Download Information about the TV Drama lists

‘Spaces of Television’ TV drama lists: definitions & inclusions
This document provides supplementary information about the Excel
spreadsheets and pdf file featured on this page, and is intended to clarify their
criteria for the inclusion of data, and the categories used.
‘Single Plays 1955-94’
This spreadsheet was compiled with the intention of listing all of the single
plays produced for television between 1955-1994.
Please note the following presentational points:

On all spreadsheets the date of a production is given in the format of
year, followed by the month and date in brackets, so that the data is
presented chronologically when the Excel sorting function is used to
reorganize data.

‘BBC Television’ is used as the name of the sole BBC channel before
the launch of BBC-2.

The ‘Series’ column lists the anthology which each play was part of. If
this column is blank, then it was transmitted as a stand-alone play.

The ‘Origin’ column states whether the play originated from literary or
theatrical sources. Where blank, this means the play was original
material. (So, using the Excel sorting function, the plays can thus be
organized into lists of theatrical, literary and original types.)
List of Anthology Series
‘Anthology series’ provides details of the different anthology strands of plays
transmitted between 1955-94, presented alphabetically by year.

The column ‘Series No.’ lists which series number was (or were)
transmitted in any particular year (for those series of which more than
one were made). E.g. in 1956, series 1 and 2 of ‘Big City’ were shown.

Where the ‘Series No.’ column is left blank, this means either that there
was only one series made (such as, for example, in 1955, ‘The
Granville Melodramas’) or, that the anthology strand was not divided
into discrete series but was a continuous featuring strand (e.g. ‘Sunday
Night Theatre’, ‘International Theatre’, ‘London Playhouse’, etc). This
can be ascertained by checking if the anthology is listed under
consecutive years. If not, then it was a single series.

The ‘No of Plays’ column details how many plays from a particular
anthology were transmitted in that year. (E.g.: In 1956, 16 ‘Armchair
Theatre’ plays were shown.) Where more than one series of the same
anthology was broadcast in the same year, as in the case of ‘Big City’
cited above, the number of plays refers to the total number of plays
from that anthology transmitted that year, not the number in each
series.

The spreadsheet gives a break down of which ITV companies provided
plays to a particular anthology. For example, ‘Play of the Week’ is listed
3 times for 1956, as each row gives details of the contributions of
different companies (ATV, Granada and Rediffusion).

The ‘Type of Series’ column states whether a series was themed, or if
it was predominantly (but not necessarily exclusively) theatrical or
literary. If blank, then it was of no predominant type. NB. This can
change within a particular anthology series, as, for example, from 1965
to 1967 ‘Play of the Month’ was of no particular type, but from 1968
onwards it was predominantly theatrical.

The column ‘Source of Plays’ indicates the source material for a series,
so for example we can see that even after it became a predominantly
theatrical strand, ‘Play of the Month’ did still transmit some original and
literary plays.
ITV Dramas Lists
The pdf file ‘ITV Drama Chronologies’ lists all drama series, including single
play anthologies, produced by each ITV company within the period of 19551999. It also includes an appendix of independent ITV drama productions at
the end of the document.

The ITV franchises are listed alphabetically, running from ABC to
Yorkshire Television

Within each list, the dramas are compiled chronologically, according to
the transmission date of the first episode or play in each series.

The series number is given, along with the number of episodes (or
plays) in the series, and the episode (or play) duration in brackets, (e.g
6 x 25m).

Stand-alone single plays are included in the list, identified as ‘play’,
instead of ‘series’ in the brackets. Details of each play in every single
play anthology are not given, however, as this information can be
cross-referenced from the ‘Single Plays 1955-99’ spreadsheet.
There are separate spreadsheets giving details of every drama episode and
play for three ITV franchises established in 1968: London Weekend Television
(LWT), Thames Television and Yorkshire Television (without Emmerdale
Farm which was too extensive to include here).

In these three spreadsheets, the ‘Title’ column contains the name of
the particular episode or play, while the ‘Series’ column gives the title
of the anthology, series or serial that it appeared in. E.g. on the
Yorkshire Television spreadsheet, we can see that the first episode of
‘Tom Grattan’s War’ entitled ‘The Watcher’ was transmitted on 24 th
August 1968.

By sorting the list alphabetically according to ‘Series’, an uninterrupted
chronological sequence of episode dates and titles can be seen for
each series.