The 1977 Play of the Month adaptation of Henry James’ The Ambassadors, starring Paul Scofield and Lee Remick, is being screened on BBC4 tonight, its first broadcast on British television for 46 years. Scheduled at the challenging time of five-to-midnight, overnight ratings will probably be minimal, with a larger audience likely to be accrued through long term availability on BBC iPlayer. Unlike Dickens, Austen or the Brontes, adaptations of Henry James have almost disappeared from the British TV drama repertory, with just two productions in the last 25 years (and both those were of The Turn o ..read more

Written by John le Carré, produced by John Kershaw and directed by Alan Cooke. Broadcast on ITV at 8.30pm on 29 June 1970. By Joseph Oldham Readers of the recently published book A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré (2023) may have been intrigued by a brief reference to a letter that the acclaimed spy novelist wrote to John Margetson, a former colleague from the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), on 15 June 1969. Outlining several creative projects in development, le Carré briefly notes that he had ‘finished a 1½ hour television play the other day.’[1] But although A Private Spy elsewh ..read more

The Forgotten Television Drama – Half-Hour Play season at BFI Southbank in May 2023 began with a half-hour discussion in which BFI TV Programmer Marcus Prince talked to season curator Lez Cooke about the rationale for the season. Half-Hour Story: Robert (1967) MP: So we have called the season ‘Rediscovering the Half Hour Play’ – was this the motivation and genesis of the idea for you in researching the season – a feeling that these short plays have been sadly overlooked and neglected? LC: This is the 4th season of Forgotten Television Drama at BFI Southbank, all of which came out of a project ..read more

The Forgotten Television Drama season, ‘Rediscovering the Half-Hour Play’ concludes at BFI Southbank on Wednesday 31 May with a session on one of the most popular forms of the half-hour play: mystery and suspense dramas. Associated-Rediffusion’s Tales of Mystery (1961-63) anthology was one of the earliest manifestations of the genre, but unfortunately none of the 29 dramas made for the series have survived. It was followed by several mystery and suspense series in the 1970s when the half-hour anthology was at its peak, including Tales of Unease (LWT, 1970), The Frighteners (LWT, 1972-73 ..read more

Rotten (BBC, 1978) The Forgotten Television Drama season, ‘Rediscovering the Half-Hour Play’, continues at BFI Southbank on Saturday 27 May 2023 with three plays that illustrate the ways in which the half-hour play has been utilised as a vehicle for experimentation. Following on from the showcase of work from the Regions in the previous session, it is perhaps not coincidental that all three plays in this session were produced by BBC regional production centres in Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle, underlining the freedom to experiment and innovate that was often available to creative practi ..read more

The Forgotten Television Drama season, ‘Rediscovering the Half-Hour Play’, continues at BFI Southbank on Sunday 14 May 2023 with a session looking at the contribution made by women to the half-hour play. The achievement of women writers has been undervalued in television drama, but the half-hour play gave many women their first opportunity to write for television, often leading to successful careers writing full-length plays, series and serials. Here we showcase the work of three women writers who made significant contributions to television drama: Andrea Newman, Elaine Morgan and Rona Mu ..read more

The Forgotten Television Drama season, ‘Rediscovering the Half-Hour Play’, continues at BFI Southbank on Sunday 7 May 2023 with a session looking at early work by three writers who went on to produce landmark television drama: John Mortimer, Dennis Potter and Andrew Davies. As with directors, producers and script editors the half-hour play provided a good training ground for those learning the craft of writing for television and many now established writers penned their first television scripts for the half-hour play: others in the season include Alan Bleasdale, Michael Hastings, Rona Munro an ..read more

Our Half-Hour Play season at BFI Southbank gets under way on Wednesday 3 May with a session on Novice Directors. The half-hour play has always provided a great training ground for new and emerging talent. In this selection we feature three plays directed by figures who went on to enjoy great international success. Half-Hour Story: Robert (ITV, 1967) Frank Windsor in Robert (1967) Director Ridley Scott. With Angela Baddeley, Frank Windsor, Robert Langley. 25min Half-Hour Story was one of ITV’s most significant anthology series. Rediffusion produced 38 half-hour plays in three series from May 19 ..read more

Half-Hour Story: Robert (1967) We are pleased to announce a new season of Forgotten Television Drama at BFI Soutbank in May 2023. Curated by Lez Cooke this new season, the first since Forgotten Black TV Drama in 2019, provides an opportunity to rediscover a lost form of TV drama: the half-hour television play. Once prevalent on British television, the half-hour play was a unique form which provided an opportunity for many writers, directors and actors to develop their craft. Writers including Alan Bleasdale, Andrew Davies, Andrea Newman and Fay Weldon wrote some of their first scripts for the ..read more

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 this new six-part version is that it reverts to the usual duration of about six hours of the first four productions, where the 1999 and 2011 productions were both a relatively compact three hours. This is the first Dickens adaptation made for British television since A ..read more