ITV’s Love Island , where gorgeous singletons compete to find love, was the surprise reality hit of the last decade. Format sales tipped £1billion for ITV as the show was replicated all over the globe. It won the BAFTA for best reality show in 2018 and had done the unthinkable attracted back to appointment-to-view television the elusive 16-34 demographic.
The Royal Wedding kick-started, but by no means overshadowed the long, hot, English summer of 2018, which was defined not only by its heatwave, but also by some other very vivid and historical moments. Some of these include: VAR (video assistant referee) systems being used for the first time at the FIFA world cup; Angelique Kerber, defeating Serena Williams to become the first German since Steffi Graf in 1996 to win Wimbledon;
This article was originally published on The Conversation on 4 June 2018.
Harold Pinter died ten years ago, and the anniversary is being recognised this summer by a season of screenings of his TV and film work at the British Film Institute’s BFI South Bank cinemas in London. As most people know, Pinter’s output spanned theatre, film, television and radio drama, poetry, prose and political essays.
Last year I had the opportunity to spend time researching the women involved in the development of early BBC television, from the experimental years of 1936-1939 and from the relaunch of the service following the end of the war, to the professionalization of the service by the 1950s.
When that estimable curator of classic British television, the Drama channel, began repeating Jersey-based detective series Bergerac (BBC, 1981-91) earlier this year, the Radio Times was less than laudatory, claiming the first episode showed ‘every one’ of its thirty-seven years.
As someone who was fairly vocal about the need for long-running BBC flagship series Doctor Who to seriously address its gender problems, I was pleased, but not overjoyed, when it was announced that the thirteenth Doctor would be played by Jodie Whittaker, the first woman to take on the role.
I was talking to my colleague Robin Ellis the other day (not the Robin Ellis who used to be in Poldark ; we couldn’t afford him): ‘Do you remember The Adventure Game , Robin?’ I asked. He looked at me blankly, as is his wont. ‘Early 80s, puzzle-based game, set on the planet Arg?’ Not a sausage. ‘The characters were really alien dragons in disguise, and all their names were anagrams of the word ‘dragon’? Silence deep as death.
Maybe it’s a sign of true equality in television when a woman writer gets a truly terrible drama screened on prime time, mainstream tv. But it’s a bit galling when the woman is one of British television’s most esteemed writers, Kay Mellor, and I am one of the target audience.
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities Professorial Lecture: Doctor Who: A British Alien?
