Nineteen Eighty-Four (British TV programme)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the American television version, see
1984 (1953 TV program). For the American unrelated television series, see 1984 (TV series)
.

Nineteen Eighty-Four
Opening title
GenreDrama
Based onNineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell
Written byNigel Kneale
Directed byRudolph Cartier
Starring
Narrated byRichard Williams
ComposerJohn Hotchkis
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of episodes1
Production
ProducerRudolph Cartier
Running time105–107 minutes
Original release
NetworkBBC
Release12 December 1954 (1954-12-12) (see text)

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a

British television adaptation of the 1949 novel of the same name by George Orwell, originally broadcast on BBC Television in December 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. It starred Peter Cushing (as Winston Smith), Yvonne Mitchell, Donald Pleasence and André Morell.[1]

In a 2000 poll of industry experts conducted by the

100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four was ranked in seventy-third position.[2]

Background

Orwell's novel was adapted for television by

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 a veteran of many television drama productions.[6]

It was his work on Quatermass that had prompted the BBC's

Sonia Brownell
, but when Cartier joined in January 1954 he demanded that Kneale be allowed to handle the adaptation. This and other complexities of production meant that the April airdate – which would have been about 30 years before the novel was set – had to be postponed.

Cast and crew

The role of Winston Smith was taken by Peter Cushing, one of his first major roles.[8] Cartier cast him after having been impressed with his performance in a BBC production of Anastasia the previous year.[9] Cushing went on to become a film star, as would his co-star Donald Pleasence, who played Syme. Pleasence was the only member of the cast present in the 1956 feature film adaptation of the story, playing an amalgamation of Syme and Parsons with the latter's name.[10]

Other cast members included

Big Brother was Roy Oxley, a member of the BBC design department whose inclusion was something of an in-joke on the part of the production team.[13]

The composer of the incidental music for the programme was John Hotchkis, who insisted on a larger than usual orchestra to perform the piece.[14]

Production

Until the early 1960s, the vast majority of the BBC's television was performed live.[15] Nonetheless, there was a certain degree of pre-shooting in the form of inserts on film, which could be played into the studio and broadcast as part of the play to cover changes of scene or show location material which would have been impossible to mount live in the studio. Initial filming for Nineteen Eighty-Four took place on 10 November 1954 in Studio B of Alexandra Palace (even by then all but abandoned as a venue for shooting drama, although it housed the news and later the Open University for the next thirty years), with footage of the Two Minutes' Hate and some of the canteen scenes being filmed there.

Further location shooting took place on 18 November which were exterior scenes featuring Smith's travels in the proletarian sector. According to Peter Cushing, speaking on

Tavistock Place from 22 November (moving to 60 Paddington Street
from 29 November). During these rehearsals, the cast memorised their lines and cues as important in a live television production as in a stage play.

The cast and crew moved to Studio D at the BBC's Lime Grove Studios on Saturday 11 December 1954 for a full camera rehearsal and run-through. Rehearsals continued the following day until shortly before transmission, which began at 20:37 Sunday 12 December and continued for the best part of two hours.

Kneale's script was a largely faithful adaptation of the novel as far as was practical. The writer made some small additions, the most notable being the creation of a sequence in which O'Brien observes Julia at work in PornoSec and reads a small segment from one of the erotic novels being written by the machines.

Reaction

The play provoked something of an upset.

The Daily Worker, a communist newspaper, described it as a "Tory guttersnipe’s view of socialism".[19]

Political reaction was divided, with several

the Queen and Prince Philip made it known that they had watched and enjoyed the play.[19]

Amidst objections the BBC went ahead with a complete live restaging on Thursday 16 December. This was introduced live on camera by Head of Drama

Panorama on 15 December to defend the production.[19] The seven million viewers who watched the Thursday performance was the largest television audience in the UK since the Coronation
the previous year.

At the time, television images could only be preserved on

telerecording" in the UK and "kinescoping" in the USA
) but was used sparingly in Britain for preservation and not for pre-recording. It is thus the second performance, one of the earliest surviving British television dramas, that is preserved in the archives.

The Goon Show parody

BBC) and Goldstein's revolution by Horace Minikstein's Independent Television Army (i.e. the Independent Television Authority
). Jokes included such stabs at the BBC as:

Announcer (Sellers): "Attention BBC workers! Lunch is now being served in the BBC Canteen. Doctors are standing by."

Seagoon is tortured in Room 101 by being forced to listen to clips from Ray's a Laugh, Life with the Lyons and the singing of Harry Secombe. Unlike the original script, Seagoon is freed from Room 101 and the ITA overthrows the BBC after a three-day phone call and a £10 bribe. However, when Seagoon hears the ITA's output, he wants the BBC brought back.

The programme was such a success that the script was performed again on 8 February 1955. This was not a repeat – it was a new broadcast of the same script with minor changes. One change was the recorded addition of John Snagge as the BBC announcer previously portrayed by Sellers.

The first version exists in pristine form in the BBC archives, the second performance only as a lower-quality off-air recording, which excludes the first five minutes of the programme and both musical interludes, preserving about 18 minutes of material.

