Category Archives: Single Plays

The Stripped-Down Studio Space: Play for Today: Psy-Warriors (BBC, 12/5/81) & Centre Play: The Saliva Milkshake (BBC, 6/1/75)

Posted on February 24, 2014 by leahpanos

by guest writer, David Rolinson   Psy-Warriors explores the military use of psychological operations as writer David Leland poses “the moral dilemma [of] how far we can torture and degrade prisoners in the name of democracy and freedom” (Radio Times). … Continue reading →

Posted in BFI Screening Series, Single Plays | 3 Comments

Mixing Genres in the Studio: Playhouse: The Journal of Bridget Hitler (BBC2, 6/2/81)

Posted on February 20, 2014 by leahpanos

In the fifth screening of the ‘Dramatic Spaces’ season, The Journal of Bridget Hitler, Colour Separation Overlay (CSO) is used in an entirely different way than in our previous double bill of ‘studio trickery’, this time within a self-reflexive drama-doc … Continue reading →

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Studio trickery: Censored Scenes From King Kong (BBC, 1973) & Play For Today: The After Dinner Joke (BBC, 14/02/78)

Posted on February 15, 2014 by leahpanos

This double-bill, the fourth screening in our ‘Dramatic Spaces’ season at the BFI, features two remarkable BBC television plays that take advantage of electronic ‘studio-trickery’: Howard Schuman’s never-transmitted Censored Scenes From King Kong (1973) and Caryl Churchill’s 1978 Play For … Continue reading →

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‘Dead of Night: The Exorcism’ (BBC, 1972)

Posted on February 6, 2014 by billysmart

Our ‘Dramatic Spaces: The Imaginative World of the TV Studio’ film season opens at BFI Southbank tonight, with a screening of ‘The Exorcism’, Don Taylor’s play for made for the BBC2 horror anthology series Dead of Night. Over the course … Continue reading →

Posted in BFI Screening Series, Single Plays | Tagged , | 6 Comments

‘Armchair Theatre: The Golden Road’ (1973): Representing lesbianism in the 1970s

Posted on September 26, 2013 by billysmart

(Text of a paper given by Billy Smart at ‘Television for Women’, University of Warwick, 17 May 2013) What I’m going to do today is present a long-forgotten drama of some significance to you and – through close textual analysis … Continue reading →

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Excited about apathy: Red Letter Day (Granada, 1976)

Posted on May 18, 2013 by billysmart

(Review of Red Letter Day: The Complete Series, originally published on Tachyon TV, 2011)  Thanks to the canonical status of the BBC’s Wednesday Play and Play for Today, people have a selective memory when it comes to the single play. … Continue reading →

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Beyond the Fourth Wall: Experiments in TV Drama: Samuel Beckett’s Plays on BBC TV

Posted on December 2, 2012 by spaces-of-television

Samuel Beckett is probably best known as a theatre dramatist, but there is a long history of BBC TV presenting dramas that he wrote for specifically for the medium, and also television adaptations of his theatre work (Bignell 2009). In … Continue reading →

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Beyond the Fourth Wall: Experiments in TV Drama: David Bowie in Baal (BBC, 1982)

Posted on November 2, 2012 by billysmart

Alan Clarke’s television production of Bertolt Brecht’s play Baal (BBC1, 2 March 1982) is being screened as part of the ‘Beyond the Fourth Wall: Experiments in TV Drama’ season at BFI Southbank on Friday 30 November. Booking details can be … Continue reading →

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The Cherry Orchard (BBC, 1981)

Posted on October 28, 2012 by billysmart

Although only a handful of stage adaptations for British television were ever made on location on outside broadcast (OB), the technologies and working practices could also be used inside, as well as away from, the studio. This unusual method of … Continue reading →

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