{"title":"Oliver Reed: ‘I’m Mr England!’","authors":"A. Roberts","doi":"10.3366/jbctv.2022.0631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2022.0631","url":null,"abstract":"This article traces the acting career of Oliver Reed, focusing primarily on his work with Michael Winner, Ken Russell, Joseph Losey and Hammer Films, while also acknowledging interesting later works such as Castaway (1986) and The Brood (1979). It also examines the reasons for his decline in the later years of his career, which were not simply the result of alcoholism, as is all too frequently claimed, but also of the lack of suitable roles in a British cinema then in state of decline and the gladiatorial nature of a tabloid celebrity culture which served only to encourage Reed to indulge his self-destructive ‘hell raiser’ image. The picture that emerges here is of an actor with very considerable physical presence and exceptional vocal control who starred in too few films worthy of his talents, which were squandered by an industry largely blind to the creative possibilities which underpinned his proven commercial drawing power.","PeriodicalId":43079,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Cinema and Television","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45915793","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Startling or Seductive? An Analysis of Play for Today’s Title Sequences","authors":"Tom May","doi":"10.3366/jbctv.2022.0614","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2022.0614","url":null,"abstract":"Play for Today has been widely regarded as a prestigious vehicle for one-off dramas on topical issues. Based on accounts by producers, composers and graphic designers, this article will provide a historical analysis of the changing image of Play for Today through the close analysis of its seven title sequences. Focusing on how the different sequences invested the strand with a particular identity and prepared audiences for the plays that followed, it identifies two main modes of address. It argues that the Play for Today image was at its most startling during the periods 1971–3 and 1977–82 when the title sequences signalled to viewers that Play for Today would present important – often politicised – drama with a proximity to the news. Other sequences – during 1973–7 – sought instead to ‘seduce’ viewers by foregrounding the strand’s humanism and eclecticism.","PeriodicalId":43079,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Cinema and Television","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44802701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"War and Peace: Play for Today’s Home Front Quintet","authors":"John Wyver","doi":"10.3366/jbctv.2022.0619","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2022.0619","url":null,"abstract":"Although Play for Today is a strongly contemporary series, for many of its dramas the Second World War and the immediate aftermath are years of considerable significance. Numerous plays refer explicitly to aspects of the war, and nine productions are set wholly or primarily between 1940 and 1945. This article focuses on five of these, all of which were made on film for the later seasons of Play for Today: Licking Hitler (1978), Blue Remembered Hills (1979), The Imitation Game (1980), Country (1980) and Rainy Day Women (1984). Each film aims to offer a revisionist understanding of the conflict, setting out to de-mythologise established myths about the war at home. This article argues that this ‘home front quintet’ forms a significant and, in part at least, a coherent group of dramas within the series. It seeks to identify connections across these dramas, and to understand their politics as engagements with the war and its aftermath during a period that the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher were consolidating power. My argument is that concerns with landscape, heritage and home, game-playing and simulation, and ideas of self-reflexivity are combined with generic aspects of the war film in ways that challenge understandings of the war at home but also fail to link their re-imaginings of the conflict to credible and progressive presentations of the post-war peace.","PeriodicalId":43079,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Cinema and Television","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43893617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Retraction Notice: ‘“The Desert and the Dream”: Film in Wales since 2000’","authors":"Katie Woodward","doi":"10.3366/jbctv.2022.0625","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2022.0625","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43079,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Cinema and Television","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41937121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Diverse Spaces of Play for Today","authors":"Eleni Liarou","doi":"10.3366/jbctv.2022.0616","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2022.0616","url":null,"abstract":"Of the roughly 300 Play for Today dramas, a dozen have a non-white writer or director and/or deal with the experiences of black and Asian communities in urban England. These dramas are a tiny proportion of the overall body of work but nevertheless offer bold, often uncompromising representations of race, class and generational divisions in 1970s and early 1980s British culture. Focusing on space – in both the physical and cultural sense – this article explores the ways in which the use of location filming, in conjunction with the use of the studio in these dramas, allowed for a greater range of stories to be told, while offering new insights into the social and historical experiences of black and Asian communities. The ‘journey narratives’ of these plays expand the physical and cultural geography of the dramas and temporally connect a complex set of historical experiences, not previously seen on British television.","PeriodicalId":43079,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Cinema and Television","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43950706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hannah Andrews, Biographical Television Drama","authors":"T. May","doi":"10.3366/jbctv.2022.0623","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2022.0623","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43079,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Cinema and Television","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44037269","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: Play for Today at 50","authors":"John Hill","doi":"10.3366/jbctv.2022.0613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2022.0613","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43079,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Cinema and Television","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42849948","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nathan Townsend, Working Title Films: A Creative and Commercial History","authors":"Justin Smith","doi":"10.3366/jbctv.2022.0624","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2022.0624","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43079,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Cinema and Television","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42524800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Play for Today: A Statistical History","authors":"T. May","doi":"10.3366/jbctv.2022.0620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2022.0620","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents an original statistical analysis of Play for Today (BBC1, 1970–84). It begins by defining what counts as a Play for Today. It then presents six specific data-sets examining the following: (1) the output of Play for Today in different periods; (2) the duration and scheduling of plays; (3) their originality; (4) the use of film or video; (5) audience viewing figures; and (6) the number of television repeats. It also compares the data to indicate the construction of a privileged Play for Today canon which ignores a large ‘lost continent’ of Plays for Today.","PeriodicalId":43079,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Cinema and Television","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47409856","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Obituary: ‘The role and importance of institutions’: Tony Smith","authors":"Richard Paterson","doi":"10.3366/jbctv.2022.0621","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2022.0621","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43079,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Cinema and Television","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47981452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}