Billy Smart

Plot Inflation in Greater Weatherfield: Coronation Street in the 1990s

In a recent overview of developments in soap opera scholarship Christine Geraghty suggests that critical orthodoxy has arisen, stifling further analysis of the form.1 Current work concentrates upon the presupposed fixed conventions of soap opera as a form, neglecting to identify and consider changes that appear within the programmes, which might potentially contradict previous generalised definitions of soap opera as a genre. In particular, Geraghty identifies the absence of detailed textual analysis of British soaps: Textual readings of soaps need to become more nuanced and to be unhooked from questions of representation. The 1980s practice of reading for ideological positions and contradictions needs to be reinforced with (or undermined by) an account of their visual and aural textual features (including performance) and an assessment of how such features work with or against the grain of the particular stories being told. Textual analysis of this kind would need to be taken across episodes to look at the rhythms, repetitions and changes in style and would need to incorporate an account of the way in which these elements have changed over time.2

Drama for People ‘in the know’: Television World Theatre (BBC 1957–1959) and Festival (BBC 1963–1964)

This article provides a survey of the pioneering BBC series of theatrical adaptations Television World Theatre (1957–1959), examining BBC production documentation and audience research to identify the institutional discourses that surrounded the making and transmission of these programmes. Recurrent arguments throughout the production of the series form a framework of institutional expectations within which classic theatrical plays were commissioned, made and presented for BBC Television. Having identified these questions (relating to audience address, populism, and the viability of creating a unified ‘house style’ across the diverse plays included in an anthology series), the article assesses the contemporary press discourse surrounding Television World Theatre before concluding with a consideration of how the experience of Television World Theatre affected expectations the next time that the BBC attempted a similar project in Festival (1963–1964).

‘Nats Go Home’: Modernism, Television and Three BBC Productions of Ibsen (1971–1974)

This article examines 1960s arguments that called for the rejection of naturalism in television drama, and for new modernist forms to be created in its place, through close analysis of three BBC productions of Ibsen: The Wild Duck (Play of the Month, BBC1 1971), Hedda Gabler (Play of the Month, BBC1 1972) and The Lady from the Sea (BBC2 1974). Troy Kennedy Martin’s polemical 1964 essay ‘Nats Go Home’ suggested that television drama had “looked to Ibsen and Shaw for guidance” (relying upon verbally constructed narratives derived from the naturalist theatre) and called for a new, more visual and abstract, modernist form of drama to be created in its place. This new drama would agitate the viewer into forming an objective understanding of events and themes through montage and juxtaposition. Through analysis of three television productions of canonical Ibsen plays, Kennedy Martin’s representation of naturalist drama can be tested, demonstrating how modernist elements within Ibsen’s drama were realised through television adaptation.

Television history: archives, excavation and the future. A discussion

This article considers possible futures for television (TV) studies, imagining how the discipline might evolve more productively over the next 10 years and what practical steps are necessary to move towards those outcomes. Conducted as a round-table discussion between leading figures in television history and archives, the debate focuses on the critical issue of archives, considering and responding to questions of access/inaccessibility, texts/contexts, commercial/symbolic value, impact and relevance. These questions reflect recurrent concerns when selecting case studies for historical TV research projects: how difficult is it to access the material (when it survives)? What obstacles might be faced (copyright, costs, etc.) when disseminating findings to a wider public? The relationship between the roles of ‘researcher’ and ‘archivist’ appears closer and more mutually supportive in TV studies than in other academic disciplines, with many people in practice straddling the traditional divide between the two roles, combining specialisms that serve to further scholarship and learning as well as the preservation of, and broad public engagements with, collections. The Research Excellence Framework’s imperative for academic researchers to achieve ‘impact’ in broader society encourages active and creative collaboration with those based in public organizations, such as the British Film Institute (BFI), who have a remit to reach a wider public. The discussion identifies various problems and successes experienced in collaboration between the academic, public and commercial sectors in the course of recent and ongoing research projects in TV studies.

Producing Classics on outside Broadcast in the 1970s: The Little Minister (1975), As You Like It (1978) and Henry VIII (1979)

Cedric Messina, producer of Play of the Month (from 1967–77), the BBC Television Shakespeare (1978–80) and others, was responsible for the majority of BBC television adaptations of theatrical plays for over twenty years. This article examines three Messina Outside Broadcast (OB) productions, The Little Minister (1975), As You Like It (1978) and Henry VIII (1979), to explain the practice and significance of OB drama. Messina believed that recording in romantic real-life locations (castles, forests, stately homes) could inspire visual pleasure for viewers, an approach based upon the simultaneous, but perhaps contradictory, representation of the decorative/spectacular and the (‘newsreel’/‘documentary’) real.

The BBC Television Audience Research Reports, 1957–1979: Recorded Opinions and Invisible Expectations

Between the 1950s and the 1980s, the BBC’s internal Audience Research Unit compiled up to 700 Audience Research reports for television a year, attempting to cover the complete spectrum of BBC TV programming. This article considers the form, value and possible future application of this material, reflections inspired by my own use of the collection when researching BBC adaptations of theatrical classics in order to examine the use of space in these dramas in the 1970s; the spaces that programmes were made in, the spaces represented onscreen, and viewers’ spatial understanding of these programmes. In this piece I shall describe the form that the Audience Research Reports took, demonstrate why they are of use to historians, and then explain two methodologies that I have used in my work; forming conclusions through looking at the full extent of reports for one form of drama (versions of classic stage plays recorded on location on Outside Broadcast) spread across a number of years; and decoding audience’s reactions through establishing what was left unsaid in these reports.

Three Different Cherry Orchards, Three Different Worlds: Chekhov at the BBC, 1962–81

Unlike the theatre, there is no established tradition of plays being revived (new productions made from existing scripts) on television. The only instance of this mode of production in Britain has been the regular adaptation of classic theatrical plays. The existence of three separate BBC versions of Chekhovs The Cherry Orchard (1962, 1971, 1981) creates a rare opportunity to trace developing styles of direction and performance in studio television drama through three different interpretations of the same scene. Through close analysis of The Cherry Orchard, I outline the aesthetic and technological development of television drama itself over twenty years.

Cosmic effects on the intimate screen: J. B. Priestley, Ralph Richardson and 'Johnson over Jordan' (1965)

This article considers ideas about the suitability of experimental, non-naturalist, narrative forms in theatre and television, through the example of a 1965 BBC2 adaptation of J. B. Priestleys 1939 play Johnson over Jordan. Using both textual analysis of the programme and research into the BBC production documentation, this essay explains how the circumstances and conditions of 1960s television adaptation and the star casting of Sir Ralph Richardson transformed Priestleys stage play. The TV adaptation achieved cosmic effects on an intimate scale, through inference and the imaginative integration of the studio space with dubbed sound.