Learning the Facts of Life: Forty Years as a TV Dramatist

Abstract

Back in 1977, Alan Plater contributed an article to TQ25 celebrating twenty-five years as a writer for stage and television. But his first play for television was not screened until 1962 – hence the different anniversary which here provides the occasion for his reflections on changes in the medium and its treatment of drama (and dramatists) over the succeeding four decades. As a stage writer, he established special relationships with Stoke-on-Trent, Humberside, and the North-East – where his Close the Coalhouse Door played to tremendous local acclaim, but to metropolitan disinterest when it reached the West End. But while his stage work has remained resolutely committed to the parts the critics seldom reach, as a writer for television he has both kept his own entirely distinctive voice, as in the Beiderbecke sequence, and remained an ever-reliable contributor to series from Z Cars in the 'sixties to Midsomer Murders in the new millennium, with excursions into glossy period dramatizations such as the seven-part Fortunes of War. Here, he reflects on the losses of spontaneity and creative freedom which have accompanied technical innovation and increasing bureaucracy, and offers some hopes for changes in direction to restore what was once the glory of British TV drama. This article is based on an inaugural lecture Alan Plater gave at the University of Bath in March 2002.