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.

Reaction

The play provoked something of an upset. There were complaints both about the "horrific" content (particularly the infamous Room 101 scene where Smith is threatened with torture by rats) and the "subversive" nature of the play. Most were worried by the depiction of a totalitarian governmental regime controlling the population's freedom of thought, and four MPs from the ruling Conservative government tabled motions in the House of Commons for the scheduled Thursday second performance to be cancelled. There was also a report in the Daily Express newspaper of 42-year-old Beryl Merfin of Herne Bay collapsing and dying as she watched the production, under the headline "Wife dies as she watches", allegedly from the shock of what she had seen.

Related Topics:
Room 101 - MPs - Conservative - Tabled - House of Commons - Daily Express - Herne Bay

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Amidst objections the BBC went ahead with the performance, although the decision went to the heights of the Board of Governors, which narrowly voted in favour of the second performance. This was even introduced live on camera by Head of Drama Michael Barry himself, who had already appeared on the Monday's edition of the topical news programme Panorama to defend the production. The seven million viewers who did tune in for the Thursday performance constituted the largest television audience in the UK since the Coronation the previous year, and even the Queen and Prince Philip made it known publicly that they had watched and enjoyed the play.

Related Topics:
Board of Governors - Panorama - Coronation - The Queen - Prince Philip

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When it had become clear what an important production Nineteen Eighty-Four was, it was arranged for the second performance to be telerecorded onto 35mm film – the first performance having simply disappeared off into the ether, as it was shown live, seen only by those who were watching on the Sunday evening. At this stage, Videotape recording was still at the development stage and television images could only be preserved on film by using a special recording apparatus (known as "telerecording" in the UK and "kinescoping" in the USA), but was only used sparingly, then in Britain for historic preservation reasons and not for pre-recording. It is thus the second performance that survives in the archives, one of the earliest surviving British television dramas.

Related Topics:
Telerecorded - 35mm film - Videotape - Film - Kinescoping - USA - Britain

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