From the earliest days, drama has been at the heart of the BBC’s programming. The first television drama in the UK was Pirandello’s The Man With the Flower in His Mouth, which was broadcast by the BBC and the Baird Television Company in July 1930, while the long-running radio serial The Archers, now in its eighth decade, continues to entertain millions every week.
Drama can entertain and provide escapism. At the same time, it can prick the conscience and stir the soul. It can deal with complex ideas and flights of fancy, gritty social issues, and controversial topics. It has the ability to both engage and alienate audiences and provoke wider public debate. Done well, it can ensure large and loyal audiences.
The backbone of BBC 1 and the backbone of [the] BBC ...are long running drama series. Those are the things that make the television service. The backbone of the television service is unquestionably drama, long running drama series that ...are there for fifteen weeks at a time.
Fantasy and adventure
In the early 1960s, when the BBC faced competition from the rival television service, ITV, the Director-General, Hugh Carleton Greene, set about refreshing the BBC’s output. One of a number of key appointments made at this time was Sydney Newman, who was lured from the ITV company, ABC Television, to eventually head up the BBC’s Drama Group.
Newman, a Canadian by birth, had succeeded in establishing a strong drama strand on ITV, Armchair Theatre, which was attracting large audiences. In securing his services, Carleton Greene heralded a new and – some might say – golden age of popular drama at the BBC.
One of the first drama series on which Newman worked was a new science fiction series for Saturday evenings, aimed primarily at children, but which also needed to attract the sports-programme-viewing adult audience to ensure that they remained watching BBC Television for the remainder of the evening. The result was Doctor Who.
Here is Sydney Newman outlining the origins of Doctor Who, and admitting that were it not for producer Verity Lambert, the series may not have been as successful as it became:
One of the characteristics of the early Doctor Who was its alignment with the public service broadcasting ethos of the time. Not only was the series entertaining, but from the outset it sought to educate, hence the stories in the first season in which the Doctor visited Marco Polo and the Aztecs. Indeed the series (certainly during the 1960s and 1970s) was seen as quintessentially British in its traits and storylines. Despite ending in 1989, like the Doctor him/herself, it regenerated, returning as a television movie in 1996 before being relaunched on the BBC in 2005.
The 'realist turn'
Whilst Doctor Who was firmly in the fantasy and adventure camp, other BBC drama in the 1960s took a more realist turn. In October 1964, The Wednesday Play strand was launched, providing a platform for new and emerging writers, producers, and directors such as Tony Garnett, Ken Loach and James McTaggart.
On November 16 1966, as part of The Wednesday Play series, Cathy Come Home was broadcast on BBC One. Written by Jeremy Sandford and directed by Ken Loach, the drama tells of a young northern girl, Cathy (played by Carol White) who moves to London and marries a local van driver, Reg (played by Ray Brooks). After having children, and after an accident at work which leaves Reg unable to work, their lives descend into poverty and homelessness. The traumatic scene at the end of the drama where Cathy’s children are forcibly taken from her and put into care is one of the reasons why the drama provoked so much debate.
It was shot in a documentary style, which also contributed to its controversial status – the mixing of genres, creating a hybrid, potentially misleading an audience not yet fully literate in televisual terms. Here Sydney Newman talks of the way in which the drama was filmed and the impact it had:
One who had doubts about the mixing of fact and fiction was Grace Wyndham Goldie, then Head of Television Talks. She felt that Cathy Come Home had strayed too far away from the drama fold. As Newman says in his interview: 'Grace was very angry at me for having done Cathy Come Home because she felt that was impinging on the documentary area which was under her.'
However, the Director-General, Hugh Carleton Greene, had a more positive take on television drama at the time:
Escapism and 'crowd-pleasers'
When The Wednesday Play came to an end in May 1970, it was relaunched in October that year as Play For Today (on a Thursday evening). Whilst Hugh Carleton Greene may have been supportive of ground-breaking drama, Alan Hart, a BBC executive who went on to become Controller of BBC One in the early 1980s, had a rather different view:
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, pressure on broadcasters to maximise ratings and audience figures was becoming intense. One of Alan Hart’s first decisions as Controller was to move Doctor Who from its Saturday night slot to an early evening slot twice a week, as viewing figures on a Saturday were dwindling.
As pressure mounted and as a multi-channel age loomed on the horizon (a fourth television channel was on the way and there was talk of satellite and cable television), broadcasters increasingly looked for ‘crowd-pleasers’ that would guarantee large audiences and healthy ratings. One such programme which did the trick for the BBC was Dallas.
Produced by American broadcaster CBS, Dallas first hit British screens in 1978 and ran until 1991. As Alan Hart explains, programmes such as Dallas were part of a ‘quota’ of overseas programming:
Following the trials and tribulations of the rival Ewing and Barnes families in Texas, the drama was a huge success for the BBC, the series being watched regularly by 20 million viewers. The ‘Who Shot JR?’ cliff-hanger at the end of the third series in 1980 sparked national conversations and ensured the series;’ continuing popularity.
Such was the impact of Dallas that Thames Television attempted to secure the series in 1985 when the BBC refused to pay what it considered to be over the odds for each episode in the ninth series. This resulted in a major row between the BBC and the ITV company which was only resolved following interventions by the Independent Broadcasting Authority.
As Michael Grade, Controller of BBC One at the time, noted in his Oral History Collection interview with Frank Gillard on 31 January 1989: ‘We had an agreement with ITV that we didn't poach. It was open competition between us for new series, but once you'd bought a series, until you'd exhausted your negotiations it didn't go onto the open market, and that was the accepted practice.’
The proud tradition of popular drama in the BBC continues, but major investment from streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon pose challenges for the Corporation. However, as long as public service broadcasting exists, the BBC will undoubtedly continue to produce entertaining – and challenging – popular drama.
Further Reading
- Hugh Chignell, British Radio Drama, 1945-63 (2019)
- Lez Cooke, British Television Drama: a history (2003)