Philby’s name had continued to appear in the headlines over the years since his defection – in 1967, for instance, the Sunday Times Insight Team had published an enormously revealing exposé on Philby’s career, whilst Philby himself had subsequently penned his own KGB-sponsored memoir, My Silent War (1969). Reblogged this on Opening Negotiations and commented: Faber, 1998: 260-261. The main image depicted a slightly dishevelled man standing in front of a small painting of an English landscape – over this, a caption described the premise of this first play in the new run: ‘An English ex-spy lives with the memory of what he has betrayed’. ), Potter on Potter. Harris briefly mentions his time at Oxford University during the interview (Potter substituting his own alma mater for Cambridge), fondly recalling ‘bells across the meadow, city of dreaming spires, punts on the river, champagne and strawberries, straw hats, narrow little streets…’. [11] J. Thomas, ‘Stealing a kiss at 50’, Daily Express, 23 January 1973, 8. Is it perhaps included by Potter to discourage us from being too tempted to sympathise with Harris? Beginning on BBC1 on Thursday 15 October 1970, it continued until 1984, running to over 300 individual plays and regularly commanding audiences of several millions. NLCB Play Whe Results in Trinidad and Tobago are updated after the Play Whe game draws which occur Monday - Saturday at 10:30 AM, 1:00 PM, 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM.At the bottom of the Play Whe results for today, there is a search form that you can use to check previous Play Whe results and a section showing what are we under today in Play … In 1945, the Carlions assemble at an English country house for a family gathering. Joseph Oldham is a writer and researcher, and the author of Paranoid Visions: Spies, Conspiracies and the Secret State in British Television Drama (Manchester University Press, 2017) – out in paperback in December 2020. Directed by Mike Newell. All episodes of Play For Today. Full Kansas City Chiefs schedule for the 2020 season including dates, opponents, game time and game result information. The home of NFL Super Bowl 2021 news, ticket, apparel & event info. This play took Potter into a thematic area which he had not previously explored – the murky world of Cold War espionage. Broadcast on BBC1 at 9.20 pm on Thursday 14 October 1971. Andre Deutsch, 1968. ( Log Out /  Full Tampa Bay Buccaneers schedule for the 2020 season including dates, opponents, game time and game result information. [17] BBC Television Weekly Programme Review minutes, 31 January 1973, 2. BBC copyright content reproduced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Though we see an authentic filmed exterior ‘THE WOODMAN’, the public house interior is shot on video. In this latest work, Potter offered a study of Adrian Harris (John le Mesurier) – former British intelligence officer and long-time Soviet double agent. [7] The casting was universally admired. [1] This followed a sizeable upturn in 1971, clearly influenced by the 1969 Divorce Reform Act. 2020 플레이 포 투데이 Play for Today 인디스페이스 2020년 5월 5일 ~ 2020년 8월 4일 His view of the pinched chimneys does not aestheticise them as some British New Wave films do. I can remember watching the repeat with my parents and my mother saying, you get the feeling that this is a bad idea, but I had completely forgotten how it ends – I’d assumed that Harry was going to return to the fold. © His downcast demeanor in his conversation with the younger daughter and place apart in the groupings outside the church make the cost of Harry’s decision very clear, while the sense of what the future might hold for him is ambiguous. This was a canny approach for le Carré, as many of Pinter’s most notable plays had been produced for television since the early 1960s, including The Birthday Party (ITV Play of the Week, 22 March 1960), A Night Out (Armchair Theatre, 24 April 1960) and The Lover (ITV, 28 March 1963) – this was a style of writing which was well-suited to the claustrophobic style of 1960s’ studio drama. John Caughie argues that the most effective use of montage in Potter’s work offers ‘a way of dissolving hierarchies, resisting the unifying order of plots and subplots, identification and resolution, catching the viewer instead in the dialectic of competing realities which refuse to cohere into the plenitude of an organically unified world’. [10] P. Black, ‘Entertainment/2’, Daily Mail, 23 January 1973, 17. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Nancy Banks-Smith and Mary Holland who (IIRC) made comparisons to Jimmy Cagney movies and Hamlet… But, Raymond Williams is ideologically acute… https://www.academia.edu/15448116/_The_heart_of_England_does_not_beat_in_stately_homes_or_on_smiling_lawns_Treachery_and_national_identity_in_Dennis_Potter_s_Traitor_, […] for the slot. [17] Echoing the moralistic faction within the audience sample, one of six letter writers published in the Radio Times about Kisses at Fifty criticised the quantity of ‘blasphemies and oaths’, attempting the witticism that it should have been set in Chapel-influenced industrial Wales which would ‘could have reduced it by one-third’. In this instance, however, his script was rejected by producer Graeme MacDonald, prompting his agent to respond haughtily, ‘I must say that I admire your courage in turning down a play by John le Carré’. Finally, a fourth strand shows the older Harris (the only other strand in which the character is portrayed by le Mesurier) at the height of his intelligence career. Coming from a more privileged background than Potter, le Carré had far more capacity to identify with Philby; in a 1968 article on the famous traitor for the Sunday Times (18 February), he had declared how ‘Philby, an aggressive, upper-class enemy, was of our blood and hunted with our pack’, before qualifying the ‘we’ by identifying himself as ‘middle-class, graduate, intellectual’.