30-Jun-03
240 pages
Published/distributed by BFI Publishing
ISBN/EAN: 9780851708850
Paperback
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British Television Drama: A History Cooke, Lez
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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 30s and 40s 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 TV drama before the 60s, including the legendary Nineteen Eighty-Four, the important shift to pre-recorded and filmed drama in the 60s and 70s, the impact of ITV's populist drama series (Emergency Ward Ten, Coronation Street) and single play strands like Armchair Theatre, the new wave of 60s BBC drama (including the ground-breaking Wednesday Play), ITV telefantasies of the 60s (The Avengers, The Prisoner), the controversial drama-documentaries of the 60s and the 70s (The War Game, Law and Order), the responses to Thatcherism in the 80s (Boys from the Blackstuff, Edge of Darkness), the heritage dramas of the 80s and 90s (from Brideshead Revisited to Pride and Prejudice) and concluding with stylish 90s dramas like 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 casestudy of one seminal drama, and concludes with an assessment of the changes in British TV 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.
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