It's only rubbish on the telly

[altariel]

How very ordinary the selection of Top 50 Greatest Dramas was.

First of all, it wasn't varied in form. The list is predominantly one-off plays and the short serial form (6-8 episodes, 1-2 seasons). Where were the TV series? You know, those long-running things that people actually watch? Most of the TV series that appeared were US shows, The West Wing, The Sopranos, Hill Street Blues - I'm not complaining about including any of these (except 24), but aren't there quite a lot of British programmes like this too? Or are they too populist? If you're going to have Z Cars, you're going to have to think about including The Bill, even if Z Cars was the one you watched as a kid, and The Bill is only on ITV.

Second, it was way too realist. There were four 'speculative' dramas altogether, if we stretch the definition as broadly as possible: 'Threads' (the post-Bomb drama set in Sheffield which you could argue is well within the British realist TV drama tradition); Twin Peaks, Doctor Who, and The Prisoner. Come on, couldn't you have even nodded to Nigel Kneale? Nineteen Eighty-Four? Quatermass? The 1970s Quatermass miniseries with John Mills even fits their tediously narrow range.

Thirdly, where were all the women? You know, women? What about Tenko? Where was Tenko?! The first British TV drama to have a cast predominantly made up of women. The programme they wanted to cancel because the ladies in it didn't look pretty enough. (Do you know what I would love to see? One of those big 'state of the nation' social history dramas, like Our Friends in the North, but about the women's movement. Or, if we're going to keep on making WW2 dramas, one about the home front. Something like Jocelyn Playfair's A House in the Country.)

And, finally - and related to this - why so much Dennis Bloody Potter? I can't stand Dennis Bloody Potter. Women=fuck=dirt=death. Misogynist nonsense. There, I've said it. So pretentious. And TV drama is so not about pretension. If you want to be pretentious, go and make a bloody film, not television. Plus, if you shed the Potters and a couple of Poliakoffs, you'd definitely have room for Tenko. Which I bet people actually watched. Poliakoff they just read about in The Observer.

All in all, it added up to a list of drama about the British male experience, c. 1940-1990. My guess is that other things were happening during this time. Quite a lot of which was even shown on television.

Comments

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

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.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

What is quite bizarre is including some series, then omitting many other excellent examples.

Well, most of the series they include are US shows, and I think they cover, "Programmes we wish we could be making."

the fantastical elements in Kneale remain as objective, unforgiving facts that the characters and the audience must come to terms with

Perhaps this is what I was getting at with 'speculative' (which I was basically setting up as a catch-all term to cover "not kitchen sinkish"). Which would explain why "future histories" like Threads or A Very British Coup can make it to the list, because the fantastical element isn't, say, a BEM. (And also because they also fit nicely into other genres: drama-documentary, or political thriller. So, "It's not science fiction, it's an alternative history.")

what about a series which, taken as a whole, wouldn't merit inclusion, but which has a particularly outstanding episode that deserves individual recognition

We were saying last night Morse should probably have been in (as we were watching Lewis). Why not include them? It's quite possible that a fair chunk of Z Cars looks awful by contemporary standards; doesn't stop it being significant.

But who knows where that would lead us? To including Coronation Street, perhaps, and that would obviously never do.

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

I'd be reluctant to include Morse as a whole because so many of its episodes are handsomely produced stories about bugger all. When it is more ambitious, as in the example I cited, it can be brilliant. So why include Z Cars? Or indeed Doctor Who? Again, it comes down to quality versus significance. If you were talking just about high quality drama (he says, swiftly skating over some very fragile issues), then you might include individual episodes/stories from these series, just as you might with Morse. But Z Cars and Doctor Who have a cultural significance and influence taken as a whole, which Morse lacks. And in the case of Who, at least, even when it's bad there's usually something interesting about it.

Basically, in the expression "Best Television Drama", only the word "television" is unproblematic. And in a few years we won't even be able to say that.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

The list would be ludicrous without Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective

It would certainly look very strange...

But a list that doesn't include Quatermass and the Pit is also ludicrous. Nigel Kneale is simply ignored by the prevailing literary culture.

My feeling is that he's beginning to be recognised, but probably not by the sort of people who do these lists. I've seen a lot more about him than Potter recently (admittedly some of it prompted by his death), and I bet if Nancy Banks-Smith had had anything to do with it Kneale would be in.

Dennis Potter had one of the most beautiful speaking voices I ever heard; I would love to hear his last interview with Melvyn Bragg again, because when I listen to his voice I feel as if I'm kneeling to take the sacrament.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

No links to the Bragg interview, but many audio clips of Potter speaking here.