British Television Drama

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Belmondo
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#1 Post by Belmondo » Fri Jan 11, 2008 3:13 pm

Never been to England, never watched British TV, but, I have spent a small fortune on various DVDs of British television dramatic series. Too many to name (although I will if you insist) - but the point is that I love just about all of them and am ready to conclude that the Brits know how to do this stuff better than we do.

Yes, we have THE SOPRANOS and THE WIRE and a dozen others, and it raises the following question - is British drama really better, or do we just get the high quality stuff here in America when British TV is really no better than American TV?

I just learned that Jane Austen's PERSUASION (the 1995 version with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds) was made for British television but released in America as a first run movie. We can argue that THE WIRE is every bit as good as JEWEL IN THE CROWN, but I'll run out of American examples long before I run out of British examples.

Or, am I just an Anglophile and completely wrongheaded as usual?

Foulard
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#2 Post by Foulard » Fri Jan 11, 2008 4:00 pm

As someone who's also watched a lot of British TV drama (mostly 60s-70s) I think the writer has had a bigger profile in England than in the US--Most title sequences on BBC and ITV shows include with "By (writer)" as a prominent credit at the beginning.

I think budgetary matters may have also played a role--videotaped dramas died out in the US in the fifties, but continued in the UK for decades after. That medium lends itself to a more dialogue-driven plot. Bigger American budgets lend themselves to more spectacle.

Also, American series have generally had 24-30 episodes per season (decreasing in more recent years), where British series tend to run 6 to 13 episodes per series. I think that encourages more careful writing.

After that, you could include cultural differences--a more verbal culture there?

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tryavna
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#3 Post by tryavna » Fri Jan 11, 2008 4:29 pm

Foulard wrote:Also, American series have generally had 24-30 episodes per season (decreasing in more recent years), where British series tend to run 6 to 13 episodes per series. I think that encourages more careful writing.
I've always felt that that makes a huge difference, especially since writing staffs for individual British tv shows are typically much smaller than here in the U.S. As a result, British shows are typically more focused, more consistent, and less padded than their American counterparts.

At the same time, however, I lived for a time in Britain, and my sense is that they have their fair share of clunkers, too. The clunkers are just less likely to be exported.

Then again, we have British television to blame for American Idol and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire -- since the format of each originated over there.

Also, it's worth pointing out that some of the Brits I've met in America are consistently surprised by some of their older shows that have attained popularity over here. Are You Being Served?, which used to be shown on PBS over here, seems to be the biggest shocker to many. It'd be like some British channel trying to pass off The Beverly Hillbillies as the height of American television culture.

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Antoine Doinel
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#4 Post by Antoine Doinel » Fri Jan 11, 2008 4:47 pm

tryavna wrote:Then again, we have British television to blame for American Idol and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire -- since the format of each originated over there.
Let's not forget that short lived phenomenon - The Weakest Link.

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Gregory
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#5 Post by Gregory » Fri Jan 11, 2008 9:57 pm

Maybe someone here can help me with a recommendation. I was recently given a box set of the BBC's George Bernard Shaw productions (I've listed the contents below). I've seen a couple of other BBC theatre programs in the past and thought they were pretty so-so. Were any of these outstanding or particularly worthy of being watched by someone who's interested in these but not necessarily a big fan?
The Millionairess (1972), Mrs. Warren's Profession (1972), Pygmalion (1973), Heartbreak House (1977), The Devil's Disciple (1987), Arms and the Man (1989), plus bonus plays The Apple Cart (1972), You Never Can Tell (1977), The Man of Destiny (1981), Androcles and the Lion (1984)

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tavernier
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#6 Post by tavernier » Fri Jan 11, 2008 10:20 pm

British actors doing Shaw plays? Sounds like a can't-miss.

Now if I knew which actors.....

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Ste
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#7 Post by Ste » Fri Jan 11, 2008 10:57 pm

It's been a while since I posted here -- work overwhelmed me during much of 2007 -- but this post piqued my interest.