Legacy

It was twenty-three years before the 35mm telerecording of the 16 December performance received a repeat broadcast in 1977. Another proposed repeat as part of the BBC's fiftieth anniversary of television celebrations in 1986 was overruled by the producers of the 1984 John Hurt/Richard Burton feature film, who felt that earlier versions would affect income for their film. The BBC was permitted to show the play again in 1994 on BBC Two, as a tribute to the recently deceased Cartier and again in June 2003 on digital station BBC Four as part of the George Orwell centenary celebrations.

Kneale's adaptation was produced again by the BBC, with some modifications in 1965. Starring David Buck, Joseph O'Conor, Jane Merrow and Cyril Shaps, it was broadcast in BBC2's Theatre 625 anthology series as part of a season of Orwell adaptations sub-titled The World of George Orwell, on 28 November 1965.[25] Long believed lost, on 12 September 2010 it was announced that a copy had been located at the American Library of Congress, although an approximately seven-minute segment in the middle was unrecoverable from the NTSC video tape recording.[26] It was recovered amongst a hoard of over 80 lost British television episodes dating from 1957 to 1970. In 1965, a radio adaptation was broadcast on the BBC Home Service with Patrick Troughton, soon to become the Second Doctor in Doctor Who. This radio version was properly archived and has survived.[27]

Scenes from Nineteen Eighty-Four, along with the 1954 adaptation of Animal Farm, were featured in "The Two Winstons", the final episode of Simon Schama's program A History of Britain.

Broadcast history

  • BBC Television, 12 December 1954, live – not recorded.
  • BBC Television, 16 December 1954, live – exists as a
    35mm film telerecording
    .
  • BBC2, 28 November 1965, new production of an updated version of the 1954 script. Exists as an NTSC videotape copy, although 7 minutes is missing.
  • BBC2, 3 August 1977, repeat of 16 December 1954 telerecording.
  • BBC Two, 1 July 1994, repeat of 16 December 1954 telerecording, commemorating the death of Rudolph Cartier.
  • BBC Four, 14 June 2003, repeat of 16 December 1954 telerecording.

Home media

In March 2014, the play was included in a "Classic Horror Volume 1" DVD release alongside Nosferatu, Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera.

In April 2022, the

BFI
released a standalone Blu-ray + DVD combo containing a Standard Definition and a new High Definition transfer of the play.

Bibliography

Books

  • Fulton, Roger (1997). The Encyclopedia of TV Science Fiction (2nd ed.). London: Boxtree Books.
    ISBN 0-7522-1150-1
    .
  • Jacobs, Jason (2000). The Intimate Screen: Early British Television Drama (1st ed.).
    ISBN 0-19-874233-9
    .

Magazines

See also

  • Nineteen Eighty-Four
    , 1953 American television adaptation

References

  1. ^ "Nineteen Eighty-Four (Dual Format Edition)". BFI. Retrieved 7 November 2023.
  2. ^ "BFI - Features - TV 100 List of Lists". 11 September 2011. Archived from the original on 11 September 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  3. ^ "BFI Screenonline: Kneale, Nigel (1922-2006) Biography". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  4. ^ "BFI Screenonline: Quatermass Experiment, The (1953)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  5. ^ "BFI Screenonline: Cartier, Rudolph (1904-94) Biography". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  6. Independent.co.uk. 2 November 2006. Archived
    from the original on 21 June 2022.
  7. ^ "BFI Screenonline: Wuthering Heights (1962)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  8. ^ "Peter Wilton Cushing - British actor".
  9. ^ "Anastasia (1953)". Archived from the original on 17 August 2016.
  10. ^ "1984 (1956)". Archived from the original on 17 January 2018.
  11. ^ "Nineteen Eighty-four (1954)". Archived from the original on 17 January 2018.
  12. ^ "Wilfrid Brambell". Archived from the original on 24 July 2016.
  13. ^ "Roy Oxley". Archived from the original on 12 March 2016.
  14. ^ "John Hotchkis". Archived from the original on 28 October 2017.
  15. ^ "BFI Screenonline: Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  16. ^ Late Night Line-Up. 27 November 1965. BBC 2.
  17. ISBN 9781351517652
    – via Google Books.
  18. ^ "Nineteen Eighty-Four". The Times. London. 13 December 1954. p. 11. Retrieved 19 June 2016. (subscription required)
  19. ^ a b c Fordy, Tom (4 May 2022). "How the 'unadulterated horror' of Peter Cushing's Nineteen Eighty-Four broke the BBC". The Telegraph. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  20. William Steward and Austen Hudson (all Conservative). "Controversy Over "1984"". The Times
    . No. 53115. London. 15 December 1954. p. 5. Retrieved 19 June 2016. (subscription required)
  21. Anthony Greenwood (all Labour) and Beverley Baxter (Conservative). (As for the last citation: The Times
    , 15 December 1954)
  22. Walter Robert Dempster Perkins
    (both Conservatives) and others (as before).
  23. ^ Signed by Harry Legge-Bourke and five other Conservatives (as before).
  24. ^ "1985, The Goon Show - BBC Radio 4 Extra". BBC.
  25. ^ "Theatre 625: The World Of George Orwell: 1984". 25 November 1965. p. 19 – via BBC Genome.
  26. ^ "BFI Screenonline: 1984 (1965)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  27. ^ Deacon, Alison Deacon, Nigel. "radio plays drama, bbc, Eric Ewens, DIVERSITY website". www.suttonelms.org.uk.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

External links

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