''First Night'' was a

BBC 1 BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, ...

series of contemporary television dramas by new writers, which ran from September 1963 to May 1964 and was the forerunner of ''

The Wednesday Play ''The Wednesday Play'' is an anthology series of United Kingdom, British television plays which ran on BBC One, BBC1 for six seasons from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually original works written for television, although dramati ...

''. The series was produced by

James MacTaggart James MacTaggart (25 April 1928 – 29 May 1974) was a Scottish television producer, director and writer. He worked in London from 1961. Early life MacTaggart was born in Glasgow and served in the Royal Army Service Corps from 1946, rising to ...

.Lez Cooke, ''British Television Drama: A History'', 2015, p. 71, 1844578968 "''Festival'', under

Peter Luke Peter Ambrose Cyprian Luke MC (12 August 1919 – 23 January 1995) was a British writer, editor, and producer. Early years Luke was born in St Albans, he was the first son of Sir Harry Luke and his wife Joyce Evelyn Fremlin. He had wanted to be a ...

, who went with him to the BBC as a producer, was to do the more classical pieces, ancient and modern: plays by

Noël Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and ...

Cocteau Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the su ...

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

, Ionesco, etc. were included in the first 1963–64 season. ''First Night'', produced by John Elliot, was to concentrate on the new writers and was to go out on Sunday night in opposition to ''Armchair Theatre''."

Nigel Kneale Thomas Nigel Kneale (28 April 1922 – 29 October 2006) was a Manx screenwriter who wrote professionally for more than 50 years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and was twice nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British S ...

's ''

The Road ''The Road'' is a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. The book details the grueling journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that ha ...

'' was produced under the show's banner. Only a single episode (''Maggie'') is known to exist. The rest of the series, including ''The Road'', is considered

lost Lost may refer to getting lost, or to: Geography *Lost, Aberdeenshire, a hamlet in Scotland * Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, or LOST, a hiking and cycling trail in Florida, US History *Abbreviation of lost work, any work which is known to have bee ...

References

1963 British television series debuts 1964 British television series endings 1960s British drama television series BBC television dramas Black-and-white British television shows 1960s British anthology television series English-language television shows Lost BBC episodes Social realism {{BBC-tv-prog-stub