As a British ex-pat living in the States I miss U.K. TV terribly. American telly has its own peculiar charm, but you can't beat a good BBC drama. For Xmas, a friend in England sent me Funland, which is the most remarkable thing I've seen in ages. It is co-written by one of the guys from The League of Gentlemen, and is extremely dark and rip-roaringly funny in equal measure. My girlfriend and I sat down to check it out at about 7PM one evening and didn't get up until we'd seen all 11 episodes -- six hours straight through. Gripping stuff, thoroughly recommended.

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Belmondo
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#8 Post by Belmondo » Fri Jan 11, 2008 11:32 pm

Gregory wrote:Maybe someone here can help me with a recommendation. I was recently given a box set of the BBC's George Bernard Shaw productions (I've listed the contents below). I've seen a couple of other BBC theatre programs in the past and thought they were pretty so-so. Were any of these outstanding or particularly worthy of being watched by someone who's interested in these but not necessarily a big fan?
The Millionairess (1972), Mrs. Warren's Profession (1972), Pygmalion (1973), Heartbreak House (1977), The Devil's Disciple (1987), Arms and the Man (1989), plus bonus plays The Apple Cart (1972), You Never Can Tell (1977), The Man of Destiny (1981), Androcles and the Lion (1984)
Having a hell of a hard time finding reviews or info on these; but my unreliable sources indicate that:
ARMS AND THE MAN is quite good and has an early strong performance from Helena Bonham Carter.
PYGMALION is excellent and James Villiers and Lynn Redgrave are both terrific though some say Redgrave is too old for the role.
THE MILLIONAIRESS gets a mixed response but Maggie Smith and a young (yummy) Helen Mirren are great.
HEARTBREAK HOUSE has a peculiar performance from John Gielgud and a good one from Leslie-Anne Down.
Simon Callow is in one of these somewhere.
All of these may be stagebound and victims of limited budgets ... and that is the sum total of my received knowledge.

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Gropius
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#9 Post by Gropius » Sat Jan 12, 2008 2:29 am

Belmondo wrote:Never been to England, never watched British TV, but, I have spent a small fortune on various DVDs of British television dramatic series. Too many to name (although I will if you insist) - but the point is that I love just about all of them and am ready to conclude that the Brits know how to do this stuff better than we do.
Amusing that you should suggest this, since the TV critics of British newspapers regularly praise the higher production values of HBO-type American shows, and complain that nothing similar gets made here. So it's probably partly a 'grass is always greener' phenomenon.

If there was a 'golden age' of British TV drama, then I think it's already long past. Commercialisation and the chase for ratings have led to a preference for gameshows and other ready-made formats. When 'serious' drama is produced, it's mostly from the same tired handful of nineteenth-century novels (or some ersatz emulation thereof), diluted and injected with superficial eroticism for a popular audience. There are exceptions, of course (e.g. Peter Kosminsky's The Government Inspector, Channel 4, 2005), but I don't watch enough television to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Going back to the historical perspective, I suppose British broadcast media was originally more centralised than in America; state involvement in the BBC gave it a sense of educational/non-commercial purpose which allowed for a certain creative latitude (e.g. the 60s work of Ken Russell, Peter Watkins, Jonathan Miller, etc.). Channel 4 was founded in the 1980s with a similar remit, giving a platform to the likes of Peter Greenaway. However, as neoliberalism has further spread its tendrils, governments and the chairmen they endorse have become increasingly hostile to non-market logic, which naturally leads to the penalisation of programmes which are not instant Saturday night hits. (One could also point to the knock-on effect of the proliferation of satellite/digital channels, spreading the viewers and therefore funding/revenue more thinly.)

