Exploring The Wednesday Play’s Legacy At 60 – 02.14: ‘Three Clear Sundays’ (BBC1, 7 April 1965)

The Wednesday Play (1964-70, or 1965-70) was a landmark BBC drama series, following ITV’s lead with Armchair Theatre (ABC & Thames, 1956-74) in amplifying working-class voices. Canadian migrant Sydney Newman, from a working-class background, spearheaded both initiatives. After completing a Ph.D. on The Wednesday Play’s successor, Play for Today (BBC1, 1970-84), It’s time to grapple with the legacy of its predecessor in greater depth.

This series of posts commemorates the sixtieth anniversary of The Wednesday Play while exploring its diverse output beyond justly celebrated works like Up the Junction (1965) and Cathy Come Home (1966). I plan to watch and reflect on all existing plays up to Cathy, supported by research. Missing plays will still be covered, but without textual analysis.

02.14: Three Clear Sundays (BBC One, Wednesday 7 April 1965) 9:45 – 11:10pm

Directed by Ken Loach; Written by Jimmy O’Connor; Produced by James MacTaggart; Story Editor: Roger Smith; Music by Nemone Lethbridge (lyrics) & Harry Pitch (harmonica)

Now, we are onto a play which began defining the Wednesday Play’s iconoclastic populism. Story editor Roger Smith notes how ‘hundreds’ of letters were received praising James O’Connor’s A Tap on the Shoulder, asking for more from the writer (Radio Times, 1 April 1965, p. 35). Just three months on, their wishes were granted.

Barrow boy Danny Lee (Tony Selby) pushes a man down in a pub brawl and gets landed in prison on a six-month sentence. Herein, he is manipulated by two wily inmates into hitting a police warden – he hits him over the head, sufficient to kill the man. Thereafter, he pleads guilty, honestly, and is faced with the death penalty under law. Despite his formidable Mum’s (Rita Webb) machinations, he is found guilty and is executed by the state via hanging. The play’s title comes from ‘the three clear Sundays a condemned murderer spends in jail before execution’ (Daily Mirror, 7 April 1965, p. 18). The same preview indicates O’Connor wrote the play when in Dartmoor, but revised it for TV (ibid.).

The Daily Mirror reported that ‘the BBC are awaiting Parliament’s decision on capital punishment before fixing a screening date’ for 3 Clear Sundays (6 January 1965, p. 12). Indeed, this play had been the first of O’Connor’s accepted by the BBC, before A Tap on the Shoulder which was screened on 6 January (Television Today, 25 March 1965, p. 9). It has an added non-naturalistic element wherein ballads, with lyrics by Nemone Lethbridge and harmonica playing by Harry Pitch, periodically summarise or comment on the on screen action.

The Daily Express indicated the sensational nature of the play, showing an image from its conclusion, and claiming it was the first hanging scene in TV ‘to be shown in detail’, while emphasising how O’Connor himself was under threat of ‘a REAL noose’ only to be reprieved 48 hours before he was due to he hanged (18 March 1965, p. 7). O’Connor claims the play was not propaganda but was written from the heart and was ‘an emotional autobiography’ (ibid.).

A certain androcentric bias at the root of a drama like this was plainly indicated in a Daily Mail article about Andrea Lawrence’s appearance in the play, titled ‘Andrea stars with 56 men’, though it excludes mention of Finnuala O’Shannon or Rita Webb entirely, both who give significant, substantial performances here (15 March 1965, p. 4). Another newspaper mentions the large cast of 69, while noting the play concentrates on the effect Danny has ‘on the other inmates and those waiting and praying outside the jail’; furthermore, it intriguingly adds that A Tap on the Shoulder ‘is to be made into a film.’ (Peterborough Evening Telegraph, 3 April 1965, p. 3).

The Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail reflected how O’Connor’s decade in Dartmoor prison means ‘there is a great deal of feeling and warmth in the play’, also expressing surprise how he ‘has managed to bring a touch of humour to this frightening situation’ (7 April 1965, p. 4). It’s notable how few of the reviews mention Ken Loach’s part in the production as director; one of the few which does calls him ‘Kenneth Leach’. The emphasis in the press build-up was squarely on Tony Selby, with at least six papers publishing images of him behind bars, and O’Connor, who is praised thus by Roger Smith:

But what is remarkable is that in spite of the genuine outrage he feels his writing is warm and compassionate, with an extraordinary joy of life. In the worst situation he can find humour – something very rare in a writer (op. cit.)

In other words, the classic working-class survival – or gallows – humour.

You can watch the play here on the estimable Play For Forever’s YouTube channel (or indeed the excellent Ken Loach at the BBC DVD box set from some years back…):

YouTube video (accessed: 7 April 2025)

Rating *** / ****

The earlier sections of this play felt much in the same brash capering tone as A Tap on the Shoulder, but its tragic development felt very different, all in aid of an impassioned anti-capital punishment stance. The illiterate Danny Lee is unable to deny he did what he did and meant to do it. But is not able to identify the blame that also ought to have been attached to the two men, including self-styled “King of the Underworld”, Johnny May, who persuaded him to do what he did.

The point isn’t really that he was innocent, but just that no one is deserving of state execution, whatever they have done. He’s a wretched individual in terms of what he did, and Tony Selby performs brilliantly to ensure we believe his limitations and gullibility, but then also feel for him as the inexorable fate of the death penalty is cruelly applied. The play’s ending is well edited and sparsely suggestive, not prurient in any way. Then we get three on-screen captions including ones by Albert Pierrepoint and Arthur Koestler.

The songs, lyrics written by Nemone Lethbridge, and music played on accordion and/or harmonica by Harry Pitch, felt an odd, novel gesture, somewhere between Brecht/Weill and English folk song a la Ewan MacColl and the Radio Ballads. They had a worldly, sardonic air.

