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The Wednesday Play, transmitted on BBC-1 between October 1964 and October 1970 when its strand title became Play for Today, has been accorded a privileged and even mythologised position within the development of television drama. Famed for producing ground-breaking television 'events' such as Jeremy Sandford's Cathy Come Home, Nell Dunn's Up the Junction and David Mercer's In Two Minds, credited with radical experimentalism in terms of form and content, venerated for its apparent refusal of public broadcasting objectivity in its direct intervention in issues of social legislation (including the legalisation of homosexuality and abortion), critics such as George Brandt conclude that `much of the history of British television drama is tied up with this programme spot' [1]. Brandt's statement expresses the widespread recognition that in the field of television drama The Wednesday Play was the genuine article, a strand arising out of a particular historical moment, emblematic of its time, its successes and excesses unique, never-to-be-repeated victories. In short, it is taken to connote both the Golden Age of British television drama and a lost era of public service vision and integrity.
The problem with this evaluation is that it is formulated from the wrong end of time. In the post-Thatcher era, The Wednesday Play is mourned as being expressive of writer-led drama and of staunch public service support for it in the face of intimidating external pressures. The discussion here will question this sentimental vision (which has been encouraged by the BBC) by reversing the historical angle of vision and tracing the origins of this play strand from 1962 to 1966. Extensive research at the BBC Written Archive Centre reveals that, despite well-publicised indications issued by the Corporation that the single play was to remain the Drama Group's 'flagship' throughout the 1960s, institutional policing in fact neutered the writer while sustained moves were made to kill off this genre once and for all. An investigation of Archive material surrounding The Wednesday Play clearly indicates that, contrary to popular, critical and Corporation mythology, this play strand survived the 1960s in spite of the BBC and not because of it.
The information presented here derives largely from BBC internal memoranda and policy statements between the years 1960 and 1967; the gap between official BBC policy direction...