Abstract
One particularly depressing sound still to be heard in the land is the English don who, while lecturing on Shakespeare as a truly popular dramatist whose plays could pack the Globe any afternoon, scorns television drama simply because it caters for a mass audience. Yet it is probable that more people see a single transmission of a television play than saw all of Shakespeare’s plays during his lifetime. Similarly, a modern drama must fill a theatre six nights a week for many years in order to equal the average audience of a ‘Play for Today’.
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Notes
Hugh Whitemore, ‘Word into Image: Reflections on Television Dramatisation’, in Ah! Mischief: The Writer and Television, ed. F. Pike (London: Faber & Faber, 1982) p. 101.
W. Stephen Gilbert, ‘The Television Play: Outside the Consensus’, Screen Education, no. 35 (Summer 1980) p. 35.
Peter Buckman, ‘Illuminations’, The Listener, 19 April, 1979, pp. 554–5.
Shaun Sutton, The Largest Theatre in the World (London: BBC, 1982) p. 20.
Barry Hanson, in ‘The Rise and Fall of the Single Play’, London Weekend Television, 8 April 1979.
Robert Holles, ‘Independent Television and the Single Play’ paper delivered to the Society of Authors, 1979.
David Reid, ‘The Single Play’, in Television and Radio 1980 (London: IBA, 1980) p. 25.
John Bowen, ‘Protecting the Public Story-tellers’, The Times Educational Supplement, 21 May 1982, p. 26.
Michael Bakewell, ‘The Television Production’, in The Wars of the Roses (London: BBC, 1970) pp. 233–4.
Jonathan Raban, ‘Leeds — United!: Drama Making News’, Radio Times, 7 November 1974, p. 82.
Paul Johnson, ‘Journalists as Play Actors’, The Listener, 19 March 1981, pp. 362–3.
Robin Sutch, ‘Reality Principle’, Guardian, 26 August 1980, p. 7.
Raban, in Radio Times, 7 November 1974, p. 82.
Joseph Hone, ‘Saints and Sinners’, The Listener, 14 September 1978, p. 341.
David Wheeler, ‘Faultless Faction’, The Listener, 10 September 1981, p. 282.
John Ellis, Visible Fictions (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982) pp. 121ff. and 145ff.
Patrick Stoddard, ‘Soldiering: A Serious Business’, Broadcast, 28 February 1983, p. 22.
John Naughton, ‘Visual Feasts’, The Listener, 15 October 1981, p. 446.
Peter Fiddick, ‘Soap Operas’, Guardian, 15 April 1980, Arts page.
Peter Buckman, ‘In Praise of Soaps’, The Listener, 19 August 1982, pp. 25–6.
Ibid.
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© 1984 David Self
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Self, D. (1984). Genres and Media. In: Television Drama: An Introduction. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17646-5_1
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