The drama overall felt like had astute perceptions about varying working-class underworld attitudes and distinct hierarchies of crime. This includes the perception that thieving and making material gains is the way to go, rather than just getting in the nick for violence, as a mug does. Johnny May and Robbo Robertson know how to manipulate a mug, which Danny foolishly allows to happen to him.

This felt like it gave an unvarnished, real blast of experience and untidy, vigorous but painful life in 1965 London. Yemi Goodman Ajibade and Henry Webb get small roles as a Black man who a racist landlord refuses to serve and a Jewish man accused of financial cheating who faces reprisals – it’s not really made clear the truth of this latter situation. These roles, dialogue from some of the lags about “poofs” and also the spirited but constrained Rosa – who lacks the freedom to have a safe abortion – indicate just how restrictive British society still was, in many different ways. We also hear from an appallingly unrepentant murderer of three “whores”, who, in the most macabre of the songs, wants to commit a fourth murder. As with Tony Parker’s plays, you feel you are an eavesdropper of some horrible, unpalatable but true human behaviours and attitudes that exist. It was an uncomfortable moment which reminded me of reading Blake Morrison and Gordon Burn about the Yorkshire Ripper killings.

As is sometimes the case with Ken Loach, you get a clearcut moral judgement on the narrative situation, but here Jimmy O’Connor avoids a neatness and the whole scenario, if not glorifying crime, certainly has something of the Graham Greene-Bonnie and Clyde attitude of fascination and some admiration for these people. But there’s good writing and playing of Danny’s manipulation and betrayal by May and Robbo, which is keenly observed in documentarian style by Loach. The cast is perhaps excessively large, which even more than the previous O’Connor play, makes it somewhat hard to follow the various strands, but it conversely helps to create a rich, untidy tapestry of the life of the times.

As with O’Connor’s previous Wednesday Play, there is a rich variety of colloquial language: ‘Mush’, ‘snout’ (packet of cigarettes), ‘in the family way’, ‘a slash’, ‘chokey’, ‘the screw’, ‘the nick’, ‘geezer’, ‘got his collar felt’, ‘bit of bird’, ‘cock’, ‘done me nut’, ‘a stretch’, ‘nicker’, ‘let’s get down to brass tacks’, ‘straightened’, ‘the cat’ and ‘a diabolical liberty’. And that’s just a cursory list!

I’d say this play’s overall vigorous spirit and campaigning heft – through a tragic human story – made it a fine and crucial addition to the now established, ongoing Wednesday Play project.

Best Performance: TONY SELBY

Television Today noted this was Selby’s thirtieth TV role (1 April 1965, p. 11). Nine days after the play’s broadcast, an article noted that Pimlico-born Selby’s first acting job was in 1949 at the Scala Theatre alongside Margaret Lockwood in a version of Peter Pan (Westminster & Pimlico News, 16 April 1965, p. 1). It reveals also that Chelsea FC fan Selby lived with his wife Jackie Milburn and parents at Kent House, Tachbrook Estate, and he and Milburn were about to buy a house of their own (ibid.).

Now, Rita Webb was very close to getting my nod here, with an indomitable performance as a matriarchal battleaxe. I think I recall reading about how Liz Smith regarded her as a close friend in her early days after moving to London, among many others part of the cosmopolitan theatre circles Smith moved in after the Second World War.

But Selby, whose performance Roger Smith praised as ‘one of the most moving’ he had seen (op. cit.) edges it as he makes the latter stages so tense and, gradually, moving. O’Connor’s script and Selby’s playing convey a hapless man, guilty, but who deserves a better fate than this and clearly deserved some measure of forgiveness and chance at redemption.

Best line: “You ain’t missing much in ‘ere, y’ know… It’s a miserable bastard life outside! What with my back, Aunt Lil’s operation and atom bombs in Scotland, and now there’s a load of flu about, I think I got a dose meself. Now where’s me snuff box?” (Britannia Lee to her son Danny, who is soon to die)

I do also like some of Nemone Lethbridge’s folk ballad lyrics, e.g. “Mother’s got the geezer straightened! She won’t ever let a chance go by!”

Audience size: 9.90 million.

Share of overall TV viewing audience: 68.9%

The opposition: BBC2 (Madame Bovary – Part 3 / Jazz 625 – Tubby Hayes Big Band), ITV (The Budget – response by Mr. Edward Heath / The Tigers are Burning – dramatic reconstruction of a 1943 battle between the Russians and the Germans / Professional Wrestling from Bradford)

Audience Reaction Index: 68%

Reviewed in London press publications consulted: 46% (to be checked later)

Reception: Fairly good response from London critics, if miserly in number and with certain reservations. However, the reviews gathered from outside London are almost uniformly glowing, which, as with A Tap on the Shoulder, says something about how The Wednesday Play was now communicating well beyond metropolitan journalistic elites. This is corroborated by the viewer responses from the time, from a vast audience nearing 10 million.

Anon acclaimed its ‘shattering effect’, Loach’s lucid direction, Selby’s ‘remarkably accurate’ and ‘moving’ performance and Webb dealing with a ‘caricature’ role with ‘strident gusto’s and O’Shannon ‘touchingly gentle’ (Times, 8 April 1965, p. 6). Gerald Larner questioned the structure and plausibility of the first two-thirds’, but admired the harrowing final third, see it as ‘not a play but a plea against capital punishment’, which was ‘valuable’ (Guardian, 8 April 1965, p. 9). Generally, though, Larner felt it undisciplined, with excessive ‘stock’ characters (ibid.). The paper later apologised to O’Connor for an erroneous reference to him having written the play while in Broadmoor, potentially influenced by a stray line in the play mentioning that establishment (Guardian, 10 April 1965, p. 6).

