British Television Drama

[MichaelB]

Likewise, one could only dream of the 1964 Hamlet at Elsinore being shown again.

Well, unlike most British 1960s television, at least that still exists in its entirety, so it's not a completely forlorn hope.

As does the entire fifteen-part 1960 series An Age of Kings, which turned Shakespeare's history plays into a chronological miniseries - and did it surprisingly well. Highlights of that include a young pre-Bond Sean Connery as a distinctly Scottish Hotspur.

[GaryC]

I can confirm this, as I was at the Missing Believed Wiped showing on Sunday at the BFI Southbank where all three of these were shown. (All from 16mm telerecordings from long-gone 405-line originals - well, only half of one of the Who episodes due to time constraints..)

While the two Who episodes were hardly the ones fans would have loved to have turned up, the fact that they have is very encouraging. I certainly wasn't alone in thinking that no more missing Who would turn up at this late stage. There are now 106 missing episodes remaining, so who knows what's sitting unnoticed in someone's private collection, as these were? "The Underwater Menace" Part 2 telerecording had evidently been to Australia and back as it bore censor cuts that had been made there. Fortunately for the future DVD release, those censor trims had been found separately in Australia in 1996!

Emergency - Ward 9 was a half-hour play for BBC2's "Thirty Minute Theatre" broadcast - apparently live - in 1966. The series' story editor and later Potter producer Kenith Trodd was there to introduce the play, and he highlighted the fact that nowadays much of the language in the play would be unacceptably racist. The play is minor Potter, but entertaining enough, and shows some of his themes and techniques in very much embryonic form. I've no idea if this will get a DVD release as there are a lot of BBC Potter plays which have never been lost not yet released. There remain two further missing Potters, both made for the BBC: his debut, The Confidence Course from 1965 and a 1967 Wednesday Play, Message for Posterity.

[colinr0380]

Along with the recent discovery of a couple of thought lost Doctor Who episodes, apparently an early TV play by Dennis Potter has also been rediscovered, Emergency Ward 9

[Calvin]

The much-acclaimed 2001 series In a Land of Plenty is available in its entirety on YouTube courtesy of its production company. Adapted from the Tim Pears novel, it follows one English family through the decades following the Second World War.

[beamish14]

The much-acclaimed 2001 series In a Land of Plenty is available in its entirety on YouTube courtesy of its production company. Adapted from the Tim Pears novel, it follows one English family through the decades following the Second World War.

Thank you so much for this. It aired on BBC America around 2002, and I’ve always wanted to rewatch it

[SeizureMilk]

Not sure where to put this, seeing as this probably isn't worth much attention to warrant a new forum, but I've been watching The IT Crowd recently, and honestly, this is one of the best shows I've seen in awhile, the characters are charming and clever, the humour is very VERY funny (at least from my POV), and the direction is surprisingly solid, right now I'm on Season 2, Ep. 3 so I'll let you kino-watchers know how my journey will go, but in the meanwhile, what are your thoughts on it and what other similar comedies could I potentially watch. Thank you for reading.

[MichaelB]

If you haven't seen Black Books (for my money superior to The IT Crowd), you're in for a major treat - and indeed a welcome reminder of the days when Graham Linehan was primarily known as a superb comedy writer.

Although I gather the roots of his present all-consuming obsession with demonising trans people as much as possible (and by "all-consuming", I mean "to the extent of wrecking his marriage, relationships with formerly close creative partners, and his public reputation, perhaps terminally in all cases") - originated following a negative reaction to a particular episode of The IT Crowd, which he took so personally that it's ultimately led him down this bizarre rabbit hole.

[colinr0380]

I've never seen Black Books but that was a big Channel 4 series that occupied the same Friday night timeslot between Spaced and The IT Crowd. And I only really first became aware of the whole Linehan situation from the mention in Pottergame!

There's not too much like The IT Crowd (Channel 4 moved on to The Inbetweeners as their big show after The IT Crowd came to an end, but that's never been appealing to me. I think that was the point at which I realised that I had 'aged out' of their demographics), but I'd use a search on the actors in the show to check out other things - for instance Matt Berry and Noel Fielding were in the surrealist The Mighty Boosh. Berry and Richard Ayoade came from Gath Marenghi's Darkplace (one of the best series Channel 4 did). Peter Serafinowicz was part of the Simon Pegg-Edgar Wright gang (he's in Spaced and the roommate in Shaun of the Dead) and together with Robert Popper created the fantastic loving parody of 1970s/1980s Schools programmes Look Around You. (I still laugh at the wordplay of the "Look out for the new albumin... it's out now!" line from the narrator in one experiment involving eggs).

Olivia Colman is in the second series of Look Around You, where it went from ten minute programmes to a full blown half hour parody of the BBC's 1980s 'future-tech' Tomorrow's World series. Colman is also one of the main supporting players in the Mitchell and Webb show ("I see you've... started... Blacking up again") which was fantastic, particularly in the way that it brutally satirised the format of television, and gameshows with the increasingly convoluted Numberwang. And then ended its entire run with the most tear-jerking sketch since the end of Blackadder Goes Forth.

In terms of drama-comedies, I quite like Friday Night Dinner, although Two Doors Down much more. From the 2000s, I loved The Smoking Room (which might actually be close to The IT Crowd!) although that series was a casualty of the changing times, being cancelled due to becoming an anachronism once the indoor smoking ban came into effect. I don't smoke, but Robert Webb's deadpan and sarcastic character in that was otherwise all too relatable! And I also like the really radical way that each episode is temporally contained within a single half-hour break with the various combinations of characters coming in and out of the room during each episode, and with no underscore aside from the opening and closing titles. There's been nothing quite like that series since, sadly. Its probably the best piece of media about office workers since Il Posto!

[MichaelB]

Here's future Oscar winner Olivia Colman in perhaps her greatest role.

And one of the absolute high points in my entire Q&A career was hearing this Mitchell & Webb sketch namechecked by the great John Krish - unsurprisingly, he absolutely adored it, and thought that it completely nailed everything that he felt was wrong with modern television documentary. And when that opinion is expressed by someone whose documentary career went right back to working alongside Humphrey Jennings, that carries real weight.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Olivia Coleman was also in the recent very odd comedy, Flowers with Julian Barratt and Will Sharpe. To call it black humour understates things.

I enjoyed all the C4 comedies colin suggests, but The Inbetweeners is better than you might think (it's amusing even if you're not a 15yo boy).

[colinr0380]

Here's future Oscar winner Olivia Colman in perhaps her greatest role.

And one of the absolute high points in my entire Q&A career was hearing this Mitchell & Webb sketch namechecked by the great John Krish - unsurprisingly, he absolutely adored it, and thought that it completely nailed everything that he felt was wrong with modern television documentary. And when that opinion is expressed by someone whose documentary career went right back to working alongside Humphrey Jennings, that carries real weight.

The only dated thing about that clip now is that Channel 5 has since moved on from those kinds of medical shock-docs to a package of salacious real-life murder docs and minor royal expose and/or love-in pieces now, although making sure to carefully avoid touching anything involving Prince Andrew! (Plus shocking product-placement programmes working as hour-long endorsements of various supermarkets like Lidl or Harrods). However it remains relevant because Channel 4 took a turn (presumably prompted by Channel 5 lowering the bar) into the 'sensitive freakshow' programmes instead, which continues unabated to this day.