- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Introduction
- TV Drama: The Case against Naturalism
- Naturalism and Television
- Taboos in Television
- Signposting Television in the 1980s: The Fourth Television
- Television Drama, Censorship and the Truth
- The Day after Tomorrow: The Future of Electronic Publishing
- The Primacy of Programmes in the Future of Broadcasting
- Reflections on Working in Film and Television
- ‘Opening up the Fourth Front’: Micro Drama and the Rejection of Naturalism
- Power and Pluralism in Broadcasting
- Ethics, Broadcasting and Change: The French Experience
- Freedom in Broadcasting
- Deregulation and Quality Television
- The Future of Television: Market Forces and Social Values
- The Future of the BBC
- Occupying Powers
- A Culture of Dependency: Power, Politics and Broadcasters
- Talent versus Television
- A Glorious Future: Quality Broadcasting in the Digital Age
- Rewarding Creative Talent: The Struggle of the Independents
- Television versus the People
- Public-Interest Broadcasting: A New Approach
- A Time for Change
- The Soul of British Television
- Television's Creative Deficit
- Freedom of Choice: Public-Service Broadcasting and the BBC
- First Do No Harm
- Appendix A Edinburgh International Television Festival, 29 August-2 September 1977: Programme
- Appendix B
- Index
TV Drama: The Case against Naturalism
TV Drama: The Case against Naturalism
The James MacTaggart Lecture 1976
- Chapter:
- (p.35) TV Drama: The Case against Naturalism
- Source:
- Television Policy
- Author(s):
John McGrath
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
In this lecture, the author, a socialist, playwright, director and founder of the 7:84 theatre company, shapes his recollections of working with James MacTaggart in London in the early 1960s into what Troy Kennedy Martin (1986) described as a ‘swingeing attack on naturalism’. He argues that naturalism imposes a certain ‘neutrality about life on the writer, the actor and the audience’: it presents a world that is ‘static, implied and ambivalent’. He claims that the television image is not conducive to naturalist drama because it lacks sensuality. Television images are situated in the context of reported reality: viewers watching television drama will have witnessed, ‘napalmed women in Vietnam running about on fire’. MacTaggart produced and directed a number of series called Storyboard, The Wednesday Play and Diary of a Young Man. There are three distinguishing features of the television image: its non-sensual informative nature, its lack of empathy and its situation in the context of reported reality. This lecture challenges people working in television to ask themselves why there is so much critical debate about film but so little about television.
Keywords: James MacTaggart, television drama, television image, naturalism, sensuality, reported reality, empathy, Storyboard
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- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Introduction
- TV Drama: The Case against Naturalism
- Naturalism and Television
- Taboos in Television
- Signposting Television in the 1980s: The Fourth Television
- Television Drama, Censorship and the Truth
- The Day after Tomorrow: The Future of Electronic Publishing
- The Primacy of Programmes in the Future of Broadcasting
- Reflections on Working in Film and Television
- ‘Opening up the Fourth Front’: Micro Drama and the Rejection of Naturalism
- Power and Pluralism in Broadcasting
- Ethics, Broadcasting and Change: The French Experience
- Freedom in Broadcasting
- Deregulation and Quality Television
- The Future of Television: Market Forces and Social Values
- The Future of the BBC
- Occupying Powers
- A Culture of Dependency: Power, Politics and Broadcasters
- Talent versus Television
- A Glorious Future: Quality Broadcasting in the Digital Age
- Rewarding Creative Talent: The Struggle of the Independents
- Television versus the People
- Public-Interest Broadcasting: A New Approach
- A Time for Change
- The Soul of British Television
- Television's Creative Deficit
- Freedom of Choice: Public-Service Broadcasting and the BBC
- First Do No Harm
- Appendix A Edinburgh International Television Festival, 29 August-2 September 1977: Programme
- Appendix B
- Index