Drama

The two lead actors embrace in fear, overlaid with the shadows of two INGSOC policemen
The play that caused a furore and added Big Brother to conversation – 1984, with Peter Cushing and Yvonne Mitchell.

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.

Actors in poverty clothing
...and Shout Aloud Salvation, originally produced in April 1951, brought to the screen a little-known actress named Virginia McKenna.
The cast struggle to remove a helmet from the first victim in Quatermass
In the summer of 1953, The Quatermass Experiment took viewers into the realms of other worlds. The popularity of this serial led to its sequel, Quatermass II, which took viewers into Outer Space.
1956 // THIS IS TRANSDIFFUSION