Book review: Richard Hewett (2017) THE CHANGING SPACES OF TELEVISION ACTING – From studio realism to location realism in BBC television drama

This book, published by Manchester University Press, seven years ago, is a detailed academic study of TV acting. It provides a clear contextualised historical framework, conveying the progression from studio realism to location realism. With Outside Broadcast video as the transitional technology towards single camera DV/film that we largely now have. Hewett tantalisingly notes some exceptions which have marked a return to multi camera studio live – EastEnders and Corrie live episodes and the live event drama Frankenstein’s Wedding (2011). There’s a great account of the throwback The Quatermass Experiment (2005), which reached a 542,000 peak audience on BBC4, and pointed to some notable possibilities that were being neglected. Here, I feel Hewett could have explored the crucial previous attempt at doing live dramas, Live at Pebble Mill (BBC2, 1983) and engaged with arguments about why there was an unfairly negative critical response to fine dramas like Keith Dewhurst’s The Battle of Waterloo.

Hewett traces how, initially, very gestural stage derived acting styles were still prevalent among some in the 1950s Quatermass cast, like Van Boolen, but that Reginald Tate was pioneering the ‘scaling down’ of performance that would go onto dominate TV acting. He evocatively and economically describes and analyses the subtleties of acting gestures, movement and vocal delivery in impressive detail. In the 1970s, studio realism and restrained performances were very much hegemonic, but in the Survivors episode analysed, Talfryn Thomas using far a more expressive and gestural and large style where the acting performance is very much evident. And viewers were still very much admiring and accepting of this, at this point. Most of the actors were developing a location realism on OB video in real spaces, not created ones in the studio. Perhaps Hewett here could have explored key precursors to this like Up the Junction (1965) and Cathy Come Home (1966) which began using 16mm film for TV dramas.

This book contains a wealth of reflective analysis of changing training for actors, with a gradual decline in the central of stage training: IMO, which hasn’t really benefited screen acting. There are telling and caustic Broadsides from Tony Garnett and Timothy West that more people should have been listening to. There’s also great and intelligent testimony from actors like Louise Jameson and Denis Lill. While Hewett records how the younger generation of actors feel that some older, more theatrically rooted actors only really act with their voice. This reminds me of Roger Lewis’s significant observation about the stillness of Richard Burton in his excellent recent book.