Radical Television Drama Introduction

The origins of this issue reside in a season of television dramas, entitled ‘United Kingdom!: Radical Television Drama Before and During Thatcher’, that ran at BFI Southbank from November to December 2009. The season was conceived by members of staff (Susanna Capon, John Hill, Jonathan Powell and Rob Turnock) in the Department of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London and was jointly curated with Marcus Prince of the BFI. In all, the season involved screenings of over 20 programmes that ranged from Episode 1 of Diary of a Young Man (1964) and Up the Junction (1965) to The Deal (2003), The Government Inspector (2005) and a new episode of Shameless (2009). There were panel discussions (on changes in the organisation of broadcasting and ‘the new radical drama’) as well as on-stage interviews with a variety of television practitioners (including Tony Garnett, Ken Trodd, Roy Battersby, Margaret Matheson, Roy Minton, Peter Flannery, Michael Wearing and Stephen Frears).1 John Hill and Derek Paget also delivered public lectures to accompany the season and these now appear, in a revised form, in this special issue of the Journal of British Cinema and Television on ‘Radical Television Drama’. The inspiration for the season of screenings and discussions derived from two key events. 2009 was, of course, the thirtieth anniversary of the arrival to power of a new style of Conservative government, led by Margaret Thatcher. This event has often been taken to constitute a significant watershed in postwar politics as a result of the new government’s abandonment of the old social democratic ‘consensus’ (involving an ideological commitment to Keynesianism, full employment and public welfare provision) in favour of a socially divisive, ‘free market’ economic neo-liberalism. Thatcherism’s reshaping of the political and economic landscape also involved