British Television Drama: A History

by Lez Cooke

This book illuminates the varied history of British television drama in one volume for the first time--from its beginnings on the BBC in the '30s and '40s to its position at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Lez Cooke examines the significant developments during these sixty years of television live TV drama before the '60s such as the legendary Nineteen Eighty-Four, the important shift to pre-recorded and filmed drama in the '60s and '70s, the impact of ITV's populist drama series ( Emergency Ward Ten, Coronation Street ), telefantasies of the '60s ( The Avengers, The Prisoner ), the controversial drama-documentaries of the '60s and the '70s ( The War Game, Law and Order) , the responses to Thatcherism in the '80s ( Boys from the Blackstuff, Edge of Darkness ), the heritage dramas of the '80s and '90s (from Brideshead Revisited to Pride and Prejudice ), and the stylish '90s dramas like Queer as Folk, Between the Lines, This Life and Cold Feet.
The book concludes with an assessment of the changes in British TV drama over its eventful history, especially examining the accusation that there has been a decline in the production of radical and progressive drama in the last twenty years.

226 pages, Paperback

First published August 6, 2003

Reviews

[Stuart Douglas · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a real need for a good history of British TV drama (there's a real need for more good books on UK tv in general) - and this is almost that book. Full of interesting facts and with a decent critical analysis behind it, it mainly falls down in being occasionally poorly written (the tendency to mark every word taken from a quotation in qwuotes, even if it's a single common word is distracting) and often repetitive (the author will make the same point, in almost the exact same words, within the space of a few peages).

Still, this is a decent attempt at a history of a large and sprawling area which does manage to cover a lot of ground (if to uneven effect) in quite a short length.

[[ J o ] · Rating 2 out of 5]

to review at a later date - possibly even re-read at a later date as well, though not urgent ]