In the late 1970s, I was part of a raucous lobby to liberate television drama from the confines of the studio and progress it to film. Ken Loach had shown the way. In works such as Cathy Come Home, he had lifted us with a blast of freedom that was impossible with lumbering videotape cameras recording what were essentially televised stage plays. Film was the modern medium – swift, versatile and punchy. If British drama was ever going to take flight with the vigour of the French New Wave, it had to be shot on real locations.
How wrong I was! This summer, when so many people have found themselves hooked on the BBC Four reruns of the 1970 studio productions of The Roads to Freedom, it has become clear that, in our victory, something vital got mislaid. It isn’t simply that, in the transition to film, British television inevitably became more of a director’s medium and less of a writer’s. Rather, if you compare the formulaic, neutered drama currently offered on the BBC with the depth and ambition of this Sartre adaptation, you will conclude that flashy style is intentionally being deployed in today’s schedules to make sure there’s no danger of significant content.
