The thesis makes use of archival research, particularly with regards to tracing
chronologically the main changes in the use of film for television generally and in the adventure series specifically. Much of this information has come from a mix of consumer and trade based contemporary periodicals such as Radio Times, TV Times,
Television Mail/Broadcast, Kinematograph Weekly, Television: the Journal of the
Royal Television Society, Journal of the Society of Film and Television Arts, Film and
Television Technician, among other periodicals kept at the British Film Institute library
in London.45 The material was used to extract key events and dates that could be used to construct a comprehensive account of developments in the history of the filmed adventure series from the 1950s to the early 1970s. In this way, it was possible to map the field and begin to pinpoint gaps in the literature. The choice of mostly trade periodicals can suggest a narrowing of focus, but this was because it was important to try to understand the differing contemporary attitudes to filming a programme for television on location or on a soundstage compared to recording a programme within a television studio using electronic cameras. The result, for example, was that it was possible to find an early instance of a published interview with a television director to make a comparison between working on film to working in the electronic studio and begin to examine attitudes to the telefilm by other contemporary practitioners.46 This allowed the thesis to integrate the main theoretical debates within the academic
45 The original source material is appropriately referenced in the thesis and/or contained in the
bibliography.
literature, for example, the issue of flow or the ephemeral nature of television, with a close historical analysis.
This research method not only offered an account of events that could be
evidenced, but offered the possibility of an insight into historical processes between the ITV broadcasting companies, and how this impinged on the ‘creativity’ of the
individuals employed by them. For example, reading contemporary interviews with practitioners enabled an understanding of the motivations of key individuals like Monty Berman and Julian Wintle as they were employed to develop the adventure series in the 1960s. To be able to better appreciate the attitudes to television at the time by
practitioners and/or commentators helped to contextualise wider theoretical debates surrounding television by Raymond Williams, John Ellis, Jane Feuer and others that were not formulated to deal specifically with the British adventure series.
Nevertheless, journalistic discourse from periodicals can raise problems about the validity of the information that has been published. Therefore, care had to be taken not only to consult consumer and trade publications when building an understanding of events, but a wider range of sources to counter-balance the possibility of bias or opinion expressed by commentators of the period. Consequently, official publications by the ITV television regulator, the Independent Television Authority (ITA), and other
government papers such as The Pilkington Report (1962) and The Annan Report (1977) were consulted. These papers could be relied on as a reliable source, although
questions of interpretation continued to be valid. Other document sources were company records from ITV television companies, insofar as they existed, which were inspected to ensure further methodological integrity, and as a check on the claims made by journalists or officialdom.
Another key problem of reliability, one that James Chapman has remarked on, became apparent while researching the thesis.47 Care had to be taken to check some of the facts cited in fan-based books.48 The telefilm adventure series of the 1960s and, to a lesser degree, the shot-on-film television series produced by Euston Films in the 1970s, such as The Sweeney, have become subjects of celebration by the ‘avid viewer’ or fan. Information about The Avengers and The Prisoner could be found in periodicals such as Starburst, but this clearly functioned as a fan magazine. The information from fan-based books and periodicals can be useful, but there are dangers relying on previous work that is lacking in empirical studies and referencing, and is primarily a highly subjective celebration of a particular series that functions as nostalgia.
To counter the problem of reliability and, more crucially, interpretation of the programmes that have been chosen, it was necessary to find other sources of
information, in addition to the ones already mentioned. A visit to the Written Archive Centre (WAC) of the BBC, based at Caversham Park, meant it was possible to
uncover information that was able to shed light on a few of the claims and
assumptions made about The Avengers, an ITV show. Fortunately, the show had been discussed by The Critics, a BBC Radio show in 1963, and it was possible to
understand, using some of the archive material, how attitudes to the show had been constructed. This provided insight into how the action-adventure text existed as a
47
James Chapman, ‘The Avengers: Television and Popular Culture during the High Sixties’, in Anthony Aldgate, James Chapman and Arthur Marwick (eds), Windows on the Sixties: Exploring Key
Texts of Media and Culture (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), pp. 37-69 (p. 65). Chapman refers to Toby
Miller and an encounter with an Avengers fan.
48
For example, books such as Dave Rogers, The Ultimate Avengers (London: Boxtree, 1995) and by the same author, The Prisoner and Danger Man (London: Boxtree, 1989).
production strategy to create ‘culturally valuable’ television that relied on the written word rather than visual style, and a tension between an older form of realism and a modern Pop Art, which can be used to articulate wider cultural thematic discussions both inside and outside television.
Other document archives were consulted to check the information about Thames Television and its film-making subsidiary, Euston Films. Once again, most discourse about Euston Films seemed to be by fans about The Sweeney, a gritty crime series of the 1970s, in semi-professional magazines such as Primetime. The problem of finding information on the formative period of Euston Films – the period the thesis wished to address in order to draw a possible link between it and the 1960s telefilm series - meant that two more archives were consulted at the British Film Institute. These contain material from Thames Television and the programme Hazell (1977-78) produced by Thames. Documents from Thames Television are extremely difficult to find, and this is probably a consequence of the demise of the regional ITV companies after the Broadcasting Act (1990), leading to the loss of many of the files. There is anecdotal evidence that it was possible in the 1990s to rescue valuable material from the rubbish skip – the picture used at the front of the thesis is one such example and was kindly provided to me by a lighting engineer, who has an amateur interest in the history of ITV.49
As a consequence, both archives at the BFI are incomplete and consist of a miscellany of documents that, in the case of the Thames Television archive, has not been catalogued. However, it was able to yield much valuable information on the
historical context to the formation of Euston Films and a few surviving documents offered insight into how management, men such as Jeremy Isaacs, reacted to the possibility of shooting drama on film. The archive for Thames Television was a key resource for information about the use of 16mm film cameras and attitudes to using film when because of employment demarcation rules it was not possible to deploy 16mm film for television fiction without special arrangement between the television trade union, Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians (ACTT), and the ITV companies. The second archive for the Thames Television programme, Hazell, included more information that was not published or had been heavily edited when it had been published in one of the very few books examining the process of producing a television programme at the time.50
Nevertheless, archive research can only represent a partial insight into events within an institution. In order to better understand the context of production
operations and decisions, it was necessary to interview several retired individuals who had been employed by Thames Television and Euston Films. Communications were in the form of e-mails, telephone calls and, if they could be arranged, a face-to-face interview in London. The key interviewees included Jim Goddard, a director for
Callan, Special Branch, and Hazell; Muir Sutherland, the Head of Thames Television
International; Trevor Preston, a writer on The Protectors, Special Branch and Hazell; Ted Childs, the producer of Special Branch.51 Together they were able to provide much anecdotal material that could be used to re-think the industrial contexts of
50 See Manuel Alvarado and Edward Buscombe, Hazell (London: British Film Institute, 1978) and
Manuel Alvarado and John Stewart, Made For Television: Euston Films Limited (London: British Film Institute in association with Thames Television International, 1985). Unfortunately, Manuel Alvarado died a few months before the commencement of this thesis.
production in British television in the 1970s and the use of film for television. Of course, the unreliability of anecdotal information was a concern, and the thesis takes care not to be dependent on it, but verify the opinions and memories that have no doubt dimmed over thirty years, using published and unpublished sources. Overall, several methods of research have been grafted onto each other to diminish reliability problems caused by the use of journalistic discourse, fan-based books and interview material.