Armchair Cinema

Did You Know?

• One of the films, Ian Kennedy Martin's Regan, gained a favourable response from viewers, with over seven million tuning into the episode.
• Regan was commissioned into a full series, The Sweeney, that ran between 1975 and 1978, and also produced two spin-off feature films released in 1977 and 1978.
• The complete series of Armchair Cinema was released on DVD on 31 August 2009 by Network, along with the television films "Suspect" (1969), "Rumour" (1970), "The Sailor's Return" (1978) and "Charlie Muffin" (1979).

Background

In 1971, three Thames Television executives—Lloyd Shirley, George Taylor, and Brian Tesler—founded Euston Films as a production company. It remained a Thames subsidiary until shutting down in 1994. Back then, TV drama usually combined studio videotape with exterior scenes shot on 16mm film or outside broadcast videotape. Euston Films realized that shooting entire productions on 16mm film could be faster and cheaper. The idea for the company originated with writer Trevor Preston and directors Jim Goddard and Tim Green, who, while working at ABC Television in 1965, proposed a dedicated unit for all-film dramas. After Thames Television was created in 1968, this approach was tested with two one-off plays, "Suspect" (1969) and "Rumour" (1970), aired under the ITV Playhouse banner, plus the children's series The Tyrant King. These experiments led directly to Euston Films becoming a formal production unit for Thames. Around the same time, the anthology series Armchair Theatre faced growing criticism as an outdated relic of television's stage origins. Thames had already found success with Euston Films on the series Special Branch, which switched to all-film production in 1973. Jeremy Isaacs, then Thames’ Director of Programmes, was impressed by Euston Films' work on that show and chose to commission them to revive the struggling Armchair Theatre. The revived series was rushed into production later that same year.