British TV's loss of ambition
I have just been re-watching the BBC’s brilliant adaptation of Wolf Hall on BBC iPlayer. Superbly cast, with Mark Rylance, Claire Foy, Anton Lesser and Damian Lewis, among others, and brilliantly directed by Peter Kosminsky, it was one of the best BBC dramas in recent years.
There is one curious thing about Wolf Hall, however. Wolf Hall is an adaptation of the first two books in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. Together, the books come to over 1,100 pages, brilliantly adapted by Peter Straughan and Kosminsky in six episodes. Why only six? Each book could easily have sustained six episodes on their own. This is part of a bigger problem in British television: a strange loss of ambition.
This is a new development. Between the 1960s and 1980s British TV produced huge, ambitious TV historical documentaries from The Great War in 1964, which marked the 50th anniversary of the First World War, to The World at War in 1973-4, both 26 episodes; Civilization (1969) and The Ascent of Man (1973), both 13 episodes. Drama series were just as big. The Forsyte Saga (1967) and The Pallisers (1974) were also 26 episodes. During the 1980s ITV started making ambitious, high-prestige drama series like Brideshead Revisited (11 episodes, 1981) and The Jewel in the Crown (14 episodes, 1984).
It wasn’t just the sheer size and cost of these series, it was the range: historical documentaries, dramas and series about culture and ideas. During these twenty years, British television was hugely ambitious.
What has happened? Most prestige drama series are now just a few episodes. Those big series about ideas — Civilisation, The Ascent of Man, Alistair Cooke’s America and Carl Sagan’s Cosmos (both 13 episodes) The Shock of the New (8 episodes) — used to be a regular, almost annual event. No longer. Now they have vanished. Civilizations was shorter and worse than the original. The Great War and The World at War were just the beginning of a number of big, ambitious documentary series. Others included The End of Empire (14 episodes), The Dragon Has Two Tongues (13 episodes), and — the last hurrah — Cold War (24 episodes) and Millennium: A Thousand Years of History (10 episodes).
Compare these huge history series with the BBC’s output to mark the centenary of the First World War, a number of smaller projects with different presenters, including Jeremy Paxman and Niall Ferguson. The BBC and ITV have given up on big series. Simon Schama’s History of Britain was fifteen episodes but split between three series. Andrew Marr’s various series on history and modern politics were between three and six episodes. Niall Ferguson’s historical series for Channel 4 tend to be about four episodes each and are there to sell the books.
There’s another twist. The decline of big series on British television has coincided with the rise and rise of ambitious new series in America. The last two big historical documentary series shown on the BBC, Cold War and Millennium, were produced by Jeremy Isaacs but financed by Ted Turner. Since then, the Americans have made their own hugely ambitious series. In particular, during the last thirty years, big historical documentary series by Ken and Ric Burns have taken on big subjects, from The Civil War to The Vietnam War, from the history of Jazz to New York.
Big series like The Wire, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and Homeland, have changed the nature of TV drama. From the opening episode of The Sopranos to the final episode of Homeland, these series have ranged from Italian-American tough guys in New Jersey to Mexican drug dealers in New Mexico, from inner-city cops in Baltimore to terrorism in the Middle East and Pakistan. These are huge series, ranging between sixty and ninety-six episodes.
Of course, there are British drama series like Spooks, eighty-six episodes over ten seasons. But, by and large, the best TV dramas are shorter: Sherlock, Broadchurch and Line of Duty are all under thirty episodes. But many of the best drama series — Stephen Poliakoff’s Shooting the Past and Relative Strangers, Hugo Blick’s The Shadow Line and The Honourable Woman — are just a few episodes.
This is all part of two huge changes in television. First, how American cable TV has overtaken British television in ambition since the 1990s. Second, the loss of ambition in British TV. We no longer think big.
