The Sunday night play on BBC Television has become almost a national institution. Indeed, it is often said that television drama, entering, as it does, millions of homes, fills the need for a National Theatre in Britain. In 1946, when the BBC Television Service resumed after the war, the whole field of international theatre was ready to be explored. Since then the world’s plays, hundred by hundred, have been given new meaning and new audiences through the eyes of the television camera. Today the Drama Department is extending its scope; more and more plays are being specially written for the television screen. So the new writer takes his place alongside Ibsen and Shakespeare. And in these plays are presented some of Britain’s most distinguished actors and actresses.
The plays of Shakespeare are televised four times a year. In December 1955 Othello brought together an impressive trio — Gordon Heath as Othello, Rosemary Harris as Desdemona, and Paul Rogers as Iago.
