The Wednesday Play

The Wednesday Play was a BBC1 anthology series of television plays that ran for six seasons, from October 1964 to May 1970. It became known for its contemporary social dramas, bringing topics to a wide audience that had rarely been explored on screen before. The series featured some of British television’s most influential and controversial works, such as *Up the Junction* and *Cathy Come Home*, and also showcased the earliest television plays by Dennis Potter.

The idea for the series came from BBC director of television Kenneth Adam, who suggested it to the corporation’s Head of Drama, Sydney Newman, after canceling two earlier series of single plays. Newman had joined the BBC following the success of *Armchair Theatre*, a similar programme he had produced at ABC Weekend TV. That series had tackled difficult social issues in a ‘kitchen sink’ style while attracting a mass audience on ITV. Newman wanted to move the BBC away from its reputation for safe, unchallenging drama and create something with more bite, which he called “agitational contemporaneity.”

The Wednesday Play achieved this goal. The BBC began stockpiling six or seven plays in case of problems with individual works. One production, *The War Game* (1965), was pulled from broadcast by a nervous BBC under government pressure. Another, John Hopkins’ *Fable* (20 January 1965), which inverted South Africa’s apartheid system, was delayed for weeks over fears it might incite racial tensions.

The series was intended to nurture new writers, and several careers began there. Dennis Potter’s first four accepted television plays aired in 1965. His two Nigel Barton plays (8 and 15 December 1965) brought him widespread attention, while *Alice* (13 October 1965), about Lewis Carroll’s relationship with Alice Liddell, developed themes he would revisit. In the first half of 1966, playwright Peter Luke produced 26 Wednesday Plays, with story editing by David Benedictus. Highlights included *The Snow Ball* (20 April 1966), adapted from Brigid Brophy’s novel; *Toddler on the Run* (25 May 1966), adapted by Shena Mackay from her novella and directed by James MacTaggart; *Cock Hen and Courting Pit* (renamed *A Tour of the Old Floorboards*, 22 June 1966) by David Halliwell; and two plays by Frank O’Connor, adapted by Hugh Leonard with almost no dialogue.