The Daily Express front page rather vaguely reported that ‘Viewers protested to the B.B.C. last night at a hanging scene’, odd given the brief and suggestive rather than lingering and graphic nature of the said scene! (8 April 1965, p. 1). This same page’s main story ‘JAIL FOR RACE HATERS’, reported on Labour Home Secretary Sir Frank Soskice’s Bill to outlaw racial discrimination in public places (ibid.). While this had many loopholes, it was a significant step forward in creating a new offence of inciting racial hatred. O’Connor’s play has a scene where a White publican won’t serve a Black man: its truth is demonstrated by the words of Councillor Austin Webb, chairman of the Licensed Victuallers’ Central Protection Society: ‘”We do not preach a colour bar, nor do the brewers. But I know some publicans do not allow coloured people on their premises.”‘

This reveals how multifaceted certain Wednesday Plays could be: focusing on one overall societal problem – here, the death penalty – but then also squarely highlighting others in single scenes: racism and abortion.

Like Larner, Maurice Richardson appreciated the message but felt the characterisation and construction were ‘amateurish’ (Observer, 11 April 1965, p. 29). He found it very viewable and revealing of prison life, though, feeling that O’Connor’s underworld dialogue is ‘the most authentic in the business’ (ibid.). Frederick Laws felt the main story of Danny was unconvincing and lacked sure pacing, but found the use of modern hanging ballads ‘persuasive’, the language ‘vigorous and plausible’ and acclaimed Rita Webb’s ‘proper gusto […] a splendid invention – receiver, mother of crooks, and humbug’ (The Listener, 15 April 1965, p. 575). Laws thus expresses a desire for O’Connor to write comedies (ibid.).

Marjorie Norris again showed a deep frame of reference, noting similarities to Victorian Melodrama and inversions of morality akin to the Carry On… films (Television Today, 15 April 1965, p. 12). Norris felt seeing ‘the snare closing round’ Danny ‘was pitiful’, and praised Rita Webb for making Britannia Lee an admirable but not loveable ‘harridan’ (ibid.). She liked how Ken Loach knows ‘when to leave well alone’ and not show off with visual techniques, and handled the folk tune sequences effectively: ‘They linked the suffering of a 1965 innocent to all those who have preceded him’ (ibid.). Norris noted ‘Another success from producer James MacTaggart.’ (ibid.)

Jess Conrad, a footballing crony of Tony Selby noted his ‘old chum’ had been ‘hoofing in Edwardian bathing draws – ‘stripes going The wrong way, and all that gear’ – at the Players Theatre near Charing Cross: as a means of unwinding from his ‘sterner performing chores’ elsewhere and with filming of TCS in the bag (The Stage, 29 April 1965, p. 7). John Holmstrom did not see it as all that stern a challenge, describing Danny as an ‘absurdly innocent victim-hero’, with his progress to the gallows achieved via ‘a series of bizarre accidents’, though he did like O’Connor ‘apt yet stylish’ dialogue (New Statesman, 23 April 1965, p. 660).

B.L. thought it both a great play and great propaganda, admiring the various settings’ atmosphere, including the home of Britannia, ‘the Cockney female Fagin’ (Belfast Telegraph, 8 April 1965, p. 15). B.L. likened the play to Brendan Behan’s The Quare Fellow – which Selby had appeared in on stage – especially in its use of ‘extremely effective incidental music’ (ibid.). They also felt, tellingly, that Z Cars, in comparison, lacked authenticity and was beginning to feel more like Dixon of Dock Green in its cosy focus on the Newtown police having ‘hearts of gold’ (ibid.). Argus found it ‘stark and powerful’, ‘a tremendous, exciting story [that] came over with a rare strength’ (Glasgow Daily Record, 8 April 1965, p. 19).

W.D.A. spoke up for the importance of emotions, in justifying O’Connor’s appeal to them over reason, and how Danny, the rare straight one in the Lee clan earns our sympathy (Liverpool Echo, 8 April 1965, p. 2). They noted how ‘A combination of the author’s writing and Tony Selby’s excellent acting communicated most powerfully the sensation of the numbing sickness of fear overtaking the condemned man as events took their inexorable course’ (ibid.). Michael Beale felt it avoided over sensationalising or sentimentalising the situation, and emphasised with ‘poor, bewildered’ Danny and found Britannia ‘repulsively fascinating’ (Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 8 April 1965, p. 2).

Accolades grew. In the Somerset-based Western Daily News, Peter Forth avowed it was ‘no play for the squeamish’, hitting ‘home with savage force’ and will be remembered ‘with respect for the author and those taking part’ (8 April 1965, p. 7). Jim Webber went so far as to say The Wednesday Play had ‘contributed very largely’ to the BBC’s ‘return to grace’, with this play’s ‘trenchant bite’ a good example (Bristol Evening Post, 10 April 1965, p. 5). Webber loved the ‘sheer authenticity’, likening it to a filmed documentary which avoided staginess:

Never once did one get the impression of cardboard sets and puppets mouthing lines; so powerful was it all that the mood of the viewer was of complete belief and absorption. (ibid.)

Linda Dyson found all the characters ‘obviously authentic’ and loved the ‘street songs’ and made a rare direct political comment:

It was a bitterly tragic human story. And if public opinion isn’t ready for Mr. Silverman’s Bill to abolish capital punishment – as has been said – it must have shifted towards a more civilised view as a result of this play (Birmingham Daily Post – Midland Magazine supplement, 10 April 1965, p. IV).

