ITV at 60: 5 key programmes that launched Britain’s second TV channel

On 22 September 1955, 60 years ago, Britain’s first commercial TV service, ITV, began transmission. The honour of kicking off the channel fell to the London weekday regional contractor, Associated-Rediffusion, which held the licence until 1968, when it was replaced by Thames. Its archive of programmes and film items came to the BFI and was enhanced over the years by the addition of the Jack Hylton collection of entertainment programmes, the complete This Week archive and the recovery of a number of previously lost programmes through the BFI’s Missing Believed Wiped initiative. Here, the BFI National Archive’s team of television curators highlights some key titles from this company, from its comedy, documentary, entertainment, children’s and drama output, which we have been working on for a number of upcoming events.

From the start, A-R was at the forefront of innovative comedy with Spike Milligan’s A Show Called Fred. In 1967, David Frost gathered together four of the leading writer-performers of the day – John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Marty Feldman – and produced this brilliant sketch show, which ran to 13 episodes, but was not seen everywhere in the country. For many years it was forgotten and overshadowed by the subsequent ventures of its stars, largely because only two editions survived in the archive, but the recovery of most of the missing material through the Missing Believed Wiped campaign has changed that perception. Two more missing episodes have now been recovered and one of them will be shown in the Radio Times Festival on 25 September, introduced by Tim Brooke-Taylor.

Steve Bryant

A-R’s man about town Daniel Farson fronted a number of short documentaries, interviewing people from all walks of life and presenting television audiences with glimpses of exotic subjects like nudists and witches in the 1957 series Out of Step. His follow-up series included People in Trouble (1958), which examined mental health problems, addiction and unmarried mothers, and Keeping in Step (1958), which featured bankers, public schoolboys and members of the W.I. These series show early ITV at its brash and populist best, tackling a huge range of subjects with enthusiasm. In Success Story (1959), Farson interviewed well-known personalities about their careers. His programme featuring Fanny and Johnny Cradock can be watched on BFI Player.

Lisa Kerrigan

Jack Hylton, best known as a band leader in the 30s and 40s, was also a theatrical impresario and had an impressive roster of the star names of the day under contract. So he was an obvious choice for Associated-Rediffusion, when they were looking for someone to head up their Light Entertainment Department. He formed his own company to make comedy and music programmes for A-R, and all the surviving programmes were donated to the BFI National Archive in 1987. Tony Hancock, June Whitfield, Flanagan and Allen, Dickie Henderson, The Crazy Gang and Arthur Askey all appeared under the Hylton banner. There will be two screenings of programmes staring the Crazy Gang and Tony Hancock at the Radio Times Festival.

Pam Rostron

Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ tells the tale of a foolhardy expedition to find a mythical creature. It’s rarely adapted for television but Rediffusion produced an animated version, which was broadcast as part of their Boxing Day schedule in 1967. Michael Hordern reads the poem over John Ryan’s drawn animation, a distinct cut-out style that’s best known from children’s series Captain Pugwash and Mary, Mungo and Midge. This black-and-white film has recently been restored by the BFI National Archive and will be shown as part of the BFI Archive screenings at the Radio Times Festival 24-27 September.

Kathleen Luckey

“I loathe padding,” said Alun Owen in an interview with the TV Times on the eve of the first instalment of Half-Hour Story in May 1967. In his opinion, TV wasn’t suited to the epic; it was far better at capturing the small moments, and every writer has something that, without padding, can be said in 25 minutes. Stella Richman had already overseen the highly successful Love Story for ITV, as well as The Hidden Truth and Blackmail, when she was charged with producing Half-Hour Story, a new series of short plays for Associated Rediffusion. It was to be produced live in the studio, in a return to basic principles, and aside from Alun Owen, it would feature an exciting mix of established and new writers, including Roy Minton, Edna O’Brien, Fay Weldon, Jim Allen and Doris Lessing.

The considerable talent involved makes it especially frustrating that so little survives of this series. In the late 1990s Stella Richman donated a collection of film and Philips VCR tapes to the BFI and among it was a 35mm copy of Robert (broadcast 2 August 1967), directed by a young Ridley Scott, which until then had been thought lost. A further examination of the tapes has now thrown up another ‘missing’ programme from the series, also the work of a major British director, which we will be unveiling in due course. 

Gosta Johansson