What has happened to British TV drama?

[DublinJimbo]

Babylon very very cartoony....stereotyping cameos (in fact everybody was a cameo) + exaggerated characters....the public ; all but invisible until they needed someone shot....codswallop really....

Codswallop is spot on. I gave up after twenty minutes, unable to take any more.

[french frank]

The scheduling is preferred by the broacasters because feature films disrupt their preferred stripped-and-stranded schedules.

So, it is what the broadcasters prefer?

Getting back to aeolium's point about series and value for money. The value being the size of the audience and the money being the relative costs?

[aeolium]

The value being the size of the audience and the money being the relative costs?

Yes, though also perhaps in cost-per-hour in that it is presumably cheaper to mount a 4-part series with the same actors, sets, locations than four different one-off dramas with different locations, cast, etc.

[Honoured Guest]

VFM isn't quite that simplistic, because original drama is expensive and so that limited VFM approach would cut the amount of original drama and increase the amount of feature films and other drama acquisitions.

I think the aim is to make original drama because of its attractiveness to the audience, drawing them to the stationand its other cheaper programming, and for its intrinsic (cultural) value and then to seek to maximise the audience for it, which is a sort of economic VFM as you describe it but is also VFM in terms of boosting the wellbeing of the nation! Series have greater visibility than single dramas, and so they're more likely to reach a bigger audience. I agree that they are also cheaper per minute than original dramas produced to the same standards, and of course that's another reason why broadcasters like them. A downside is that a series can lose its audience in its first weeks, which makes it poor VFM, and so there's sometimes a tendency for series drama to be less risky and brave than single dramas. However, this safeness over time reduces audiences, who are bored, and is then followed by determined efforts of drama commissioners to excite their audiences, so excitement and risk in tv series drama tends to increase and decrease over a cycle of about seven years. Commissioning budget changes speed up and slow down the cycle.

There are still a few single dramas made for BBC, ITV and Channel 4, but they're now not scheduled in series like Play for Today, Screen Two, etc. Nowadays, they tend to individually form part of a big themed season of programmes of various genres, like BBC2's Cold War season last autumn. So interested audiences are fully aware of these dramas and are prepared for them by seeing related documentary, feature and entertainment programmes.

[Honoured Guest]

This has reminded me that Drama on 3 now tries to run themed seasons, like last autumn's Emancipation trio and this winter's Oresteia, and many plays are now introduced with a couple of minutes' talk by the writer or adaptor. Also, the annual live Free Thinking Drama on 3. It's a shame in a way that there's not more scope on Radio 3 for such themed programming which Drama on 3 can form part of. An obvious link-up could be with the Sunday Feature, on occasions. I don't think it's particularly worth exploring links with the music programming, except that the World on 3 Commonwealth Connections could perhaps have linked with a Drama on 3 mini-series. Last Sunday's Drama on 3 was World War I-themed, but I didn't notice any pre-publicity attempt to use this to draw an audience.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i have recently watched the first two series of the original House of Cards with Ian Richardson as Francis Urquhart; in comparison to its American remake with Kevin SPacey several things stand out

the original is darker and more savage
Urquhart is more haunted than Underhill
something in the talking to camera [works very well in both imho] is deeper and more dangerous in the original

and the original has stood the test of time very well

there must surely be an immense[ or very large] archive of classic drama [series/serials/plays] ... might we not be offered these by the networks?

[aeolium]

there must surely be an immense[ or very large] archive of classic drama [series/serials/plays] ... might we not be offered these by the networks?

If only, calum - and the marvellous archive of radio drama, poetry and talks.

I would unhesitatingly swap the whole of what the BBC offers on radio and TV now and may offer in the future for access to these archives.

[Stanley Stewart]

Indeed, CDJ, I've been using the spell of inclement weather to transfer off-air videos of classic drama to DVD - improved picture and sound.

A few days ago, I did a transfer of the first rate ARENA series; Painting the Clouds - a Portrait of Dennis Potter - to DVD. Hard to believe that this extended 90 mins documentary was transmitted at 21.40 hrs on 25th December 2004, on BBC 2, ye gods! Substantial extracts from his work, including segments from the final heart rending interview, along with The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven. 2004 marked the
10th anniversary of Potter's death and the profile charts his childhood, time at Oxford, bid for parliament and subsequent rise as a controversial TV dramatist. This was followed by a BBC 4 screening of Blue Remembered Hills, 65 mins, first shown in 1979, as part of the Play for Today season. Much creativity in several aspects as the adult actors, Colin Welland, Michael Elphick, Robin Ellis, Helen Mirren didn't parody their roles as schoolkids. Fascinating to see quirks of their emerging personalities. I recognised the face of the young actor playing the sad snivelling neurotic in the group but couldn't put a name to the personality. The final credits astonished when John Bird was named!

In an era of draconian cutbacks, isn't it time we saw these golden oldies again?

[Serial_Apologist]

If only, calum - and the marvellous archive of radio drama and talks.

I would unhesitatingly swap the whole of what the BBC offers on radio and TV now and may offer in the future for access to these archives.

This really takes me back to my halcyon early 1970s, when a number of us used to gather at the flat of a friend who had a really good stereo - big Wharfedales placed in opposite corners of his large sittting room - and crash into the enormous pile of cushions that substituted for more conventional furnishings, (in retrospect probably a huge fire risk!), to listen to the plays that were put on on Radio 3 back then. None of us missed not being able to afford a TV!

[Sir Velo]

It's not as though we aren't living in extraordinarily dramatic times. We have recently experienced one of the worst global economic crashes in history; there is revolution and civil war across much of North Africa and the Middle East, as well as a clash of ideas within religions and between fundamentalists and secularism; the world is riven by intense climate extremes with ice storms, floods and drought; there are constant revolutions in communication with the rise of social media and global awareness; there is an unprecedented degree of sexual freedom at least in predominantly secular countries, at the same time clashing with a conservative reaction to that freedom; and a continuing change in our understanding of almost every area of scientific inquiry (which itself has given rise to some excellent plays by Frayn and Stoppard).

Frankly, everything you list there sounds so depressing, I'm glad that none of it has made it onto our screens!

[aeolium]

Frankly, everything you list there sounds so depressing, I'm glad that none of it has made it onto our screens!

(and I didn't even mention terrorism, drugs, corruption etc...)