 |
|
     |
|
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
| Before we continue, let’s
examine what we mean by ‘the single play’. A
single play would have its own unique characters, style
and setting and it would not use those established in
another play – unless the play happened to be a
sequel of course. Situations with established characters
and settings were and are the province of series or
mini-series (hence the inaccurate use mooted in the
opening paragraph) and a story run over a series of
episodes with a finite conclusion would be considered a
serial (unless a block of episodes with the same main
characters and situation appeared, in which case this
would again be considered an ongoing series). This is not to say that the single play could not appear under a linking strand, such as the Play For Tomorrow future-based series, or even just because a set of individual plays shared the same writers, for example in comedy terms the Comedy Playhouse strand which launched amongst others Steptoe and Son, Not In Front Of The Children and The Liver Birds; all were original single comedy plays under the banner. And indeed a lot of the best plays appeared under these and other banners. The output of the single play in Britain in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies was exhaustive and in terms of quality, excellent. In its heyday around the mid to late Sixties, the Drama Group at the BBC would supply approximately 550 separate shows a year with the Plays Department providing about a third of these; the rest would be supplied by the Series and Serials Departments (and the figure does not include plays, series and serials produced by the Children’s Department). At this time, the Head of the Plays Department was Gerald Savory and he saw to it that there was a great diversity in the subject matter covered by the various strands. At this time there were many strands that covered the single play. In the late Sixties, BBC1 would include The Wednesday Play and Play Of The Month as their prestige slots for the format, if that is the correct word, along with an anthology series such as Boy Meets Girl, Make Mine Murder or Three Girls in a Flat. BBC2 would include anthologies such as The Jazz Age or Out Of The Unknown, along with dramatizations of short stories by writers such as Somerset Maugham. It was also known for running strands of plays especially by new writers to television, such as Thirty Minute Theatre, as well as existing ones and other strands included Theatre 625 (a strand that included amongst its output The Year Of The Sex Olympics by Nigel Kneale). And on the commercial channel, plays were considered important too; for example the Armchair Theatre strand would produce many good hours of drama, the strand itself rivalling The Wednesday Play in terms of quality and popularity, as would others such as Mystery and Imagination (see RTS issue 20). Into the Seventies, and while there may have been a cutting back in favour of series or serials (often for reasons of money where costs could be amortised over a run of episodes instead of just one), the single play continued to flourish. The Wednesday Play gave way eventually to Play For Today, but the quality of the output continued right through into the early Eighties. On ITV strands such as Armchair Thriller, Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense, the highly-popular Tales Of The Unexpected (though this is often thought of generally as a series now) kept the commercial flag flying, and flying high. Again, some of these can be thought of as anthologies, but as a means of presenting the single play and keeping it on the screen they worked well. Of course, the single play wasn’t just there as a source of good, one-off entertainment. While it was comedy not drama, the early mentioned Comedy Playhouse banner produced a lot of new series from single plays and a lot of it came from new writers. Strands for comedy and drama plays were seen as the best place for new writers to try their hand at television writing, and this could lead to them getting their first real breaks for series writing. Plenty of well known television writers such as Andrew Davies and David Nobbs started out on the single play, and it was through these strands that a lot of our best writers, and best series came about. So to get back to the original question, what went wrong? Did they provide good entertainment, the first and foremost reason for producing them? Yes. Did they provide breaks for new writing talent which could later be called upon to fashion new and popular series and serials as well as plays? Yes. Were the plays popular with the audience and did they get good ratings? Yes. So why did they disappear? In the final analysis, ‘money makes the world go around’ or more often than not, down a very dark, black pit. And into the black pit in the Eighties and onwards has sunk the single play because ‘first nights’ are the most expensive. As stated, serials and series are cheaper because costs can be spread out over the run; plays have no such ability and are therefore considered an expensive luxury. Also, a play strand could afford to experiment with say, a historical-based piece one week, a science fiction piece the next, one set in contemporary London the next etcetera, etcetera. As Gerald Savory wrote in the BBC’s own in-house magazine Ariel in December 1968; “One of the reasons that BBC-tv Drama is the envy of Europe is… that no attempt is made to please everyone at the same time by inventing an ‘average’ viewer. We respect the taste of the individual and aim at both pleasing and stimulating him.” The chances of that happening now is very remote indeed. The average viewer is, more often than not, what is looked to to provide the biggest ratings winner, and so those considered to be the successor to the single play – the two or three part mini-series – reflect similar themes and yarns over and over again with subtle variations. And of course, spread over more than one night’s viewing, the makers can point to them as providing good value for money. Hmmm… This is not to say that has not been any good work since the single play format died a death; that is simply not true. But it does make it more difficult for new writers to emerge and for genres not of the ‘kitchen sink’ brigade or ‘violent crime’ saga to be represented on screen in an age when those genres reflect normal life that a lot of us would like to get away from at home in our own living rooms, or at least have the option of doing so. The single play reflected good value for money – creatively, as did the anthology. It would seem that creativity has been nipped in the bud for the most part. Whether the single play and anthology will ever recover and re-emerge onto our screens we will have to wait and see. But to improve the diversity of the output already there, they are most sorely needed. article copyright PPS / M.Hearn 2005 |