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MichaelB
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#10 Post by MichaelB » Mon Jan 14, 2008 10:42 am

Gropius wrote:If there was a 'golden age' of British TV drama, then I think it's already long past. Commercialisation and the chase for ratings have led to a preference for gameshows and other ready-made formats. When 'serious' drama is produced, it's mostly from the same tired handful of nineteenth-century novels (or some ersatz emulation thereof), diluted and injected with superficial eroticism for a popular audience.
But I don't think this is a particularly new phenomenon - it's not as though the 1960s and 1970s were stuffed to the gills with subtly-drawn, textually-aware adaptations! And I'd certainly rank, say, the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, the 2005 Bleak House and the very recent Cranford alongside any other highly-praised adaptations from earlier - and they're clearly far superior in production values.
There are exceptions, of course (e.g. Peter Kosminsky's The Government Inspector, Channel 4, 2005), but I don't watch enough television to sort the wheat from the chaff.
There's plenty of wheat out there for those prepared to look for it - only a few weeks ago we had the second series of Jimmy McGovern's The Street, whose final episode (the one starring Toby Kebbell) had just about the most electrifying writing I've encountered in any medium in 2007, with McGovern on a form that he hasn't hit since the mid-1990s (Cracker, Priest, Hillsborough).

And I'd argue that the best British television writers - currently Paul Abbott and Russell T Davies - are several notches above their big-screen counterparts in terms of consistency of quality and invention, though I suspect that's largely because TV is still a more attractive medium for writers. And McGovern, Abbott and Davies have each been encouraging the development of new writers through the likes of The Street, Shameless and Dr Who.
Going back to the historical perspective, I suppose British broadcast media was originally more centralised than in America; state involvement in the BBC gave it a sense of educational/non-commercial purpose which allowed for a certain creative latitude (e.g. the 60s work of Ken Russell, Peter Watkins, Jonathan Miller, etc.).
The key word here being the qualifying "a certain" - both Russell and Watkins ended up angrily breaking links with the BBC over what they saw as its refusal to defend their work (this was over The War Game in 1965 and Dance of the Seven Veils in 1970). And Miller has had several disagreements with the BBC over the years - he agreed to produce the third and fourth series of the BBC Television Shakespeare project in the early 1980s, but was deeply unhappy with the creative straightjacket imposed by its US backers (which, amongst other things, led Ingmar Bergman and Peter Brook to turn down commissions).

(This is a very underrated series, incidentally - unfortunately, there seemed to be an inverse ratio between the quality of the production and the fame of the play, so everyone remembers the dreadful Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It and The Tempest while forgetting the outstanding Henry VIII, All's Well That Ends Well, Cymbeline and King John!)
Channel 4 was founded in the 1980s with a similar remit, giving a platform to the likes of Peter Greenaway.
The original remit still stands, but it's worth noting that Channel Four was arguably primarily responsible for the death of the traditional writer-oriented television drama. When it first began broadcasting, Play For Today was still running on BBC1 (a series that, amongst others, produced such modern classics as Edna the Inebriate Woman, Penda's Fen, Abigail's Party, Blue Remembered Hills and even Scum, though that wasn't broadcast at the time) - but Channel Four's ties with the film industry led to a much more self-consciously "cinematic" approach to television drama, with the result that audiences developed higher expectations of production values and the older studio-based dramas virtually died out.
However, as neoliberalism has further spread its tendrils, governments and the chairmen they endorse have become increasingly hostile to non-market logic, which naturally leads to the penalisation of programmes which are not instant Saturday night hits. (One could also point to the knock-on effect of the proliferation of satellite/digital channels, spreading the viewers and therefore funding/revenue more thinly.)
Your second reason is actually the main one - Channel Four would not have been able to survive into the 1990s in its original form regardless of the government's political philosophy. It's easy to wax nostalgic about the days when it showed a near-complete Tarkovsky retrospective at 9pm on Saturday nights (in early 1989, for the record), but that was when Britain only had four television channels and so it could grab a decent share of the audience by default.

The satellite/cable/digital revolution changed the broadcasting landscape beyond recognition, and most high-culture small-audience stuff is now confined to digital channels like BBC4 and More4. And the problem there is that their production budgets are tiny, as BBC4's The Alan Clark Diaries and Fanny Hill demonstrated only too clearly.

