John Wyver writes: Slightly late posting this today, but offered now in the hope you’ll find it interesting and useful. Asd ever, it’s a miscellany of stuff that I found valuable and engaging over the past seven days. The appropriately snowy image is Claude Monet’s Le train dans le neige. La locomotive, 1875, which I saw on a blisteringly hot day last summer at the Musée Monet Marmottan.
But there’s only one thing to start (and end) with this week:
John Wyver writes: The final screening in the BFI Southbank season linked to the publication of Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain is on Saturday afternoon at 15.00. The oddball programme pairs Elstree Calling, 1930, with the astonishingly eccentric and super-rare Television Follies, 1933. Tickets are still available, and you can book here. Below I’m reproducing the programme note that I have compiled for the event, which provides further details about both films.
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John Wyver writes: The earliest programme to be featured in BBC iPlayer’s treasure trove of Henrik Ibsen plays and documentaries is the production of The Lady from the Sea, first shown in May 1953. Seen initially in the days just before the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, this is one of the very earliest television dramas to be preserved in the archives, and as a consequence is a recording of singular interest. It is a bonus that it also remains a highly watchable, engrossing and indeed moving production.
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John Wyver writes: To Chichester by train last Saturday for a visit to Pallant House Gallery, both to see the current William Nicholson exhibition (on until 10 May) and to have lunch at Pallant Café, which for me is the country’s best restaurant run by a cultural institution. May I especially recommend the Welsh rarebit?
Pallant House, with its exceptional permanent collection of modern British art and its intelligent programme of temporary exhibitions is without question our best gallery, excepting only Tate, for looking at 20th and 21st century art. Combining a visit with the rarebit and then a matinee at Chichester Festival Theatre, as well as the town’s very fine Lakeland, is close to a perfect day out, although at this time of the year the stage offerings are limited.
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John Wyver writes: As we recover from the centenary, today’s post is just a single link to a piece I published on The Conversation yesterday:
Do take a look at the full piece, but I acknowledge director general Tim Davie’s commitment in a 2024 speech that,
The arts remain utterly central to the BBC’s mission. We want to send out a strong signal, that arts and culture matter, they matter for everyone, and they matter even more when times are tough.
And I argue that, in stark contrast to the arts on BBC television in the 1930s (such as the 1938 Tristan and Isolde, above),
there is no sense that Davie’s words are borne out by the current television schedules. There is no regular slot for imaginative and creative arts documentaries, such as Omnibus which lasted from 1967 to 2003, nor space for reviews and debate, like The Late Show, a nightly arts magazine show that ran throughout the early 1990s. Today’s and tomorrow’s visual artists and performers have only the most minimal presence.
The vanishingly rare presentations of stage work, whether dance, opera or theatre, are invariably acquisitions from cultural organisations that provided most of the funding and all of the production expertise. Complexity and challenging contemporary creativity are almost entirely absent. Far from being “utterly central”, the arts are today utterly marginal to BBC television.
John Wyver writes: Happy 100th birthday, television! Exactly one hundred years ago tonight, John Logie Baird gave the first public presentation of what he called ‘true television’ in his workshop about what is now Bar Italia at 22 Frith Street, London. This blog starts with an extract from Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain, following which are some links to other online elements marking today.
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John Wyver writes: As the world turns, every week can seem more extraordinary, and more distressing, than the last. As a tiny antidote to the hideousnesses elsewhere, here’s a selection of stuff that has engaged and enriched my life over the past week, with some politics but with much more besides.
This week’s image is William Nicholson’s The Brass Canister, 1917, from the fascinating retrospective at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (until 31 May), which I visited on Saturday. I intend to return to the show, and the wonderful Pallant, in a future post.
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John Wyver writes: Our series of screenings at BFI Southbank linked to the publication of Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television continues on Sunday, 25 January, with the second of three programmes of British feature films that offer imagined versions of television at its start. The silent version of High Treason, presented with piano accompaniment by John Sweeney, played to a sold-out NFT2 last weekend.
On Sunday afternoon there is a rare large-screen outing for the 1934 Will Hay comedy Radio Parade of 1935. This is a fascinating satire on the BBC, with Hay as an only lightly-disguised Lord Reith, and with a vision of television that is entirely distinct from domestic broadcasting. Tickets are still available. Reproduced here is the programme note I compiled for the event, in the form of a substantial extract from an excellent John Ellis essay about the film.
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John Wyver writes: To mark Monday’s Centenary of television in Britain, BBC Four this week played two programmes from the archives, The Birth of Television from 1976 (a scene from which is above) and JLB: The Man who Saw the Future, a 2003 drama-documentary about John Logie Baird. Both are now on BBC iPlayer for a month (the programme titles are links there), and I thought it would be interesting to revisit them. Today’s post is about the 1976 film, and we’ll get to JLB in a future post.
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John Wyver writes: Sunday on BBC Four and BBC iPlayer saw the start of a thrilling season of classic dramas by, and documentaries about, Henrik Ibsen. The full programme, to be broadcast over the coming weeks, is now available for streaming for the next eleven months (and hopefully with an extension), and there are riches galore. The offerings come from five decades from 1953 onwards, and some are true rarities; a number of the productions have not previously been accessible since transmission; and there is at least one remarkable restoration.
Those appearing on screen include Judi Dench, Anthony Hopkins, Ingrid Bergman, Michael Gambon, Kenneth Branagh, Juliet Stevenson, Jenny Agutter, Patrick McGoohan and many more. Production talent includes Waris Hussein, Elijah Moshinsky and David Thacker. For viewers interested in television drama and theatre history, this is a peak ‘high art’ offering. So given that television these days provides few such cultural treats, why is the corporation not making more of a fuss of this?
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