Nineteen Eighty-Four (TV programme)

Nineteen Eighty-Four was a British television adaptation of the novel of the same name by George Orwell, originally broadcast on BBC Television in the winter of 1954. The production proved to be hugely controversial, with questions asked in Parliament and many viewer complaints over its supposed subversive nature and horrific content. In a 2000 poll of industry experts conducted by the British Film Institute to determine the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four was ranked in seventy-third position.

Background

Orwell's novel was adapted for television by Nigel Kneale, one of the most successful television scriptwriters of the era. The previous year he had created the legendary Professor Bernard Quatermass for the popular science-fiction serial The Quatermass Experiment. The adaptation was produced and directed by the equally respected Rudolph Cartier, perhaps the BBC's highest-profile producer/director of the 1950s who was always keen to push the medium and its capabilities right to the limit, both artistically and technically. Cartier, a veteran of the UFA film studios in 1930s Germany who had fled the Nazi regime for Britain in 1936, had worked with Kneale the previous year on The Quatermass Experiment and was already a veteran of many television drama productions – indeed, together Kneale and Cartier formed BBC drama's most successful creative team of the era.

Related Topics:
Nigel Kneale - Bernard Quatermass - The Quatermass Experiment - Rudolph Cartier - BBC - 1950s - UFA - 1930s - Germany - Nazi - 1936

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It was his work on Quatermass that had prompted the BBC's Head of Drama, Michael Barry, to ask Cartier to work on an adaptation of the famous novel, having shown his abilities with literary sources having just completed work on a version of Wuthering Heights, again with Kneale handling the scripting. The BBC had purchased the rights to a television version of Nineteen Eighty-Four soon after its publication in 1949, with Kenneth Tynan having apparently originally been keen on adapting the work. The first version of the script, produced in late 1953, was written by Hugh Faulks, in consultation with Orwell's widow Sonia Orwell herself, but when Cartier came aboard in January 1954 he demanded that Kneale be allowed to handle the adaptation. This and other complexities of production meant that the hoped-for April airdate – which would have been more or less exactly thirty years before the novel was set – quickly had to be pushed back.

Related Topics:
Head of Drama - Michael Barry - Wuthering Heights - 1949 - Kenneth Tynan - 1953 - Hugh Faulks - Sonia Orwell

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