How the 30-minute drama powered British television

Anthology dramas used to be one of British television’s mainstays. Television was predominantly a multi-camera affair in the postwar years (with some exceptions shot on 16mm film), and various programme formats leaned towards a more theatrical approach, favouring the feel of weekly live performances. One of the most intriguing, and largely forgotten, of these anthology slots was the 30-minute drama; a format whose restrictive running time and low budget forced their cast and crew to innovate.

In series such as Thirty-Minute Theatre (1965-73), Half Hour Story (1967) and Second City Firsts (1973), many cheaper, small-scale dramas were given over to new writers, directors and performers, not only fermenting several generations’ worth of creative talent but also giving new, radical drama a platform that seems almost incomprehensible in today’s climate of boardroom television commissioning.

These small-scale dramas allowed many creatives to learn their craft and experiment with ideas, leading to a body of work that, with the sad exception of episodes junked from the various archives of the BBC and ITV, still stands strong today. These shows are the inspiration for an upcoming season, Forgotten Television Drama: Rediscovering the Half-Hour Play at BFI Southbank in May.

Screenwriters in particular flourished in the format. The career of Dennis Potter – perhaps television’s most revered writer – is a good example. His Thirty-Minute Theatre episode Emergency Ward 9 (1966), long considered lost until 2011, dealt with the writer’s experience of the National Health Service and also generational racism, laying the groundwork for themes later explored in the The Singing Detective (1986). Thirty-Minute Theatre provided space for writers as diverse as Fay Weldon, Tom Stoppard, Jack Rosenthal, B.S. Johnson and Samuel Beckett among many others.

Directors benefited from working in the format as well. Alan Clarke cut his teeth on many half-hour dramas, directing no less than 10 episodes of Half Hour Story after initially working as its floor manager. His work included collaborations with Alun Owen, Edna O’Brien and Roy Minton, the latter of whom Clarke would work with later on the brilliant but banned Play for Today, Scum (1977). Clarke would continue to occasionally work in the form, most interestingly in his 1972 Thirty-Minute Theatre episode, Under the Age. Scripted by Ted Whitehead, the biting drama is notable for being the only surviving work of Clarke’s set on his native Merseyside.

Clarke wasn’t the only director to explore the possibilities of the form. Half Hour Story included work by none other than Ridley Scott. Before that, Scott directed an episode of Thirty-Minute Theatre too, Jim Allen’s The Hard Word (1966), before moving on to notably bigger things. Combing through the directors of various anthology series is like a who’s who of television directors: Piers Haggard, Mike Newell, Waris Hussein, Jack Gold, Paddy Russell, and Michael Winterbottom to name but a few.

The 30-minute slot wasn’t simply effective for more literary or theatrical drama. Unusually the slot was rife with thrillers and other genre mainstays. Before longer form series such as Thriller (1973-76) and Armchair Thriller (1978-81), the shorter format arguably bolstered the possibility of tense anthology series thanks to shows such as Tales of Unease (1970) and The Frighteners (1972). And even when longer formats took over, shorter-form genre was still popular. Take any number of episodes from the series Tales of the Unexpected (1979-88). Created as a vehicle for the enjoyably grim short stories of Roald Dahl (alongside other writers’ stories he chose), the author introduced many episodes across its macabre weekly instalments. Perhaps most successful was Robin Chapman’s 1980 screen adaptation of Elizabeth Taylor’s story The Flypaper starring Alfred Burke.

The Frighteners anthology was similarly eerie, with titles such as David Hodson’s Have a Nice Time at the Zoo, Darling (1973). While in general a less successful series than Tales of the Unexpected, the shorter format allowed a few gems to slip through: Eric Coltart’s underrated crime drama The Minder (directed by James Goddard and perhaps one of the best London gangster dramas on the small screen) and spy intrigue The Manipulators, written and directed by Mike Hodges of Get Carter (1971) and Flash Gordon (1980) fame.

Spookier tales also found purchase in the format. Series such as Dramarama: Spooky (1983) and, later, Dramarama (1983-89) aimed surprisingly dark tales at a younger audience, with highlights including The Keeper (1983) by Alan Garner, Back to Front (1989) by Anthony Horowitz, and James Graham’s The Secret of Croftmore (1988), which marked the television debut of a young actor called David Tennant. The series boasted a range of previous Doctor Who’s, from Tennant and Peter Capaldi to Patrick Troughton and Sylvester McCoy, though a list of actors who worked in the format would read like a casting directory of British acting over the last 70 years: Earl Cameron, Glenda Jackson, George Cole, Beatrix Lehmann, Peter Cook, Billie Whitelaw, Brian Cox, Sylvia Syms, Leonard Rossiter, Siân Phillips and Edward Woodward to name a few.

Other spooky ventures such as the anthology series Leap in the Dark (1973-1980) with Colin Wilson also favoured the 30-minute format. Though its earlier, more docudrama-based episodes often ran closer to 40 minutes, its final season stayed true to the 30-minute drama. Most notably, the series produced several great works of English Eerie such as Alan Garner’s To Kill a King (1980) and David Rudkin’s The Living Grave (1980), the latter acting like a thematic denouement to themes explored by Rudkin in his celebrated Play for Today episode, Penda’s Fen (1974).

A cursory glance through the episodes of 30-minute dramas shows not only the creative strengths of the format but also their other primary function: as an experimental sounding board in the early careers of some of British film and television’s most important writers, directors and stars. In our age of endless lengthy series boasting huge story arcs, vast casts and an epic scale, it’s easy to forget the qualities found in these shorter works. But their rich legacy can still be seen today – on our cinema screens, our televisions and on stage.