Bill Smith felt he had made the wrong choice in opting to watch ATV’s The Tigers are Burning, after watching the last thirty minutes of O’Connor’s play: ‘I laughed, felt sad and, by play’s end, very sorry and emotionally disturbed […] A more crushing indictment of capital punishment has yet to be seen’ (Wolverhampton Express and Star, 10 April 1965, p. 15).

Peter Quince praised a ‘savagely eloquent tract’ but joined some of the London critics in finding it less successful as a play (Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 10 April 1965, p. 5). Quince would have liked a more odious murderer, as ‘the case against hanging is not selective’, but this was retrospective reflections; when it was on ‘I had been capable of nothing but stunned, horrified concentration on the screen’ (ibid.). He felt this ‘strong meat’ needed a warning beforehand for ‘viewers of a nervous disposition’, ending with praise for Rita Webb: ‘quite ‘outstanding’ as ‘his dreadful old bag of a mum’ (ibid.).

A review from the US was similarly positive. Rich. in Variety found O’Connor less a skilled playwright than ‘observer and shrewdly savage commentator on villainy’, with ‘vivid characterizations, punchy dialog’ and realistic settings (14 April 1965, p. 35). While Rich. regarded the cast as ‘unnecessarily large’, they admired an authentic tragedy, finding Selby’s performance ‘fascinating’ and the scene with the priest movingly acted (ibid.). There was further praise here for Webb as ‘his raucous, unscrupulous hoyden of a mother’, whole O’Shannon was said to give the most ‘haunting’ performance (ibid.).

Rich. regarded the scene with the Executioner (Howard Goorney) and assistant ghoulishly discussing their job unnecessarily ‘overloaded’ the anti-capital punishment argument, where a more implicit approach would have been better, but this was another largely positive review (ibid.).

Viewers regarded it as ‘a moving, dramatic and powerful play’, which brought home the ‘full meaning and horror’ of capital punishment, with one wise comment: ‘An eye for an eye does not solve anything – it just confirms man’s inhumanity’ (BBC WAC, VR/65/185). One comment picked up on a doubt I felt when watching: ‘whether a boy with Danny’s background and upbringing would be quite so gullible’ (ibid.). Tellingly, however, a Housewife declared that ‘All the scenes of prison life and crime depicted in other plays suddenly seemed bogus and one realized that this was the reality’ (ibid.). This matched the majority opinion in favour of a ‘warm, down-to-earth’ play, with only a minority complaining of dialogue that was ‘a bit too “natural”‘ (ibid.).

Most felt there was a truth underlying Britannia and ‘her brood’, seeing them as ‘typical denizens of the East End underworld’. The ballads came in for a mixed reception, with some finding them overdone and breaking up the continuity, others feeling they were ingenious and built up the right atmosphere (ibid.). Another Housewife eloquently revealed just why this had scored a RI 12% higher than the recent Wednesday Play average, and which had nearly matched that of O’Connor’s first play:

The play had the resemblance of a modern Beggars’ Opera and had a spark of brilliance both in writing and treatment (ibid.).

There were several letters to the press. M. Kelly of Dalkeith Road, Edinburgh wrote into the Daily Record calling for it to ‘be made compulsory viewing for everyone who favours hanging a murderer’, and expressing hopes the government will help us ‘start recognising crime as an illness that a rope won’t cure’ (12 April 1965, p. 2). B. Howells of Glamorgan, South Wales claimed to have been swayed totally against the death penalty by the play; previously undecided, they now saw it as a ‘barbaric act’ (Daily Mirror, 12 April 1965, p. 6).

In contrast, and in an interesting anticipation of a few responses to Adolescence sixty years hence, Miss E.M.V. Watford of Hertfordshire called for ‘a play giving the other side’, showing ‘The victim struck down; the news being broken to his wife; her struggle to keep the home together. Why does the killer corner all the sympathy ?’ (Daily Mirror, 17 April 1965, p. 4).

The People viewing panel notably championed Three Clear Sundays, with nine of the ten participants rating it ‘tip-top’ (2 May 1965, p. 4). The paper reflects how much better it went down than ‘phoney attempts at daring and tough plays which irritate viewers and the kinky, “way-out” stories drive them to despair’. They claimed that O’Connor’s play provided a corrective moral to TV producers: ‘People will take “tough stuff” so long as it is true to life, and has understandable characters – as this play had’ (ibid.).

On 16 July 1965, the play was repeated on BBC Two at 8:20pm in the Encore slot. A further repeat planned in summer 1966 was cancelled, the BBC claimed due to the World Cup and international horse show (Daily Telegraph, 17 June 1966, p. 17).

More broadly, the play contributed to a climate of significant legal change. The last hanging for murder in the UK was on 13 August 1964. Sydney Silverman MP’s The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 received royal assent on 8 November 1965, suspending the death penalty for murder, which was made permanent in 1969.

If you worked on or remember watching this play on TV, please email me at thomas.w.may@northumbria.ac.uk as I’m gathering oral history memories and would love to hear from you.🙂

Exploring The Wednesday Play’s Legacy At 60 – 02.01: ‘A Tap on the Shoulder’ (BBC1, 6 January 1965)

The Wednesday Play (1964-70, or 1965-70) was a landmark BBC drama series, following ITV’s lead with Armchair Theatre (ABC & Thames, 1956-74) in amplifying working-class voices. Canadian migrant Sydney Newman, from a working-class background, spearheaded both initiatives. After completing a Ph.D. on The Wednesday Play’s successor, Play for Today (BBC1, 1970-84), I feel it’s time to grapple with the legacy of its predecessor in greater depth.

02.01: A Tap on the Shoulder (BBC One, Wednesday 6 January 1965) 9:30 – 10:40pm

Directed by Kenneth Loach*; Written by James O’Connor; Produced by James MacTaggart; Designed by Eileen Diss; Music by Stanley Myers

*Misspelled ‘Kenneth Leach’ in the BBC’s audience research report!