[12]. And so, when considering Harris’ motives, should we concentrate on his childhood or on his experiences of the Depression? I saw Kisses at Fifty again last night. Traitor (14 October 1971) was a new play by Dennis Potter, who had rapidly established himself as one of Britain’s most prolific and acclaimed television playwrights since his single play debut on Play for Today’s predecessor The Wednesday Play six years earlier. Apted realises Welland’s exceptionally detailed stage directions, creating, in the writer’s words, ‘communal vigour in a studio’ and ‘a pub that’s actually living in the studio, not with stone-faced extras getting up and walking out on signals.’[2] The ensemble’s Coronation Street-flavoured jocular badinage and feisty confrontations take place in a simultaneously cosy and spiky space. MacDonald, meanwhile, went on to produce Traitor as a Play for Today – only two years after he had rejected a play on the treachery theme from an acclaimed and bestselling author who specialised in such material, and whose scripted material was considered entirely acceptable by two other major broadcasters. Harry’s work life is monotonous – he leaves his work shovelling at the dye factory’s furnace and then gets a job transporting crates. [11], In considering the relationship between Traitor and the oeuvre of le Carré, it is notable that Potter’s play pre-empted le Carré’s own engagements with the figure of Philby in two of his best-known novels – firstly Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974), a ‘whodunit’ account of the unmasking of a high-level Soviet mole, and later A Perfect Spy (1986), a complex, non-chronological life story of a double agent (somewhat akin to Traitor, albeit on a much vaster scale). Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. In the BBC management’s weekly programme review, Tony Preston from Outside Broadcasts – described in the minutes, jokily, as ‘aged 44’ – claimed to have ‘been enthralled throughout’. [6] Significantly, Play for Today’s next outscoring of ITV opposition came with Colin Welland’s next contribution, Jack Point (1 November 1973). The British Film Institute has announced its Blu-ray and DVD releases for October 2020, including a box set of BBC Plays for Today and two horror titles in time for Halloween. Perhaps because in the 1993 repeat Kisses at Fifty followed on from Up The Junction and The Gorge, so I was primed to think of this as being the Wednesday Play/ PFT house style. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1974, 31. [3] Humphrey Carpenter, Dennis Potter: A Biography. There’s … As a result, the BBC’s Audience Research Report found that viewers perceived the play to possess ‘topical appeal’.[1]. What is the significance of the Michaelov assassination, given that it occurs long after Harris has made the fundamental life choices that led him down the path of treachery? Having Bill Maynard as lead and the use of songs is reminiscent of Alan Plater’s Oh No It’s Selwyn Frogitt, too. This, too, aligned with the interests of Bridges, who is described by Bradshaw as a ‘cinematic satirist – in tones both mordant and melancholy – of the English class system of the early 20th century’. Here Potter had sought to convey the tensions and contradictions of Nigel Barton’s (Keith Barron) altered social status ‘by chipping the play up into swiftly moving fragments’, making quick, disconcerting jumps in time across episodes in Nigel’s life to create associations and juxtapositions.[8]. His younger daughter, the 17 year-old Helen (Maureen Callaghan) is planning to get married to Kevin (Andrew Beaumont): a subplot subtly juxtaposed with the breakdown of Harry and Rene’s marriage. I wonder whether anyone has identified the painting? Sunday, 15 November 2020. However, the overall response was ‘cordial’: ‘This was solid, ‘jam-butty’ Welland handling a difficult subject ‘with skill and understanding’’. Peter Black commended ‘its realism’, and drew attention to how Welland and Apted brought off ‘an extraordinary illusion of life’ that ‘rang true as an honest look’ at what such an affair would mean in a working-class setting. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original … Yet, there is no self-congratulation or smugness: the tone is humane and wide-ranging. With a 42.8 per cent share of television viewers to ITV’s 38.8, it was the only episode in Play for Today’s 1972/73 run to outscore the ITV opposition. Notably, however, the play neglects to represent this visually, or to expand on the experience in any way beyond this superficial description. ( Log Out /  Full Miami Dolphins schedule for the 2020 season including dates, opponents, game time and game result information. [7], As highlighted by the cover of the Radio Times, one of Traitor’s key themes is that of memory. Such was the acclaim for Kisses at Fifty that Colin Welland appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs that summer: symbolically accepted into the cultural establishment. The play has ‘a feeling of authenticity’, its ‘Northern working-class environment was vividly conveyed […] such a realistic setting in terms of people and life’. The 2020 IIHF World Junior Championship in Ostrava and Trinec, Czech