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MichaelB
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#11 Post by MichaelB » Mon Jan 14, 2008 10:47 am

tryavna wrote:Also, it's worth pointing out that some of the Brits I've met in America are consistently surprised by some of their older shows that have attained popularity over here. Are You Being Served?, which used to be shown on PBS over here, seems to be the biggest shocker to many. It'd be like some British channel trying to pass off The Beverly Hillbillies as the height of American television culture.
I spent the summer of 1996 in the US, and was delighted to see that PBS was regularly screening episodes of Yes, Minister (arguably the single best-written and most consistently intelligent series of the 1980s in any genre - calling it a sitcom doesn't really do it justice). While I was there, they axed these in favour of Are You Being Served?, massively increasing the audience - but the quality plunge was truly vertiginous.

Anthony Burgess once wrote that Barbara Cartland was a very dangerous woman because in many countries her books were the sole representatives of English literature that were easily available. Much the same is true of dreck like Are You Being Served?, and indeed Benny Hill's output.

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colinr0380
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#12 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:39 am

This is probably the most appropriate place to continue banging on about the quality of Channel 4's Longford drama. It was interesting to see that it won best actor, actress and best made for television film at the Golden Globes - it is great to see but I'm surprised as I wouldn't have thought the subject matter would have travelled that well.

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nyasa
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#13 Post by nyasa » Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:53 am

We can't mention Channel Four without mentioning Alan Bleasdale. Boys from the Blackstuff (actually broadcast on BBC2) captured the zeitgeist of the early 80s, while G.B.H. did the same for the early 90s.

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Zazou dans le Metro
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#14 Post by Zazou dans le Metro » Mon Jan 14, 2008 12:41 pm

colinr0380 wrote:This is probably the most appropriate place to continue banging on about the quality of Channel 4's Longford drama. It was interesting to see that it won best actor, actress and best made for television film at the Golden Globes - it is great to see but I'm surprised as I wouldn't have thought the subject matter would have travelled that well.
I don't think that the Brady Hindley affair and the Moors murders carry the same murky undertow as in the UK. Possibly someone US based can refute that, I don't know. And also Peter Morgan the scriptwriter is on a Hollywood roll at the moment after The Queen and Ron Howard setting to with his Frost/Nixon.

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Hai2u
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#15 Post by Hai2u » Thu Feb 07, 2008 9:20 pm

I loved Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People. Of course there's also The Avengers and The Prisoner, but I haven't seen many episodes of either. My little 11 year old brother is a big Dr. Who fan, the current somewhat campy David Tennant one, and the older versions with the more memorable 4th Doctor Tom Baker. More recently however, Torchwood has been my guilty British TV pleasure, even if the protagonist IS an American.

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Rsdio
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#16 Post by Rsdio » Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:45 am

This is an interesting topic, because the general consensus as I've always found it has been that we're leagues behind the US when it comes to TV. I've often heard or read the flipsides of a lot of these arguments, one example being that while you might say that being limited to six shows per series encourages tighter writing you could also argue that it's very limiting when it comes to developing themes and characters, I can remember quite a few occasions when I've just been starting to get interested in something only to find there's practically nothing left to see. Something like The Wire wouldn't ever be possible with the way things are structured here, but maybe that's just an exception that uses the extra time wisely. To be honest, when I try to think of television from the past twenty years that I've really loved I think there's only The Wire and Twin Peaks, I don't watch much at all so I'm not qualified to make any comments on the argument myself but it does seem as if it may just be a case of the grass always being greener.

rollotomassi
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#17 Post by rollotomassi » Fri Feb 08, 2008 4:15 pm

Where to begin with UK TV drama...some of these have been discussed already,. but the pinnacle see the following.

Pennies from Heaven (1978) and The Singing Detective (1986) by Dennis Potter
Boys from the Blackstuff (1982) and GBH (1991) by Alan Bleasdale
Our Friends in the North (1996) by Peter Flannery
Shooting the Past (1999) by Stephen Poliakoff
State of Play (2003) by Paul Abbott
Cracker (1993-1996) by Jimmy McGovern

Of the costume dramas...

