BFI TV Classics – serie

Our Friends in the North (1996) is the kind of epic drama that has ensured the BBC's peerless worldwide reputation for seriousness and excellence. In nine parts, it tells the life stories of four friends - Mary (Gina McKee), Nicky (Christopher Eccleston), Geordie (Daniel Craig) and Tosker (Mark Strong) - from adolescence to middle age. Their personal triumphs and crises unfold against the backdrop of massive social and political change in Britain - in particular the rise of Thatcherism and the dwindling of socialist ideals. Technically outstanding, Our Friends in the North is truly a 'state of the nation' drama but one which explores its large themes as well as more specific ones (domestic violence, corruption in the police and local government, iniquities in the criminal justice system) while developing its central characters with exceptional subtlety and finesse.

Seven Up was made as a one-off documentary by Granada's flagship current affairs series 'World in Action' in 1964. It featured fourteen seven-year-olds who were interviewed about their lives and what they wanted to be when they grew up. The children were selected to provide a representative cross-section of British society, and the program's intention was to test the Jesuit maxim - 'give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man' - in the context of the British belief in the overriding and determining importance of class origins. The series developed into subsequent programs, filmed at seven-year intervals, the most recent being '49 Up, 'broadcast in 2005.

The Singing Detective has been described by novelist Steven King as 'the Citizen Kane of the mini-series'. This study dissects the serial's array of themes and techniques, and explains the religious structure of the serial, its exploration into the power of language, its complex psychological construction of illness and sexuality, and more.

Edge of Darkness (BBC, 1985) is a conspiracy thriller, a psychological drama, and a mythic tale of the death and regeneration of the planet. Written by Troy Kennedy Martin, directed by Martin Campbell, and produced by Michael Wearing, it marks one of the points of a British television drama, which was both popular in its generic appeal and groundbreaking in its narrative style. Broadcast at a time of high paranoia about the secret state, the hazards of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons proliferation, Edge of Darkness start Bob Peck as Craven, a CID detective investigating the death of his environmental activist daughter, played by Joanne Whalley. His search for the truth leads him into a murky world of conspiracy involving the nuclear industry and the CIA (Joe Don baker in a bravura performance as the CIA agent Darius Jedburgh). John Caughie's insightful study of the series situates it in the political context of the 1980s and in the context of British television drama in transition. He traces Edge of Darkness's exploration of the pathology of grief, developing notions of paranoia, myth and magical thinking to highlight the ways in which Troy Kennedy Martin takes the political thriller beyond politics. The book includes an Afterword by the screenwriter, Troy Kennedy Martin. John Caughie is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow. he is the author of Television Drama: Realism, Modernism and British Culture (2000), a member of the Editorial Board of Screen and General Editor, with Charlotte Brunsdon, of the Oxford Television Studies series.

This is a reflective, funny account of one of the most popular tv sitcoms ever made. Nicholas Mirzoeff situates Seinfeld as an expression of Clinton-era America, from its consistently ironic take on social life, to the changing culture of sexuality and ethnicity.

Cracker (1993-6; 2007) was one of the standout television series of the 1990s, reinvigorating the television crime drama and winning both critical plaudits and ratings success. In Fitz, its flawed, self-destructive, arrogant but brilliant criminal psychologist hero, the series created one of the decade's most iconic characters, in the process turning Robbie Coltrane from a respected comic performer into an award-winning actor and a genuine star.Cracker played freely with the conventions of the detective thriller, focusing less on the 'who' of crime than the 'why'. As such it followed a Catholic preoccupation with deep motive and moral responsibility shared by Fitz and his creator Jimmy McGovern, the first and most dominant of the series' three writers. Through three series and two specials, Cracker explored the causes and consequences of crime, while never losing sight of the moral choices made by its perpetrators. At the same time the series exposed the inherent dangers of a police force in pursuit not of justice but of 'results'.Mark Duguid's illuminating study of Cracker traces the series' origins and development in the context of early 1990s television and places it in the contemporary social and political landscape. Duguid explores the series' distinctive moral focus, paying particular attention to Cracker's concerns with justice and the impact of bereavement and grief, most notably in McGovern's impassioned engagement with the devastation caused by the Hillsborough disaster and its aftermath. Combining detailed textual analysis with insights drawn from interviews with McGovern and producer Gub Neal, Duguid reveals how one of the angriest, toughest series of its time is also, paradoxically, one of the most compassionate.Mark Duguid is a Senoir Curator of the BFI National Archive, and is the editor of, and a major contributor to BFI Screenonline, an online research and educational resource devoted to the history of film and television in Britain. He has contributed to Sight& Sound magazine and to the Encyclopedia of Television (2004).