This play opened a new, perhaps even the first, series of The Wednesday Play. It concerns a group of criminals who conduct a gold bullion robbery from the Queen’s bond at a South Coast airport. It was written not just by a writer not just new to TV, but who possessed inside knowledge…

Indeed, the Daily Mail featured the BBC’s decision to employ Jimmy ‘Ginger’ O’Connor as a playwright as a front page story (2 December 1964, p. 1), including an interview with ‘the former barrow boy, thief and convicted murderer’ who had been given the death penalty in 1942 at the Old Bailey for the murder of rag merchant George Ambridge. O’Connor was reprieved from his execution by the Home Secretary and released from Dartmoor prison after spending ten years inside. O’Connor credits his wife Nemone Lethbridge, who gave up practicing at the bar for their marriage, as giving crucial encouragement to his writing career (ibid.).ven that initial preamble, feel free to watch the play here now:

Following this preamble, feel free to watch the play here now:

PlayForEver YouTube video posting of A Tap on the Shoulder (accessed: 5 January 2025)

L. Marsland Gander disapproved of this new series’ title of ‘Wednesday Playbeat’, feeling it too offbeat and fashionable, and a misnomer as he had been reassured by Newman, Michael Bakewell and new producer James MacTaggart that there would be little background music – presumably this strand title was quietly dropped… (Daily Telegraph, 14 December 1964, p. 15). The Belfast Telegraph also used this title on 26 December, for this new play series where ‘almost all will be about life to-day and the people in a society in the move’; with writers being given ‘freedom of action’ (p. 7). ‘Special theme music’ for The Wednesday Play called ‘Playbeat’ was heard for the first time in A Tap on the Shoulder, written by Mike Vickers and played by his group, Manfred Mann (Belfast Telegraph, 9 January 1965, p. 7). Sadly, the available copy is shorn of these titles.

Gander indicated some continuation of the casting policy of the autumn-winter 1964 Wednesday Plays, which he associated with ABC’s practice of casting star names in TV plays: he lists Lee Montague, Michael Hordern, George Baker, Andre Morell [misspelled ‘Melly’] and Richard Pearson (Telegraph op.cit.).

The play itself was trailed as part of Sydney Newman’s announcement that the BBC were avoiding ‘dustbin drama’ – ‘kitchen-sink plays, obsessed with sex and domestic problems’ – instead now favouring ‘plays with strong stories, having a “beginning, middle and ending.”‘ (Daily Mail, 11 December 1964, p. 3). Notably, Newman says that sordid or sexual material can’t be entirely excluded, but he empirically pins this down to be likely no more than 3% of the Plays department’s output (ibid.). Philip Purser saw this as ‘another try at a play series by the B.B.C.’, emphasising a break with the eight 1964 plays we assessed before Christmas (Sunday Telegraph, 3 January 1965, p. 11).

Rehearsals began on 18 December 1964 at the TV Centre, White City and O’Connor was pictured, holding his script, alongside scantily-clad actors Carmen Dene and Christine Rogers, in the Daily Mail (19 December 1964, p. 3). There’s an interesting comment in Fred Bellamy’s interview with Sydney Newman which sheds light on his populism:

Personally I don’t like too much talk in drama and I look forward very much for action, physical as well as psychological (Belfast Telegraph, op. cit.)

Series producer MacTaggart expressed his aims for the season:

It should make the viewer laugh, sit up and think, sit back and be entertained (quoted in The Express and Star, 6 January 1965, p. 13).

This was in the context of the BBC having ‘taken a frightful beating’ from ITV in terms of audience viewing figures in 1964 (Liverpool Echo, 6 January 1965, p. 2). MacTaggart and Newman’s strategy is interpreted as unabashedly populist by James Green: ‘Out are those arty-crafty plays with the non-story and indefinite endings.’ (ibid.) The BBC’s Hugh Greene era populist fightback was evident more widely in BBC TV drama; the same week, Maureen O’Brien debuted as Vicki in Doctor Who ‘The Rescue’, which I’ve written about for Stacey Smith?’s edited book Outside In Regenerates (2023). This was among Doctor Who’s most popular stories in its history.

Previews included much focus on O’Connor using his ‘knowledge of criminals’ (Sunday Mail, 3 January 1965, p. 17) and an article on the day of its broadcast headlined ‘Reprieved murderer turns playwright’ (Daily Mirror, 6 January 1965, p. 12). A Tap on the Shoulder was described as a ‘boisterous comedy-thriller’ focusing on criminals as ‘professionals”, not ‘unshaven villains on the dark fringes of society’ (Coventry Evening Telegraph, 6 January 1965, p. 2).

As you’ll have seen if you’ve watched the drama, they are so professional as to successfully make off with £2 million (in 1965 dosh) of gold bullion bars, ending up on the Riviera.

Rating: ** 3/4 / ****

(Aye, fair cop, Guv. It’s a nailed-on 7/10!)

His first Wednesday Play is the closest Ken Loach has got to making a heist film, if mainly shot on video in the studio. I don’t usually like the heist sub-genre, but this is a notably blunt play which juxtaposes legal and illegal criminality. It exposes the venal Archie’s underhanded acts to gain his advancement, with splenetic irony, but there is also a glee in how these working-class ‘professionals’ get away with it. There are, of course, echoes of the Great Train Robbery of 8 August 1963. It also feels like a left-wing inversion of Basil Dearden and Bryan Forbes’s The League of Gentlemen (1960).