The Forsyte Saga (1967) BBC
The Caesars (1968) ITV
Upstairs, Downstairs (1971-1975) ITV
Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill (1974) ITV
Edward the Seventh (1975) ITV
I, Claudius (1976) BBC
Brideshead Revisited (1981) ITV Granada
The Jewel in the Crown (1984) ITV Granada
Pride and Prejudice (1995) BBC
A Dance to the Music of Time (1997) C4
Our Mutual Friend (1998) BBC
Bleak House (2005) BBC

Of the TV plays, these always stand tallest

Elgar (1962) K Russell
Cathy Come Home (1966) K Loach
Abigail's Party (1977) M Leigh
Blue Remembered Hills (1979) D Potter
Made in Britain (1982) A Clarke
1984 (1954) original TV version

for documentaries

Alistair Cooke's America (1972)
Civilisation (1969) K Clark
The Blue Planet (2001) D Attenborough
The Ascent of Man (1973) J Bronowski
A History of Britain (2000-2002) S Schama
Walking With Dinosaurs (1999)
In Search of the Trojan War (1985) M Wood
The Power of Art (2006) S Schama
Auschwitz (2005) L Rees
Culloden (1964) P Watkins
The War Game (1965) P Watkins

The best of the rest...

Barmitzvah Boy (1976)
Blackpool (2004)
Bleak House (1985)
Caught on a Train (1980)
Clarissa (1991)
Cranford (2007)
Daniel Deronda (2002)
Edge of Darkness (1985)
Elizabeth R (1971)
The First Churchills (1969)
Gormenghast (2000)
Gulag (1999)
Hearts and Minds (1995)
Hillsborough (1996)
House of Cards (1990)
How Green Was My Valley (1975)
In a Land of Plenty (2001)
In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great (1998)
Jesus of Nazareth (1977)
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1982)
Lillie (1978)
Longitude (2000)
The Lost Boys (1978)
Middlemarch (1994)
The Naked Civil Servant (1975)
The Nazis: A Warning from History (1997)
Nuts in May (1976)
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1989)
The Pallisers (1974)
People's Century (1995-1999)
Perfect Strangers (2001)
Prime Suspect (1991)
The Rainbow (1988)
Scum (1977)
Sex Traffic (2004)
The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970)
Song of Summer - Delius (1968)
Talking Heads (1987)
This Life (1996-1997)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979)
Traffik (1989)
Vanity Fair (1998)

That'll be enough to keep anyone busy.

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nyasa
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#18 Post by nyasa » Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:52 pm

I'd add to your documentary list the two recent art/travel series presented by Brian Sewell:

The Naked Pilgrim & Grand Tour

I missed them both first time round (they were on Channel 5, for which I never bother reading the listings), but have since got them both on DVD. They're both right up there with the other crown jewels of British TV documentary.

There's a taster here.

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MichaelB
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#19 Post by MichaelB » Fri Feb 08, 2008 7:34 pm

Ken Russell's Elgar should be on the "documentaries" list - in fact, Peter Watkins' films are arguably closer to dramas!

(Russell used actors, but they don't speak, and the only voice we hear is Huw Wheldon's commentary)

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#20 Post by rollotomassi » Sat Feb 09, 2008 9:13 am

Quite right, Michael B, I would agree with that correction on Russell.

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NABOB OF NOWHERE
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#21 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Sat Feb 09, 2008 10:05 am

Let's not forget all those wonderful 'Plays for Today' and some memorable drama courtesy of the Daves - Edgar, Hare, Rudkin and Mercer.

They were the days of true issue led drama not the 'Helpline' emetic pap we're served up with now. You know the scene...."If you've been affected by this TV program ring 0800 etc etc " I fantasize about that treacly mouthed voice coming on and saying just once." if you've been affected by this drama. ... good !"

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colinr0380
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#22 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Feb 09, 2008 11:09 am

I want to mention Traffik again as I love this series. I prefer the Michael Douglas/Erika Christensen drug subplot to the similar Bill Paterson/Julia Ormond scenes but would rate the rest of the mini series just above the Soderbergh film - although the beauty of the adaptation is that just by shifting countries the film gets the chance to distance itself from the mini series and tackle some different issues.

Considering the invasion of Afghanistan has not provided any real solution to the problem of opium growing there, with no real alternatives provided to match the amount of money made from planting the poppies, that aspect of Traffik remains as current as ever.

