The Classic Serial on Television and Radio Also by Robert Giddings SCREENING THE NOVEL (with Keith Selby and Chris Wensley) THE WAR POETS 1914–18 IMPERIAL ECHOES ECHOES OF WAR WHO WAS WHO IN FICTION (with Alan Bold) THE CHANGING WORLD OF CHARLES DICKENS THE TRADITION OF SMOLLETT THE AUTHOR, THE BOOK AND THE READER FROM PAGE TO SCREEN (with Erica Sheen) YOU SHOULD SEE ME IN PYJAMAS (autobiography) Also by Keith Selby HOW TO STUDY A DICKENS NOVEL SCREENING THE NOVEL (with Robert Giddings and Chris Wensley) HOW TO STUDY TELEVISION (with Ron Cowdery) EVERYBODY’S GRAMMAR (with James Sale) The Classic Serial on Television and Radio Robert Giddings and Keith Selby © Robert Giddings and Keith Selby 2001 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). Outside North America ISBN 978-0-333-71388-4 ISBN 978-0-230-59629-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230596290 In North America ISBN 978–0–312–23598–7 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Giddings, Robert. The classic serial on television and radio / Robert Giddings and Keith Selby. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–312–23598–7 (cloth) 1. Television serials—Great Britain—History and criticism. 2. Radio serials—Great Britain—History and criticism. 3. Television adaptations. 4. Radio adaptations. 5. English fiction—Film and video adaptations. I. Selby, Keith. II. Title. PN1992.3.G7 G44 2000 791.45'6—dc21 00–030893 10987654321 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 Contents Acknowledgements vi List of Plates vii Introduction viii 1 Definitions, Early History: the Classic Drama Serial 1 2 The 1970s: Signs of Change 31 3 The Blockbusters 54 4 The 1990s: Renaissance of the Classic Serial 80 5 The ‘Pride and Prejudice Factor’ 104 6 The ‘Pride and Prejudice Effect’: a Promising Future for the Past 124 7 Boz Rides Again, and this is where we came in. 151 8 The Albatross which was Really a Phoenix 190 Notes 211 Select Bibliography 227 Index 229 v Acknowledgements This book could not have been written without the help of the library staff of the following institutions: Bournemouth University, the London Library, Poole Public Reference Library and Southampton City Library. We are particularly grateful to Anne Salenieks of Parkstone Library, Poole, for her help in tracing a number of video recordings. We are indebted to Janice Cake, for secretarial support, who tran- scribed many hours of recorded interviews. For additional help with recordings, our thanks are due to the staff of Media Services, Bournemouth University. Particular thanks are due to Tim Preece and Catherine Wearing for their help in arranging interviews with many media professionals, and to Charmian Hearne for her encouragement and endurance. We acknowledge the great help we had from the BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham Park, Reading, BBC Sound Archives at Broadcasting House, and the BBC Reference Library Service. Parts of this book first appeared in The Dickensian and appear by kind permission of the Editor. vi List of Plates 1 The Mayor of Casterbridge. Anne Stallybrass and Alan Bates. The Ronald Grant Archive. 2 Brideshead Revisited. Anthony Andrews and Jeremy Irons. The Ronald Grant Archive. 3 The Jewel in the Crown. The Ronald Grant Archive. 4 Clarissa. British Broadcasting Corporation. 5 Middlemarch. Rufus Sewell, Juliet Aubrey and Robert Hardy. The Ronald Grant Archive. 6 The Buccaneers. Alison Elliott and Mark Tandy. The Ronald Grant Archive. vii Introduction Unceasingly contemplate the generation of all things through change, and accustom thyself to the thought that the Nature of the Universe delights above all in changing the things that exist and making new ones of the same pattern. For every- thing that exists is the seed of that which shall come out of it. Marcus Aurelius 1 This book evolved naturally as a result of teaching English, media and communication, and researching and writing Screening the Novel. We found that little work had actually been done on the ways in which the broadcast classic serial as a genre had been initiated, pioneered and developed to become an accepted broadcasting genre. We found that it had developed not only as the creation of early radio drama producers, but had partly evolved as the result of the expressed wishes of the BBC radio audiences before the Second World War. As a result, the BBC declared its intention in Radio Times to broadcast faithful serial dramatisations of classic novels, adhering to the original as much as possible. Radio audiences enjoyed dramatisations of novels, and particularly relished the opportunities radio offered in bringing classic novels alive on the airwaves. Serialised classic novels were consumed as special treats associated with weekends and high holi- days. Friday evening was at first scheduled for their transmission but this was soon transferred to Sunday evenings which became firmly established as their slot. With the advent of television early Sunday evening was taken over as appropriate scheduling for those serials suit- able for family viewing and the more adult novel dramatisations were scheduled in the late evening slot on Saturday or sometimes on a weekday evening. When television took on the classic serial the genre had been well established by the BBC. By classic novel was usually meant a British novel of the Victorian or Edwardian period, with occasional forays into Jane Austen or occasionally into the eighteenth century. The intention was to serialise this fiction but to treat it with respect in an attempt to do justice to the original work. This is an important point. These were not adaptations. They were dramatisations. As far as possible these versions stuck to character, plot and dialogue as closely viii Introduction ix as broadcasting allowed, and they were essentially translations from the printed page into broadcast drama. There are several ways in which a media genre may be regarded. It can be evaluated aesthetically. An attempt may be made to define the genre in terms of a system of conventions that permit artistic expres- sion. We would need to establish what constitutes a classic serial, as broadcast drama. What qualities does it have, which might differen- tiate it from other costume dramas or adaptations of novels? We would need to establish what constitutes the conventions which governed the manner in which novels were dramatised and scheduled for broadcasting. When we look at the origins of the genre, it is clear that in the main it was nineteenth- or early twentieth-century British novels which tended to be selected, although there were occasional American, French or Russian classics. These were serialised in several episodes and treated with respect. An effort was made to preserve as much of the original dialogue as possible. Productions gave great care to good diction and historical accuracy. Much of the attention which the BBC had always given to historical feature programmes was transferred to classic serial production – sound effects, music and general production values – in a genuine attempt to recreate a convincing sense of the past. This sometimes erred towards the precious, for example, a pecu- liarly crisp and careful elocution-teacher style of pronunciation became the done thing in Jane Austen. Additionally, classic serials may also be seen as examples of broad- casting ritual, which involves an examination of the genre as a means by which a culture speaks to itself, and incorporates an evaluation of shared beliefs and values as transmitted by the form. Two aspects of classic serial form in particular need pondering: the ‘classic serial’ prototype, and the type of narrative prose fiction selected for the ‘classic serial’ treatment. The form itself, the drama serial in episodes of equal length broadcast in weekly instalments, was created to estab- lish audience loyalty. It provided good wholesome family listening, particularly for autumn weekends, and fitted comfortably into the construction of the Reithian Sunday. This considerably affected the choice of material, which has to be seen as worthy and morally whole- some, even uplifting. The form has been a staple of British broadcasting for decades and continues to thrive, though its history has not been entirely free of ups and downs. Ritual theory though suggests how genre connects with the evolving social order. The broadcast classic serial becomes a means by which past literature is x Introduction identified as being worthy of classical status and this contributes to the construction and maintenance of the literary canon. This may work imperceptibly. For example, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Henry James and George Eliot have assumed the status of classical authors.