''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 dramatic adaptations of fiction (and occasionally stage plays) also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen. Some of British television drama's most influential, and controversial, plays were shown in this slot, including ''Up the Junction (The Wednesday Play), Up the Junction'' and ''Cathy Come Home''. The earliest television plays of Dennis Potter were featured in this slot.

History

Origins and early seasons

The series was suggested to the BBC's Head of Drama, Sydney Newman, by the corporation's director of television Kenneth Adam after his cancellation of the two previous series of single plays.Oliver Wake
"Wednesday Play, The (1964-70)"
BFI Screenonline. Newman had been persuaded to join the BBC following the success of the similar programme ''Armchair Theatre'', which he had produced while Head of Drama at ABC Weekend TV from 1958 to 1962. ''Armchair Theatre'' had tackled many difficult and socially relevant subjects in the then-popular 'Kitchen sink realism, kitchen sink' style, and still managed to gain a mass audience on the ITV (TV network), ITV network, and Newman wanted a programme that would be able to tackle similar issues with a broad appeal. Newman also wanted to get away from the BBC's reputation of producing safe and unchallenging drama programmes, to produce something with more bite and vigour, what Newman called "agitational contemporaneity". ''The Wednesday Play'' succeeded in meeting this aim, and the BBC quickly developed the practice of stockpiling six or seven ''Wednesday Plays'' in case there were problems with individual works. One production, ''The War Game'' (1965), was withdrawn from broadcast by a nervous BBC under pressure from the government, while John Hopkins (screenwriter), John Hopkins' ''Fable (TV play), Fable'' (20 January 1965),Mark Dugui
"Fable (1965)"
BFI Screenonline. an inversion of South Africa's Apartheid system, was delayed for several weeks over fears that it would incite racial tensions. Intended as a vehicle for new writers, several careers began thanks to the series. Television programmes had a much shorter lead time in this era, and Dennis Potter's first four accepted television plays were shown during the course of 1965. The two The Nigel Barton Plays, Nigel Barton plays (8 and 15 December 1965) first brought him to widespread public attention and the slightly earlier ''#Alice, Alice'' (13 October 1965), about Lewis Carroll's relationship with Alice Liddell, developed themes to which Potter would return. In the first half of 1966 a series of 26 ''Wednesday Plays'' were produced by Peter Luke, the playwright, and story edited by David Benedictus. Highlights included ''#The Snow Ball, The Snow Ball'' (20 April 1966),Irene Shubik, ''Play for Today: the evolution of television drama'', Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000 [1975], p. 46 adapted from the novel by Brigid Brophy, ''#Toddler on the Run, Toddler on the Run'' adapted by Shena Mackay from her novella and directed by James MacTaggart, (25 May 1966), ''#Cock, Hen, and Courting Pit, Cock Hen and Courting Pit'' (renamed ''A Tour of the Old Floorboards'', 22 June 1966) by David Halliwell and two plays by Frank O'Connor (which Hugh Leonard adapted)Madeleine MacMurragh-Kavanagh and Stephen Lacey "Who Framed Theatre?: The 'Moment of Change' in British TV Drama" in ''New Theatre Quarterly'', No.57, February 1999, p. 69. virtually without dialogue and which, renamed ''#Silent Song, Silent Song'', won The Prix Italia award in 1967 for 'original dramatic programmes' jointly with a French programme. The other O'Connor/Leonard work was ''#The Retreat, The Retreat'' (11 May 1966). These two plays starred Milo O'Shea and Jack MacGowran. ''Cathy Come Home'' by Nell Dunn and Jeremy Sandford was offered to the Luke/Benedictus team who passed it on to Tony Garnett.

Tony Garnett and Ken Loach

Garnett was quickly seen as someone capable of delivering plays which would gain much publicity for the BBC and its Drama department.Stephen Lacey, ''Tony Garnett'', Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002, p. 56. He had the enthusiastic support of Newman, his immediate superior, who lobbied for increased funding to allow for more location shooting on film rather than shooting productions in the multi-camera electronic television studio, a practice which was felt to impair realism, the preferred mode. Director Ken Loach made ten plays in all for ''The Wednesday Play'' series. Two of them are among the best remembered of the entire run: an adaptation of Nell Dunn's ''Up the Junction (The Wednesday Play), Up the Junction'' (3 November 1965), and the saga of a homeless young couple and their battle to prevent their children being taken into local authority care: ''Cathy Come Home'' (16 November 1966). The latter began Loach's 13-year collaboration with Tony Garnett as his producer, although Garnett had been closely involved with ''Up the Junction'' as well. Plays like ''Up the Junction'' though were controversial among more conservative viewers. The 'Clean-Up TV' campaigner Mary Whitehouse accused the BBC of portraying "promiscuity as normal" in ''Up the Junction''Anthony Haywar
"Cathy come home"
''The Independent'', 3 November 2006. and ''The Wednesday Play'' as featuring "Dirt, Doubt and Disbelief". The writer on television Anthony Hayward quoted Garnett in 2006: "Mary Whitehouse was on the prowl, which was an added frisson, but it was actually very good free publicity and helped the ratings." The "drama documentary" approach was criticised by television professionals who thought it was dishonest. In a ''The Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph'' article published before its first repeat transmission Grace Wyndham Goldie complained that ''Cathy Come Home'' "deliberately blurs the distinction between fact and fiction ... [viewers] have a right to know whether what they are being offered is real or invented."Quoted by Stephen Lacey, ''Tony Garnett'', Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002, p. 57. Loach has admitted that "[w]e were very anxious for our plays not to be considered dramas but as continuations of the news" which preceded ''The Wednesday Play'''s slot.

