Everything about The Wednesday Play totally explained
The Wednesday Play was a
British television play which ran on
BBC1 from
1964 to
1970. Every week this drama anthology series presented a different play, usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources were also presented. The series gained a reputation for presenting gritty contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that wouldn't otherwise have been discussed on screen.
The series was initiated by the BBC's Head of Drama
Sydney Newman, who had previously enjoyed great success with the similar programme
Armchair Theatre, which he'd produced while Head of Drama at
ABC Television from
1958 to
1962.
Armchair Theatre had tackled many difficult and socially relevant subjects in the then-popular "kitchen sink" style, and still managed to gain a mass audience on the
ITV network, and Newman wanted a programme that would be able to tackle similar issues with a broad appeal. He also wanted to get away from the BBC's reputation of producing very 'safe' and unchallenging drama programmes, to produce something with more bite and vigour.
The Wednesday Play certainly succeeded in the latter task, with one of its productions,
1965's
The War Game, being banned from broadcast by a nervous BBC under pressure from the government. Written and directed by
Peter Watkins,
The War Game was a drama-documentary showing the effects of a nuclear attack on the UK in graphic detail. The production was given a cinematic release, and won the
1966 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. It was eventually screened by the BBC in the
1980s.
Other high profile
Wednesday Plays which did make it to the screen included
Dennis Potter's
Nigel Barton plays (
1965), which first brought him to widespread public attention, and Potter also contributed several other scripts to the series, including a version of
Alice in Wonderland (1965) and
Son of Man (
1969), a modern interpretation of the story of
Jesus.
Director
Ken Loach made two highly regarded plays for the series: an adaptation of
Nell Dunn's
Up the Junction (
1965) and the saga of a homeless young couple and their battle to keep their children,
Cathy Come Home (
1966). The success of
Up the Junction led to a
1967 cinematic version, setting a trend for film versions of successful or controversial BBC television plays that would continue for some years.
The Wednesday Play came to an end in
1970 when the transmission day changed, and the series morphed into the equally well-remembered
Play for Today. It is regarded as one of the most influential and successful programmes to be produced in Britain during the
1960s, and is still frequently referenced and discussed to this day. In a
2000 poll of industry professionals conducted by the
British Film Institute to find the
100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the
20th century, two
Wednesday Plays made the list:
The War Game was placed twenty-seventh, and
Cathy Come Home was voted the second greatest British television programme of the century.
Some examples of
The Wednesday Play, such as
The War Game,
Cathy Come Home and some of the Potter plays, are available on
VHS and
DVD. However, as with much British television of the
1960s, not all of the series survives in the archives, many episodes having been
wiped.
Further Information
Get more info on 'The Wednesday Play'.
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