It’s a play about class and this is regularly expressed in its language. Have a butcher’s. Taking a liberty. Nicker. Crumpet. Straightened. Yer nut. Yer loaf. You lemon. Caper. Chummy. Get out of it. A little natter. Not speaking The Queen’s English. You’re getting in a right Harry Tate [state]. Let’s get up there and have a go. This last example expresses the spirit of a play where a ragtag group transgresses. It’s rather like Loach’s much later feature-film The Angels’ Share (2012), though this group feels rather less identifiably underdog in nature, and are making illicit gains in an “affluent” society.

O’Connor’s play is notable for its carnivalesque, forceful working-class attitude, and it is clearly on the side of outright criminality. You feel you’re getting gritty voices from the streets, which are counter to “respectable” society and that, surely, much of the organised Labour Movement would disapprove of. This seems very much part of Ken Loach and Roger Smith’s instinctive alignment with outlaws and O’Connor significantly gives a few of the characters outspoken Revolutionary views.

The group wants to grab ‘the good life’ and raise themselves through illicit means; they have the cunning and guile to easily pull this off in a society where the establishment is clearly coded as out of touch in its Conservatism. These criminals are also aided by the emergent “enlightened” liberal mood of the 1960s, which enables and infuses this drama itself. While experiences of the Second World War hang over several of the characters, you feel they’re enjoying being able to move on. Some may move into property, others into hire purchase, when this is over, they reflect… The man whose house they’ve unwittingly used as a base, Sir Archibald Cooper (Lee Montague), ends up knighted and the prospective Conservative candidate for South Hampshire. He clearly benefits from a cosy relationship with the police and has Masonic connections.

This play centres on masculine worlds and attitudes in a way prevalent also in Play for Today’s first half (1970-77), typified by Peter Terson’s Art, Abe and Ern trilogy of 1972-74. Everyday homophobia is expressed neutrally, without any narrative coding to undermine it (it certainly figures less complexly than in O’Connor’s later Her Majesty’s Pleasure, 1973). The gang regard homosexuality as an upper-class establishment activity, associated with news stories like the Cambridge Spies, and it’s all part of the nation being in a right state, according to these underdog crooks: needs setting to rights with a Revolution. We are clearly meant to feel the group are committing more honest crimes than the Tory in the Hampshire country estate who advances hypocritical law-and-order discourses while railing against “these so-called enlightened times”.

Just as notably, we get barely any dialogue or character development for the few credited women actors here. Judith Smith does her best, and is sparky and worldly, but it’s a limited role to put it mildly. Lee Montague’s character’s wife is simply a dull, vulgar harridan, who we see once give a mouthful and then later hear her volleying abuse down the telephone line. Rose Hill gives it (im)proper welly and it’s a memorable turn, but the character is meagre. Bathing beauties stand silent at the end, flanking the men; implied to be part of the “good life” prize these rogues have won. Tony Garnett and Nell Dunn were much needed!

While it’s evidently not going to compete with Jonathan Glazer’s gangster film Sexy Beast (2000) in a million years, this seems a fairly ambitious and occasionally visually striking drama for its time. There’s good exterior filmed material in the fishing scenes and then quiet, deftly subdued – if not especially tense – scenes where the heist is enacted via boats carrying away the gold bullion from Southampton. These sequences would be better served by a restored print. Come on, BFI!

At the end, Stanley Myers’s stringed music feels oddly harried and ominous. They’ve all got away with the crime and it’s an upbeat ending from the group’s perspective, but this seems a very BBC move to have a questioning musical steer by Myers at this point. While we head light and jocular moments, wind instruments tootling away, perhaps they might be apprehended after all, due to their hubris in this scene?

Best Performance: GEORGE TOVEY

You might expect it to be Tony Selby, in the year of Saved on stage and Up the Junction. Lee Montague would really be the obvious choice. However, I’m actually going with George Tovey, who is wonderfully grizzled here as Patsy, to my ears at least, the furthest from the Queen’s lingo of them all! He later gave a fantastic performance as a lonely haunted man in the second Sapphire and Steel adventure in 1979. It’s genuinely tough to separate and single out anyone from this tight ensemble, so I just want to give Tovey a deserved shout-out.

Best line: “Do you realise that one of his sons could end up Prime Minister?” (Tim)

This line has an uncanny prescience, delivered by Tony Selby, about the nouveau riche Archie’s sons who he wants to put through Eton College.

Audience size: 8.91 million

The TAM ratings indicate 3.4 million homes for A Tap on the Shoulder, while Millie in Jamaica reached 6.66 million homes (Daily Telegraph, 16 January 1965, p. 13). This amounts to a somewhat lower figure of 7.48 million for O’Connor’s play against an estimated 14.52 million for the Millie Small programme.

Share of overall TV viewing audience: 46.1% (ITV 53.9%)

The opposition: BBC2 (The Hollywood Palace/The Likely Lads: ‘The Other Side of the Fence’), ITV (It’s Tarbuck/Millie in Jamaica/Wrestling)

Audience Reaction Index: 72%

Reviewed in London press publications consulted: [to be calculated!]

Reception: Considerable…! A mixed but largely positive reaction from the press, while a significant majority of viewers found this a refreshing and entertaining burst of vigorous real life.

Have a gander at the *Telegraph*‘s review heading

The anonymous Times reviewer admired a ‘cleverly timed story, told with documentary precision about rather dreary people’, feeling the thieves’ ‘technique’ kept it interesting and especially admired Lee Montague’s ‘colourful performance’ in enacting O’Connor’s comic characterisation (7 January 1965, p. 7).

In contrast, Philip Purser saw this as a ‘lamentable’ series opener, in the Graham Greene or Michael Frayn vein he clearly disapproves of, whose point about capitalism being crime he saw as being made far more ‘succinctly’ made in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) (Sunday Telegraph, 10 January 1965, p. 13). Purser saw the theft scene as lacking in tension and was bemused that MacTaggart and Smith felt this was ‘the best original script that had ever reached them’ (ibid.).

