Asking people to choose the five most memorable programmes or moments from the past 50 years of TV history is, we admit, an impossible task. Some of our media pundits concentrate on the areas of television in which they are uniquely qualified to comment, others purely as viewers, and some eschew their speciality to avoid unnecessary slights to friends.
The large list of Top 5s, all from people known for their contribution to television, comprise an enormous range of programmes. But two stand out: Z-Cars and the first Moon walk. Bill Cotton chose Z-Cars, as did Shaun Sutton: “It changed the face of the TV crime series.” And there can’t be many people who didn’t stay up all night waiting for that incredible moment when Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon. “I well remember watching those pictures in awe at three or four in the morning,” says Philip Jones. Sydney Newman considers it “the most memorable moment in the whole history of broadcasting.”
Peter Dimmock chose the Coronation in 1953. “It was a watershed. Television at last became respectable in the eyes of the establishment. Previously, watching television was just not done in those circles.” The Coronation also had a profound effect on Monica Sims, along with the original production of 1984. “It made the greatest impression on me. 1984 and the Coronation were the two things that made me feel I wanted to work in television,” she says. James Cellan Jones had a similar cathartic experience when he saw The Dybbuk, produced by Rudolph Cartier and starring Yvonne Mitchell. “An extraordinary performance, the best she’s ever given. It was one of the things that made me very excited about television.”
Sir David Attenborough nominated Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation. “It brought to an audience of millions the important concepts upon which our civilisation is based.” Leonard Miall can attest to its success in America. He was BBC representative in the US at the time: “It had a remarkable effect on the acceptance of British television in the United States. It was shown on PBS and the National Gallery of Art in Washington ran three showings a day with huge queues every time.”
Talking To A Stranger, the quartet of plays by John Hopkins which traced the same series of domestic events from the point of view of different characters, was nominated by Sydney Newman and Sir David Attenborough.
Shaun Sutton chose Roads To Freedom, adapted from the novels of Jean Paul Sartre. “They were the three most difficult books to adapt. The result was scintillating. It was miles ahead of its time.” He also chose Dennis Potter’s Pennies From Heaven: “breathtaking, an entirely new way of doing drama”. Troy Kennedy Martin chose a number of striking images that remain in his memory, including the face of Inspector Pyall from G. F. Newman’s Law And Order plays. He believes Law And Order to be “the greatest piece of drama ever to come out of television”.
Cathy Come Home featured on many lists, but Bill Ward believes the first example of a “factual” programme was The Course Of Justice series in the late 1940s: legal stories based on fact but presented in a fictional way. “It was superbly written by Duncan Ross and marked a milestone in television’s development.”
In the area of documentary and actuality Leslie Woodhead included Ed Murrow’s See It Now on CBS which exposed Senator Joe McCarthy’s activities: “an absolutely pioneering piece of investigative journalism which in an important way changed America”. Paul Fox chose Ludovic Kennedy’s live doorstepping of President Kennedy on Panorama. So did James Cellan Jones: “a marvellous piece of journalism”. Bill Cotton remembers the inauguration of the Eurovision link “with Richard Dimbleby: this tiny figure speaking to us from Calais”. He also nominated Tonight, “as a landmark in bringing popular current affairs to the nation”.
Moving from current affairs to humour we can’t leave out something that combined the two: Panorama on April 1, 1957, when Richard Dimbleby presented a worrying report on the failure of the spaghetti harvest in southern Europe. Cameraman Charles de Jaeger thought up this wonderful April Fool’s joke. “It took me three years to persuade the BBC to do it. And at least one senior executive in television who saw it thought, ‘It’s the BBC, so it must be true’.”
In comedy, Spitting Image earned this tribute from John Mortimer, “the best piece of political journalism around”, but the most popular comedy series of all time probably has to be Hancock’s Half Hour.
NICK RADLO
Source: Broadcast 50 Years of Television: 1986
Leave a Reply