I have been trying to think of some UK drama series that caught my attention:

Pinochet In Suburbia - The only film to have the guts to puncture New Labour's complete lack of principles until The Queen came along!

Mosley - I remember this 1998 series recreating the life of the founder of the British Union of Facists causing quite a stir in the press, but it also had some very funny scenes of Mosley fawning over Mussolini!

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (1996) - I think this six part series was fatally hurt by going out on BBC2 at the same time The X Files was at its most popular and had just been transferred to the major BBC1 channel.

An adaptation of Alain De Botton's book How Proust Can Change Your Life (2000).

Belle Époque (1995) - a three part adaptation of an unmade Truffaut script featuring Kristin Scott-Thomas and Benno Fürmann.

The ill-fated, expensive, yet fascinating adaptations of Rhodes and Nostromo from 1996.

Surrealissimo: The Scandalous World of Salvador Dali (2002)

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zedz
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#23 Post by zedz » Sat Feb 09, 2008 8:49 pm

More additions. There's a lot more Alan Clarke work that needs to be noted. Elephant, certainly, belongs among the best of the best, but don't forget Penda's Fen, Christine, Contact and Made in Britain - and maybe The Firm.

And the Dennis Potter-written Casanova is one of his most important serials, as much or more of a precursor to The Singing Detective as Pennies from Heaven. His strange, slow Mayor of Casterbridge with Alan Bates is worth checkiing out as well: it goes against the grain of many literary adaptations by adapting specific scenes in detail and at length and then eliding large stretches of the story in order to fit the novel into the time available. So it's simultaneously heel-dragging and headlong.

I also have strong memories of The Old Man at the Zoo, particularly its unexpectedly apocalyptic finale, but have no idea how it woould have aged over the last couple of decades.

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MichaelB
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#24 Post by MichaelB » Sun Feb 10, 2008 4:39 am

rollotomassi wrote:Of the TV plays, these always stand tallest

Elgar (1962) K Russell
Cathy Come Home (1966) K Loach
Abigail's Party (1977) M Leigh
Blue Remembered Hills (1979) D Potter
Made in Britain (1982) A Clarke
1984 (1954) original TV version
Why 'D Potter' and not 'B Gibson'?

Or, conversely, why 'K Loach'/'A Clarke' and not 'J Sandford'/'D Leland'?

Auteurist quibbling aside, there's a major omission from the lists above - aside from the brilliant but inevitable Talking Heads, no-one's mentioned Alan Bennett.

For me, he comfortably ranks alongside Dennis Potter as Britain's most important and innovative television playwright, though he gets fewer plaudits because his work is much subtler and the fact that many (though by no means all) of his plays have laugh-out-loud funny moments, coupled with Bennett's own extremely (though also deceptively) familiar persona, mean that they're often undervalued.

Talking Heads and the four feature films (A Private Function, Prick Up Your Ears, The Madness of King George, The History Boys) are only the tip of a very large iceberg, which includes his wonderful TV debut A Day Out (Renoir's Une Partie de Campagne transplanted to pre-WWI Yorkshire), the moving Sunset Across the Bay (a thinly disguised portrait of his own parents, relocating to seaside retirement that turns out to be less than the idyll they'd envisaged), the 1978 series Six Plays By Alan Bennett, the 1982 series Objects of Affection (also six individual plays, including his first television monologue), the appropriately Kafkaesque The Insurance Man (with a young Daniel Day Lewis as Kafka) and the two masterly spy dramas An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution. And while they don't count as plays as such, there are also marvellous examples of Bennett's television writing in observational documentaries such as Dinner at Noon and Portrait or Bust.

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#25 Post by rollotomassi » Sun Feb 10, 2008 9:20 am

MichaelB, you do point out some ommissions, but in truth, my list was the tip of the iceberg, there are others. I didn't mention the BBC Shakespeare films, of which The Taming of the Shrew, Richard III, Richard II, Hamlet Prince of Denmark and others are the highlights. Likewise, one could only dream of the 1964 Hamlet at Elsinore being shown again.

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