The crusty-sounding L. Marsland Gander was unhappy to see a play where crime paid, and interestingly assessed it as a depressing part of the television flow:

The regular evening news bulletin which immediately preceded it happened to be full of references to violent crime and thus came as a curtain-raiser. (Daily Telegraph, 7 January 1965, p. 18)

Despite his moralistic reservations, Gander felt the play had real ‘dramatic quality’, while admiring Montague’s performance and ‘subtly effective’ direction by ‘Philip Dudley’ [sic] (ibid.) He did find there was ‘overmuch thieves’ slang’ which he professed to not understand (ibid.). Gander later reported receiving ‘sharply critical’ reaction from his readers about the play’s ‘crudity’ (11 January 1965, p. 15). Gander seemed to have warmed to the play, however, seeing it as evidence of the new series’ ‘vitality’ with it’s smooth melding of filmed and studio videoed sequences – ’25 minutes of the 70 consisted of film shot partly at Byfleet and partly at Ealing’ – capturing the best of both worlds – cinema and theatre (ibid.).

Similarly mixed-towards-positive, Maurice Wiggin saw it as sometimes hilarious, at other times very awkward and clumsy in its social satire, with a ‘general effect […] of extreme cynicism’ created by O’Connor, who proved he ‘can obviously write very well’ (Sunday Times, 10 January 1965, p. 36).

Maurice Richardson found the Hunt Ball sequence a bit ‘preposterous’, but the play had ‘plenty of amateurish pristine zest’ and he liked how the crooks had a ‘curious veneer of slum sophistication’ which made them made more deeply real than ‘the average TV stock types’ (Observer, 10 January 1965, p. 24). He also rather approvingly expected the BBC Board of Governors to receive ‘a pained protest’ from Scotland Yard (ibid.).

New Listener reviewer Frederick Laws mused that O’Connor’s writing about the ‘county set’ revealed him as out of his depth, but enjoyed this play’s ‘cheerful nonsense’, professing it as better than ‘worthy dullness’ (21 January 1965, p. 117). Kari Anderson felt it was authentic and funny, and fulfilled the Wednesday Play’s ‘planners” aim for the strand to be ‘exciting, interesting and up to date’ (Television Today, 14 January 1965, p. 12). Anderson also made a more favourable cinematic comparison than Purser, to the blacklisted Jules Dassin’s Rififi (1955) (ibid.).

Anderson expressed understandable reservations about the ending scene set in the Mediterranean Riviera with the crooks lapping up their victory, seeing it as ‘false’ (ibid.). There is a shrewd observation of how the observant Black waiter (Harry Tracey) will likely report them and this underlining the play’s point about Archie as being the real crook (ibid.) – not something I’d picked up on first viewing. Montague again received praise, with Anderson wanting colour TV in order to see his ‘gorgeous country gentleman clothes’; as did Eileen Diss’s ‘exceptionally appropriate’ set designs (ibid.).

Tellingly indicating this play’s generally wide appeal, this is the first Wednesday Play where I’ve come across more reviews from outside London than in. Peggie Phillips in the Scotsman was disappointed in the ‘gifted’, formerly BBC Scotland-based James MacTaggart for presiding over a ‘routine’ production whose countryside scenes fell flat, and was bored by its cynicism:

It would be a pity if the MacTaggart touch were lost for the sake of beating up mass audiences for Wednesday night (11 January 1965, p. 4).

An avowedly Christian ‘Andrew’ in Esher News felt censorship needed considering that it ‘was hardly the play to put out at a time when concern was being expressed over the increase in violence in many of our cities’ (15 January 1965, p. 9).

Reviewers actually based in England’s varied cities and large towns felt differently. T.J.D. in the Leicester Mercury felt it a welcome ‘light relief after the stark realism of Z-Cars‘ and ‘relaxing’, in contrast to the police drama’s chilling and brutal scenes of ‘Bus Thuggery’, which they nevertheless praised as gripping (7 January 1965, p. 9). W.D.A. in the Liverpool Echo noted pointedly how ‘nobody was hurt’ in this play and, while finding the County set’s embrace of Archie unconvincing, they were entertained by its freshness; far more than the strand’s new title sequence:

Rather puzzling, however, was the pretentious long-winded visual introduction to the new Wednesday night series.

From the combination of missiles, riot troops, police dealing with sit-downers and racing car crashes I could only conclude that this was meant to indicate that – like a certain newspaper – the series is supposed to be born of the age we live in (7 January 1965, p. 2).

Jim Webber in the Bristol Evening Post was delighted at the lack of typical moralising, admiring Montague and Richard Shaw for his ‘menace’ (9 January 1965, p. 5). Webber also compared it to Rififi, which the BBC showed the next night in superlative scheduling! (ibid.) Laurence Shelley in the Crewe Chronicle used this play’s ‘disturbing’ theme of crime paying to have a dig at the Welfare State, admiring an instance of the BBC being ‘daring’ and ‘carefree’, producing its best satire since T.W.3 (16 January 1965, p. 9).

Capping off a largely very positive non-metroplitan reaction, Bill Smith in the Wolverhampton Express and Star revealed he would far rather have watched a second instalment of the ‘boisterous’ A Tap on the Shoulder than ITV’s ‘very unfunny’ comedy Tank of Fish, which even Milo O’Shea couldn’t save (19 January 1965, p. 13).

