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 including: 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.
