The Centre for the History of Television Culture and Production, and the History of Forgotten TV Drama project, at Royal Holloway, University of London, have teamed up with the television archive organisation, Kaleidoscope, to co-host a series of screenings and discussions of programmes made by STV (Scottish Television), originally launched in 1957, and HTV (Harlech Television), founded in 1968.
This will provide a rare opportunity to see some of the less well-known television dramas produced by these two companies based in Scotland and (in part) in Wales. These will include HTV’s first full-length colour drama, Fade Out (1970), starring Stanley Baker, Stephen Poliakoff’s early television play, City Sugar (1978), made by STV and starring Tim Curry, and an episode of Garnock Way (1976-8), STV’s unusually political soap opera set in a Scottish mining village. There will also be a chance to see an early TV play The Horseman’s Word (1980) by Glenn Chandler, who went on to create STV’s Taggart, and the untransmitted pilot, Jake’s Journey, co-written and starring Monty Python member Graham Chapman, made for HTV with CBS backing.
STV director David Andrews and STV producer Robert Love (tbc) will be in conversation and Douglas McNaughton (University of Brighton) and Jamie Medhurst (University of Aberystwyth) will put the two companies in historical context. There will also be a book launch of TV producer Lewis Rudd’s memoirs.
‘Saturday Night Theatre: Fade Out’ (HTV/ ITV 11 April 1970)
