When BBC2 launched in 1964, it was the first British TV station to broadcast 625 lines of picture, rather than the standard 405 lines of BBC1 and ITV. Yes, BBC2 was the BBC HD of its day – take that, US TV, with your 525 lines of NTSC (Never Twice the Same Colour) goodness.
To show off its technological superiority, one of the first regular programmes on the station was Theatre 625, a 90-minute play slot that ran from 1964 to 1968, giving us 114 separate plays (the last year’s worth in colour, since BBC2 was also the first European channel to broadcast in colour), most of which, in typical BBC fashion, have been wiped.
Of the plays that were made, perhaps the most famous are John Hopkins’ four-part Rashomon-esque Talking To A Stranger, which starred Judi Dench and told the same story from four different viewpoints – it was voted the 78th Greatest British Television Programme by industry experts and was reviewed at the time as “the first authentic masterpiece written directly for television”.
Also of note was a remake of blog god Nigel Kneale’s 1954 adaptation of 1984 and the strand’s penultimate play, also by Kneale (who now has his own category on the blog, incidentally): the highly prophetic and highly appropriate for this month of all months, The Year of The Sex Olympics, which is today’s Wednesday Play. Follow me after the jump to find out more.
Continue reading “The Wednesday Play: The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968)”