In terms of viewer reaction, rather more than usual appeared in the London press and they proportionately matched the BBC audience sample’s response. There were two very positive letters from viewers in the Scottish Sunday Mail (10 January 1965, p. 16), with T. Taylor from Falkirk finding it ‘terrific’, for throwing in ‘Everything but the kitchen sink’ and Mrs M. O. Smith from Leigh praising the acting and staging: ‘Crime, without violence, of course, has seldom been made to appear more attractive.’

In The Birmingham Post, a letter from Mrs. Lilian Jones of West Hagley, Worcestershire gave an archetypal NVLA style rallying cry – naming James Dance MP rather than Whitehouse (12. January 1965, p. 6). This was accompanied by a pompous attack on comfortable prisons, liberalism and ‘lethargy’ penned by someone calling themselves ‘Justice’ from Birmingham 33, which ends in a call, yes, to bring back the birch (ibid.).

The audience response was 9% above that of the 1964 plays we’ve covered. While 25-33% of the sample expressed an indignant, moralistic reaction, the vast majority found it entertaining and valued its topicality. For instance, a G.P.O. Engineer claimed it was a ‘dreadful comment on our way of life, but fair for all that’ (BBC ARR, 1 February 1965, VR/65/11).

There was praise of the ‘spicy, racy, natural and amusing’ action and ‘delightful characterisation’ with a teacher admiring their sauce and saying they ‘deserved to get away’ (ibid.). Viewers were also highly adept at spotting occasional flaws in the production like out-of-sync sound and visuals, but generally liked a slick and pacy production (ibid.).

— With massive thanks as ever to John Williams for facilitating access to much of the press coverage.

If you worked on or remember watching this play on TV, please email me at thomas.w.may@northumbria.ac.uk as I’m gathering oral history memories and would love to hear from you. 🙂

Brexit Britain: Day #1040 – Mass-Observation and Dream Diaries

From the 25-27 April, I attended the seventh annual conference British Association for Television and Screen Studies; the first I had attended and at which I spoke.

On Friday 26th, during my panel, the preceding speaker talked eloquently about a long lost BBC TV series EAST END, broadcast in 1939. This was an anthropological insight into the subject of Jewish and Cockney life in the East End of London, presented by Tom Harrisson, one of the founders of the Mass-Observation movement. More than a decade ago, David Attenborough presented a documentary on Harrisson, entitled Tom Harrisson: the Barefoot Anthropologist (BBC4, 18/01/2007). After our panel, the speaker JJ told me how easy it was to get sidetracked in the M-O archives: for example, getting engrossed in the dream diaries participants were asked to complete in the early years of the Second World War.

On Saturday afternoon, I made my way back from the conference on the Cross Country train to Newcastle. While there was excellent free WiFi access for the whole journey, and I spent much of the time typing up my handwritten notes from a fascinating documentary on Italian genre cinema of the 1970s, I couldn’t help observing some of what was going on around. The woman next to me was older middle-aged, serious but fairly cheery when she struggled to locate the right ticket. At Leeds, the train emptied. At York, it filled up again. A hen party, and nearer to where I was sat, a group of young women – very Geordie and working class. The sort of people Rod Liddle might patronise or, even worse, claim to speak for. The announcer on the PA system chummily advertised alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages on sale.

This group was loud, on a generally noisy carriage. At a few points they had current popular “tunes” on, as I heard a passerby say. They went out of their way to be polite. One of them needed a tissue or something and a fellow passenger gave one and was thanked profusely: “You see, I’ve got manners, me!” It could have been an encounter in Lynsey Hanley’s book Respectable: The Experience of Class (2016).

This was far from the threatening raucousness you can sometimes get on a Saturday train from tanked-up average geezers. Their dialect was interesting – the Geordie usage of “grief” as a verb. Moreover, they did not just speak about their own lives but about the varied (and none too promising) job prospects in areas like nursing. One of them in particular had strongly held views, critical of people in their own generation who seemed to want to earn their money via Instagram, in some way… They were critical of people being “obsessed” with social media and discussed what they saw as the bad pay and conditions of being a nurse today.

After mentioning the difficulties the Health Service is having in providing care for certain conditions, one said: “I don’t think there’ll be an NHS in ten years’ time.”

These aren’t the sort of people, in age, class or geography, whose voices we hear much, except if they are ghettoised in reality TV or entertainment or mediated by journalists of left, neoliberal or right wing persuasions. (Most commonly, the latter two) It made me think of the folly of scrapping BBC3. It also made me think: why on earth doesn’t the BBC make a current affairs equivalent of Gogglebox, based in the likes of trains, bus queues and shopping centres? Unmediated by voice-over.

I had a dream, yesterday morning. The Prime Minister was holding a press conference. This was seemingly being broadcast to the nation. Yet instead of the usual sort of media set up she was sat on the floor. Beside her was a pile of books. After making a very cursory introduction, she picked up one of the books and began reading. The contents were baffling: nothing seemed to make sense.

It seemed she was somehow trying to be “authentic”. Yet, she was completely failing to connect and seemed utterly oblivious to how it was all coming across.

She abruptly abandoned the first book and starting reading from another, which again made little sense. The gathered journalists were scratching their heads and began muttering, uncomfortable at the non sequiturs. The PM’s delivery was as prim and Sunday school teacher patronising as usual, but it seemed she hadn’t learned the content beforehand. It seemed to me that these were books that had meant something to her in the distant past, or to someone else…

I was in the midst of the group and, somehow, a book appeared in my hands. I turned the pages, it was an old book, its contents were obscure. Its texture as a physical object particularly struck me as I turned its dusty pages; whole chapters were marked with soot. Yet, I was able to detect amid its antiquity that its subject was English culture and in particular English seaside resorts.

I suddenly felt that a sense of epiphany, as if it was being provided by a film voice-over: that I was aware, at least in part, of what she was getting at. Yet, I kept my silence and the broadcast continued.