Later seasons

The last three years of the strand were predominantly produced by Irene Shubik and Graeme MacDonald; by this time the BBC Drama head Sydney Newman had left the BBC. Highlights from this period include several plays by David Mercer (playwright), David Mercer such as ''In Two Minds'' (1 March 1967) and ''#Let's Murder Vivaldi, Let's Murder Vivaldi'' (10 April 1968) and Potter's ''Son of Man (play), Son of Man'' (16 April 1969), a modern interpretation of the story of Jesus. Suffering from declining audience figures, the run of ''The Wednesday Play'' ended in 1970 when the day of transmission changed, and the series morphed into ''Play for Today''.

Reputation and availability

It is regarded as one of the most influential and successful programmes to be produced in Britain during the 1960s and is still frequently referenced and discussed. In a 2000 poll of industry professionals conducted by the British Film Institute to find the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century, two ''Wednesday Plays'' made the list: ''The War Game'' was placed twenty-seventh, and ''Cathy Come Home'' was voted the second greatest British television programme of the century. Some examples of ''The Wednesday Play'', such as ''The War Game'' (which was not screened by the BBC for 20 years) and ''Cathy Come Home'' (1966), a television play exploring the theme of housing and homelessness, was according to filmmaker Roger Graef "a giant wakeup call for the whole nation," and some of the Potter plays, surfaced on VHS and DVD; the Potter play, ''Alice'' was a bonus feature of a Region 1 DVD in 2010 of Jonathan Miller's surrealist version of ''Alice in Wonderland (1966 TV play), Alice in Wonderland''. The Ken Loach material has resurfaced in a ''Ken Loach at the BBC'' set, and the two plays directed by Alan Clarke in the ''Alan Clarke at the BBC'' set. However, as with much British television of this era, many episodes are Wiping (magnetic tape), lost, leaving 79 surviving in the archives (along with 3 with some surviving sequences) out of 182 transmitted.

Productions

This table is based on records in the BBC Genome archive of the ''Radio Times''. Titles billed as ''The Wednesday Play'' (or ''The Wednesday Play presenting: ...'') in the ''Radio Times'' listings for their first or a subsequent transmission are included, plus an additional two for the reasons given in the notes. Repeats of the individual productions are excluded, as are some additional repeats from ''Theatre 625'' shown in the Wednesday Play slot during 1968–69 but not billed as such in the ''Radio Times''. All episodes were broadcast on BBC1, with the introduction of colour from November 1969. The archival status has been ascertained for almost all productions based on the BFI National Archive and TV Brain online databases. Most of the extant versions are in the form of 16mm or 35mm black & white telerecordings (prints or negatives), or in a few cases original film versions where that was the original medium used for production. Some of the later plays exist in videotape formats.

''The Wednesday Play'' on DVD

* ''Alice'' (written by Dennis Potter; directed by Gareth Davies (director), Gareth Davies), as an extra on the DVD of Jonathan Miller's 1966 ''Alice in Wonderland (1966 TV play), Alice in Wonderland'' * ''Cathy Come Home'' (written by Jeremy Sandford; directed by Kenneth Loach) * ''The End of Arthur's Marriage'' (written by Christopher Logue; directed by Kenneth Loach) * ''In Two Minds'' (written by David Mercer; directed by Kenneth Loach) * ''The Nigel Barton Plays'': ''Stand Up, Nigel Barton'' and ''Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton'' (written by Dennis Potter; directed by Gareth Davies) * ''The Big Flame'' (written by Jim Allen (playwright), Jim Allen; directed by Ken Loach, Kenneth Loach) * ''The War Game'' (written and directed by Peter Watkins) * ''3 Clear Sundays'' (written by Jimmy O'Connor (author), James O'Connor; directed by Kenneth Loach) * ''Up the Junction (The Wednesday Play), Up the Junction'' (written by Nell Dunn; directed by Kenneth Loach) * ''The Golden Vision'' (written by Neville Smith and Gordon Honeycombe; directed by Kenneth Loach) * ''The Vortex'' (written by Noël Coward; directed by Philip Dudley), in the Noël Coward Collection, BBCDVD2566 * ''The Year of the Sex Olympics'' (written by Nigel Kneale, directed by Michael Elliott), DVD released by the BFI * ''The Last Train through the Harecastle Tunnel'' (written by Peter Terson, directed by Alan Clarke), in the 'Alan Clarke at the BBC' box set from the BFI. * ''Sovereign's Company'' (written by Don Shaw, directed by Alan Clarke), in the 'Alan Clarke at the BBC' box set from the BFI.

References

External links

''The Wednesday Play''
site with history and individual episodes listed
TV Cream website
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Wednesday Play 1964 British television series debuts 1970 British television series endings 1960s British drama television series 1970s British drama television series 1960s British anthology television series 1970s British anthology television series BBC television dramas Black-and-white British television shows English-language television shows Lost BBC episodes Social realism Wednesday Television series created by Sydney Newman