What has been fascinating is that there's this whole archaeology of the old episodes. There are all these old episodes that were lost but the scripts survive or floor plans of TV Centre survive with where the cameras were. And there's been this whole thing of features by brilliant writers like Simon Guerrier where they have got together a panel of people who watched the original episode - once - when it was on TV, got them up to get their memories from when they were little children, and then worked out with the maps of the floor plan, surviving bits of scripts, and tele-snaps (which are photos people took off screen) what the plot was and what it looked like. It's like the archaeology of digging up old Anglo-Saxon hoards and reconstructing a ship, but you don't think of doing that with television. But the history of British TV is 70 years-old now or older and I just think it's been remarkable how much social history there is in reconstructing them that way. So it's been a real joy and the magazine has been such a comfort through lockdown for a lot of people. It's that escape into wild adventures in space and time."

As Samira says, I'm just one of an army of DWM archaeologists, many of them more distinguished and erudite. She's referring to the recent series of articles I've co-written with Rhys Williams, attempting to reconstruct the studio sets from a few of the 97 episodes of Doctor Who missing from the archive. The amazing CGI recreations of the are by Gavin Rymill, and so far we've covered:

• The Evil of the Daleks Episode 1 (1967) in DWM Special Edition: Production Design
• The Feast of Steven (1965 Christmas special) in DWM #559
• The Moonbase Episode 3 (1967) in DWM #562

And there is more to come...

• More by me on The Feast of Steven
• More by me on The Evil of the Daleks
• Documentaries I've made with Samira include Victorian Queens of Ancient Egypt

Doctor Who Magazine #562

The thrilling new issue of the official Doctor Who Magazine features two things by me.

First, in "Moonbase 3" Rhys Williams and I have scrutinised recently discovered studio floor plans for 1967 story The Moonbase, focused on the ingenious way designer Colin Shaw maximised limited space. The CGI recreations of the studio set-up for episode 3 are by clever Gav Rymill. I also got some insight into the kind of person Colin Shaw was from his friend and colleague (and my old boss) John Ainsworth. Thanks to researcher Richard Bignell for alerting me to the discovery of the floor plans and helping my poor old brain make some kind of sense of them.

Secondly, "Sufficient Data" is a new regular column by me (and, from next issue, Steve O'Brien) illustrated by Ben Morris and exploring numbers and concepts in Doctor Who in what we hope will be a fun and surprising way. This issue we're all about the number 13. Steve, Ben and I previously worked together on the book Whographica, which is still available in bookshops.

Dear Yootha..., by Paul Curran

This is a 2014 biography of the actress Yootha Joyce (1927-80), best known as alpha-cougar Mildred Roper in the 1970s sitcoms Man About the House and spin-off George and Mildred. As a fan, Curran has sieved through a wealth of material and spoken to what feels like anyone who ever knew or worked with Joyce. The result is exhaustive.

I was especially interested in Joyce's early life and career to see if I could overlap anything with that of David Whitaker (1928-80) - writer and story editor of significant bits of 1960s Doctor Who, whose life I'm slowly piecing together. In a 1986 interview, Whitaker's first wife June Barry (who sadly died last month after long illness) claimed that Whitaker had been "almost engaged" to Joyce.

Joyce and Whitaker were born a year apart and both grew up in London - but she was in Hampstead, Clapham and then Croydon, while he was in Barnes and then Kensington. Joyce attended RADA (in the same class as Roger Moore), while Whitaker went into accountancy, where he did amateur dramatics through Sedos. In the early 1950s, Joyce and Whitaker were both in professional repertory with the Harry Hanson Court Players - but for different companies, in different parts of the country. Joyce met Glynn Edwards in the summer of 1955 and married him the following year, so if she and Whitaker were ever together it must have before then - but as Curran says in the book we don't know much about this time in her personal life. (He's also been kind enough to respond to my inquiries and say that nobody he's spoken to about Joyce ever mentioned Whitaker's name.)

Even if this connection remains a mystery, Curran is good on the kind of theatrical world Joyce and Whitaker were both part of at that time. There's the glamour of showbiz:

“Whatever their background, Harry Hanson was known to pressure his actors to always appear glamorous, on and off stage. This filtered through to the other associated Harry Hanson companies.” (p. 28)

There's the pretensions of the material performed twice-nightly for six nights a week:

[From an interview with Dudley Sutton] “But up until [Joan] Littlewood’s appearance, the English theatre was completely middle-class. It was run by the officers, and when an ordinary man or woman come onto the stage, they’d always have to be stupid, comic or both." (p. 34)

And all of this under the condescension of the state:

[From an interview with Glynn Edwards]: “Of course you had the Lord Chamberlain’s rulings, where you were only allowed to say ‘bloody’ twice.” (p. 30)

There's a horrible irony in what follows. Joyce escaped this kind of safe, sentimental theatre for bolder, more experimental stuff that dared to base itself in lived experience and to get political and sexy. Curran underlines the breadth of the work she was doing in the 1960s, from Littlewood's abrasive theatre to episodes of The Avengers and The Saint. Indeed, Mildred Roper is a bold character for her time - sexually assertive, frustrated, real, and immediately connecting to the audience. But the role overshadowed her life, and limited her options in an age of type-casting.

The last section of the book, detailing her sudden decline and death from alcoholism at 53, is hard going not least because there's a sense that it's the success of Mildred that killed the woman who played her. But Curran is shrewd in closing with a poignant last appearance, on Max Bygraves' show Max, screened after her death, where Joyce performed a song that seems to reveal something of what she was feeling in those last days. As Curran says, that made an impression on Kenneth Williams, who was haunted by it ever after:

"Years later, on 9th April 1988, not long before his own death, he added [to his diary] 'can't get Yootha Joyce out of my head - and the time she sang 'For All We Know', there was almost a break in the voice when she got to [the line] tomorrow may never come, but she carried on. She died shortly after [recording it]. A lady who made so many people happy and a lady who never complained." (p. 164)

It's as if, I thought, even after death she could produce the goods: a role that was moving, surprising and real.

(You might like to know that Joyce's co-star Brian Murphy was in a Doctor Who story I wrote, released last year.)