Face to Face (British TV programme)

History

In the mid-1950s, BBC talks producer Hugh Burnett came up with the idea for a straightforward personal interview show. It took two years to get Grace Wyndham Goldie, the assistant head of talks television, to agree to commission it. Burnett picked John Freeman as the interviewer because Freeman was good at asking tough questions without being rude. Burnett asked Freeman while they walked around the BBC block at Lime Grove Studios, and Freeman said yes by the second lap.

At the time, Freeman had been a reporter on BBC TV's Panorama since 1957 and had also interviewed people on Press Conference. The first episode featured Lord Birkett, a lawyer and judge who worked on the Nuremberg trials; it got four million viewers and a reaction index of 83%. Episodes aired on and off through 1959. The most famous guests were Tony Hancock and Gilbert Harding, both of whom seemed unsettled by the questions but later praised Freeman's approach.

Harding cried when talking about his mother, and the Hancock interview is thought to have played a role in his later self-destruction by increasing his self-criticism. One guest tried sneaky tactics to get through it: novelist Evelyn Waugh wrote to Labour politician Tom Driberg, a mutual friend of Freeman's, asking for information to use against the interviewer. Burnett wanted Oswald Mosley, the former fascist leader, to be grilled by Freeman, but BBC Director General Hugh Greene said no, worried about race riots.

Marlene Dietrich was tracked down in Paris but hung up, saying "you can't afford me." Aristotle Onassis asked for the questions in advance and was turned down. John Freeman outlived all his interviewees except Albert Finney and Stirling Moss.

Format

The camera rarely showed Freeman. Instead, it stayed on the guest, zooming in on a nervous cigarette or a face. Berlioz's overture to his unfinished opera Les francs-juges provided the theme music. Feliks Topolski drew caricatures of each interviewee for the titles. While most episodes were filmed at Lime Grove Studios, some were not: Carl Gustav Jung was interviewed at his Swiss home, and Compton Mackenzie from his bed.

Revival

The 1989 revival of the programme, hosted by Jeremy Isaacs, tried to replicate the interviewing style of its original host. Because many of the later guests were more media-savvy, it was harder to catch them off guard. Some of these interviews appeared on The Late Show. This revival ran until 1998, outlasting the original series. Isaacs himself was interviewed by James Naughtie for the show. In 2012, further editions were broadcast, starting with an interview of Peter Hain. The Sky Arts programme In Confidence, which debuted in 2010 with Laurie Taylor, uses the same format.

Reshowing of episodes

The original Face to Face has been rebroadcast on BBC Knowledge and later BBC Four, notably during the October 2005 season The Lost Decade. Of the 35 original episodes, 30 have been repeated; the five omitted are those with Nubar Gulbenkian, Roy Welensky, General Von Senger, Victor Gollancz, and Danny Blanchflower. The audio from the Stirling Moss interview appeared on the B-side of a vinyl LP, which also carried the soundtrack of the Hancock interview. In September 2009, the BBC released a Region 2 DVD box set containing all episodes except the Albert Finney interview. A selection of programmes is also available in an online archive.