''Telecrime'' was a British
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...
series
Series may refer to:
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* Caroline Series (born 1951), English mathematician, daughter of George Series
* George Series (1920–1995), English physicist
Arts, entertainment, and media
Music
* Series, the ordered sets used in ...
that aired on the
BBC Television Service from 1938 to 1939 and in 1946. One of the first multi-episode drama series ever made, it is also one of the first television dramas written especially for television not adapted from
theatre
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...
or
radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...
. Having first aired for five episodes from 1938 to 1939, ''Telecrime'' returned in 1946, following the resumption of television after the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, and aired as ''Telecrimes''.
A
whodunit
A ''whodunit'' or ''whodunnit'' (a colloquial elision of "Who asdone it?") is a complex plot-driven variety of detective fiction in which the puzzle regarding who committed the crime is the main focus. The reader or viewer is provided with the cl ...
crime drama
Crime films, in the broadest sense, is a film genre inspired by and analogous to the crime fiction literary genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and its detection. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine ...
, ''Telecrime'' showed the viewer enough evidence to solve the crime themselves. Most episodes were written by Mileson Horton. All seventeen episodes are lost. Aired
live
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* ''Live!'' (2007 film), 2007 American film
* ''Live'' (2014 film), a 2014 Japanese film
*'' ''Live'' (Apocalyptica DVD)
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* List of albums ...
, their preservation was technically difficult at the time.
Production
The
producers
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for the 1946 series were
Gordon Crier
Gordon Crier (1912 – 16 September 1984) was a Scottish radio and television producer and writer.
His early successes included ''Band Waggon'', the first comedy show designed for radio, broadcast by the BBC from 1938 to 1940, co-produced by Crier ...
, Stephen Harrison and Douglas Muir.
Plot
Each episode of ''Telecrime'' featured a crime, and in a "
whodunit
A ''whodunit'' or ''whodunnit'' (a colloquial elision of "Who asdone it?") is a complex plot-driven variety of detective fiction in which the puzzle regarding who committed the crime is the main focus. The reader or viewer is provided with the cl ...
" storyline, the viewers were given enough evidence to solve the crime themselves.
Episodes
The programme first aired, as ''Telecrime'', for five episodes from 10 August 1938 to 25 July 1939 on the BBC Television Service. Each episode was ten or twenty minutes long. During the Second World War, the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
suspended its television service. The channel was brought back on 7 June 1946. From 22 October to 28 November that year, ''Telecrimes'', as it was now called, aired for a further twelve episodes.
Each 1946 episode was fifteen minutes long. As was typical at the time, all the episodes were aired
and no recording was made, meaning none survive.
The only visual record that survives of the programme is a single publicity photograph.