I'm not quite sure what a "speculative drama" is, but if Threads counts, so does Edge of Darkness.
Television series are a different form from the one-off play or short serial (which are basically the same form differently chunked). Soap operas are different again. It would have been quite reasonable to restrict the list to plays and serials, and do a different one for series. What is quite bizarre is including some series, then omitting many other excellent examples.
A particularly blinkered critical tradition is at work, of course. I've no problem with the Potters they included: The list would be ludicrous without Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, and while I've never seen Blue Remembered Hills, what I've seen about it suggests that it too deserves to be included. But a list that doesn't include Quatermass and the Pit is also ludicrous. Nigel Kneale is simply ignored by the prevailing literary culture. Partly, I guess, it's because Kneale's groundbreaking work has been taken up and reused over and again, while Potter's greatest work remains sui generis. But it's also because the fantastical elements in Kneale remain as objective, unforgiving facts that the characters and the audience must come to terms with, while Potter allows his fantastic and spectacular elements to be neatly explained away at the end in terms of subjective psychology. In this respect, Kneale is more mature and realistic than Potter, but the bulk of TV critics lead lives of such cozy incuriosity that they get this exactly the wrong way round.
I think there is a valid reason for including Z Cars but not The Bill. Z Cars was novel, ground-breaking and influential in a way that The Bill isn't. But then we come again to this issue of evaluating a drama by its quality taken in isolation, or by its importance or influence in its historical context.
And another problem: what about a series which, taken as a whole, wouldn't merit inclusion, but which has a particularly outstanding episode that deserves individual recognition? Inspector Morse can be as soggy as a wet day in Abingdon, but the episode "The Masonic Murders" pisses all over half that Top Fifty list.
no subject
Television series are a different form from the one-off play or short serial (which are basically the same form differently chunked). Soap operas are different again. It would have been quite reasonable to restrict the list to plays and serials, and do a different one for series. What is quite bizarre is including some series, then omitting many other excellent examples.
A particularly blinkered critical tradition is at work, of course. I've no problem with the Potters they included: The list would be ludicrous without Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, and while I've never seen Blue Remembered Hills, what I've seen about it suggests that it too deserves to be included. But a list that doesn't include Quatermass and the Pit is also ludicrous. Nigel Kneale is simply ignored by the prevailing literary culture. Partly, I guess, it's because Kneale's groundbreaking work has been taken up and reused over and again, while Potter's greatest work remains sui generis. But it's also because the fantastical elements in Kneale remain as objective, unforgiving facts that the characters and the audience must come to terms with, while Potter allows his fantastic and spectacular elements to be neatly explained away at the end in terms of subjective psychology. In this respect, Kneale is more mature and realistic than Potter, but the bulk of TV critics lead lives of such cozy incuriosity that they get this exactly the wrong way round.
I think there is a valid reason for including Z Cars but not The Bill. Z Cars was novel, ground-breaking and influential in a way that The Bill isn't. But then we come again to this issue of evaluating a drama by its quality taken in isolation, or by its importance or influence in its historical context.
And another problem: what about a series which, taken as a whole, wouldn't merit inclusion, but which has a particularly outstanding episode that deserves individual recognition? Inspector Morse can be as soggy as a wet day in Abingdon, but the episode "The Masonic Murders" pisses all over half that Top Fifty list.