Republic, took place from Dec. 26 to Jan. 5, 2020. [1] Anon, DATABLOG: Divorce rates data, 1858 to now: how has it changed?, Guardian, 28 January 2010 [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/jan/28/divorce-rates-marriage-ons#data [Accessed: 10 September 2020]. On other occasions speech from one scene is overlaid on top of the start of the next one. From the eight reviews consulted, the critical reaction was unanimously positive. The Times, 16 November 1977, p. 23; The Stage and Television Today, 24 November 1977, p.22. The Social Security clerk (Kathy Proctor) iterates bland, unfeeling officialdom, echoing Cathy Come Home (1966) and anticipating David Edgar’s depiction of officialdom in Baby Love (1974). In addition to Robin Redbreast, he also wrote the now missing The Emergency Channel (8 November 1973) for the fourth season. Launched as a successor to The Wednesday Play… Written by Colin Welland, directed by Michael Apted and produced by Graeme McDonald. Indeed, the decision of Potter to place so much emphasis instead onto Harris’s childhood could be said to diminish the political choices later taken by his adult self – is treachery simply a trauma response with no meaningful ideological component? Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. [13] This was made particularly vivid when both were adapted for television as lavish heritage dramas in 1979 and 1987, respectively; as Toby Manning argues, the betrayal in Tinker Tailor is ‘of a class which regards the nation and itself as indistinguishable’. Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. Directed by Richard Eyre. Individual identity and personal agency are crushed,  signified by the way in which the actress performs her staid, rule-bound character’s lines in a middle-class accent. (Frayne in The End of the Line is conspicuously not Philby, explicitly described as being from ‘lower class’ origins.) Information based on drawing results compiled since 01/03/2000. Alongside Dunham and Yates are two generations of local northern battle-axes: Pat Wallis as the Woodman’s barmaid Flo and Lori Wells as the sharp, blunt-speaking daughter Sandra Cook. It is also very notable how the prep school headmaster bullies Adrian in making the stuttering lad recite from Blake, a poet Potter himself loved, showing the stark pleasures and pains associated with education and a national literary canon. [10] James Thomas argued the characters ‘ring very true’ and that North-set plays like this were ‘a good deal more solid and more real’ than most set in suburbia. Published on May 12, 2020. [2] For Potter’s biographer Humphrey Carpenter, this invited a  particularly specific comparison – Traitor, he wrote, is ‘a competent excursion into John le Carré territory’. Kisses at Fifty motivated significant public reaction, constituting a minor ‘media event’: the BBC received 19 phone call ‘appreciations’, alongside 46 letters ‘objecting to the language’. He also blogs at May’s Britain and Opening Negotiations. Welland replied courteously that he didn’t think more divorces would destroy Western society but merely change it, ‘perhaps for the benefit of Harrys and Renes’. Two months later, Play for Today evoked a similar sense of alienation from unpaid and paid drudgery in Mike Leigh’s Hard Labour (12 March 1973) and Barry Hines’s Speech Day (26 March 1973). Controller of BBC1 Paul Fox sounded the only adverse note in questioning ‘the language at one or two moments’. This regard extended to industry awards: the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and television critics in the Broadcasting Press Guild hailed it as the best teleplay of 1973, while the Society of Film and Television Arts gave Michael Apted an award for best single play direction.[19]. We don’t (I think) know exactly what the son is doing in London, but the reactions that James Hazeldine is capable of giving tell us enough about how he has gained an outsider’s perspective through his experience of being away. ‘Exiled in Moscow’, declared the front cover of the Radio Times (9-15 October 1971), heralding the return of Play for Today for its second series. This introduces a documentary aesthetic which purposefully does not ‘fit’ the style of the other segments, resembling more the agitational aesthetic of productions such as Cathy Come Home. Colin Welland was an art teacher who went into acting at the age of 26. During the event, they … [3] This was actually filmed in Windsor and Eton station, but the accent of David Bradley, playing a policeman in this scene, suggests the North. Potter’s primary interest in the ‘new drama’, however, lay in its potential for dramatising the complexities and uncertainties of character interiority. Through this omission, therefore, Traitor appears to downplay an intellectual context to Harris’ conversion to Soviet Communism. Apted conveys distinctively northern spaces with a Territorial Army barracks, church, pub, railway station and steeply sloping hills. As it happens, Potter wasn’t the only writer to think of writing a television play about a double agent in the style of le Carré – another attempt had been made by none other than le Carré himself who, in 1969, had submitted his first television script to the BBC as a potential. Blu-ray: PLAY FOR TODAY … Entirely confined to a single location, The End of the Line was likened by Sylvia Clayton of the Daily Telegraph (30 June 1970) to the work of Harold Pinter in its depiction of a struggle ‘for territorial superiority, for subjugation of the will’. 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