Kenneth Clark's Civilisation (1969), was a landmark documentary series, pioneering the 'presenter as hero' model. Jonathan Conlin draws on interviews with the original crew and archival research to reveal a series that combined scepticism towards traditional ideas of progress with an inclusive approach to its audience.

April 7 1991 saw the broadcast of the first instalment of Prime Suspect, a new crime series by screenwriter Lynda La Plante, starring Helen Mirren as DCI Jane Tennison. The drama focused on the desperate efforts of the Metropolitan Police to catch and convict a serial killer targeting women in a series of particularly gruesome attacks, while Tennison battles male colleagues who resent her taking charge of the case. Over seven series, Prime Suspect went on to tackle issues such as racism, homophobia and child abuse, establishing La Plante as a leading TV dramatist; winning multiple industry accolades for its stars and production team (including a clutch of BAFTAs and EMMYs) and gaining distribution all over the world. Deborah Jermyn's study examines exactly what made Prime Suspect so distinctive and controversial and the role it played in transforming the TV crime drama. Jermyn places the series in the context of earlier TV crime series, particularly those such as Juliet Bravo, The Gentle Touch and Cagney& Lacey that featured female detectives, and traces its influence on those such as Silent Witness and CSI that came after. Jermyn also relates the institutionalised sexism and misogyny that Tennison confronts to real-life discrimination and prejudice in British policing and its attitudes to women, whether as investigators or victims, in cases such as that of Assistant Chief Constable Alison Halford and the distinction made between prostitutes and the 'innocent' victims of the Yorkshire Ripper.Through a close analysis of key scenes, Jermyn highlights the formal and aesthetic innovations of Prime Suspect, in its attention to the detail of forensic work; its unflinching portrayal of the bodies of murder victims and its cinematic shooting style. Recognising Prime Suspect as one of the most striking, acclaimed and influential texts in British television history, Jermyn acknowledges the key roles played by the original screenwriter La Plante and by Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison.

‘Norman Stanley Fletcher, you have pleaded guilty to the charges brought by this court and it is now my duty to pass sentence.’ Those words, spoken by a judge to the show’s hero in the title sequence of every Porridge episode, are among the most famous in British comedy and they remind viewers that this is no ordinary TV sitcom.The first situation comedy anywhere in the world to be set in a prison, Porridge is about men being punished for crimes committed against the same sort of people who are watching the show. Millions of hard working Britons were fans, many of them anxious about rising crime and worried that burglars would steal the TV set they were watching it on.Yet they still settled down at 8.30pm on Friday nights between 1974 and 1977 to watch a series that celebrates the sometimes pathetic, often ingenious, recidivism of a group of social misfits who by their own admission are failed citizens. How did such a comedy come to be seen as part of a ‘golden age of British sitcom’, without ever losing its edge to nostalgia?Crime, like sex, sells. But Porridge did not romanticise villainy. Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, it’s a satire of class-consciousness and power, warmed by a humanistic celebration of men on the margins of society. Its heroes are weak inadequate misfits, not tough, glamorous gangsters. Porridge was a success because the essence of situation comedy is confinement; characters in this format are people who feel trapped and thwarted by circumstances beyond their control. This, therefore, is the ultimate sitcom. Richard Weight's entertaining study of this much-loved classic places Porridge in the context of 1970s social upheavals, explores how the series satirises structures of class and authority through Fletch and Godber's battles to outwit the prison officers Mr Mackay and Mr Barrowclough, and traces its influences on TV comedy that followed.