It has gladdened my heart to see a largely positive response on Twitter/X to the news that I Claudius will shortly be repeated on BBC4 (from the 16th of August). There were also a few slightly negative comments of course – for some, I Claudius is “old fashioned” or “theatrical” (these are supposed to be criticisms, but both seem like plusses to me!)
Videotaped drama is a form of television that (soaps apart) we don’t see anymore. Once, of course, it was the dominant way of programme-making and remained so for decades (notwithstanding filmed series from the likes of ITC and Euston Films).
There was a change in the air by the late seventies though. The BBC (who had tended to reserve film for one-off plays rather than series or serials) began to dip their toe into the brave new world of film series with Target (quickly followed by Shoestring). By the 1980’s film drama had begun to be seen as prestige (Miss Marple, Edge of Darkness) with taped drama now lagging behind as an inferior second best.
The 1985 Bleak House is a good example of this. Critical chatter at the time reacted positively to its glossy, all-film visuals – comparing and contrasting them to the cheap and cheerful videotaped Classic Serial strand which went out at Sunday tea-time. Such a sweeping point of view ignored the many strengths of the Classic Serials – thankfully, a decent sample are available on DVD and I live in hope that BBC4 may exhume some more in the future (the late 1960’s production of Treasure Island, with Peter Vaughan as Long John Silver, would be a good place to start).
Watching videotaped drama requires a certain mindset (not dissimilar to that of a theatre-goer). You have to accept that what you see may be somewhat impressionistic. In I Claudius, for example, at one point there’s a riot through the streets of Rome which is represented by noises off and about a dozen extras. If you can accept this sort of thing (a high tolerance for CSO is also recommended) then a veritable treasure trove of delights awaits you.
There are many excellent examples of videotaped drama on YouTube – I’ll recommend just three. Harold Pinter’s One for the Road (one set, a handful of actors). Arthur Ellis’ The Black and Blue Lamp (which was written around its production limitations – no exterior filming was available thanks to its low budget). Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw (a vanished form of television drama that was content to faithfully reproduce the theatrical experience rather than seek to open it up).
Gross oversimplification incoming. If film drama is a director’s medium, then tape drama is an actor’s one. Of course, there are many fine performances to be found in filmed dramas (just as videotape offers good directors the chance to push the medium). But it’s a point that has a certain validity. Taking I Claudius as an example – multi-camera vt recording allowed the actors to perform in extended scenes. That’s one of the strengths of tape for me – the feeling that you’re getting close to the characters (film can have a distancing effect).
I can understand why some find archive tape dramas difficult to connect with. But for me, they’ll always be my drama form of choice. If you’ve never seen I Claudius, then I’d recommend tuning in (or if you’re not in the UK, seeking out an alternative way of viewing). You may just be pleasantly surprised ….
Archive Television Musings 
I find something quite reassuring in this format, like the theme tunes of the era. Comfort watches seem to be out of fashion now, sadly. One thing also I loved about I Claudius was the sense of humour in Derek Jacobi’s performance, and little moments like John Hurt as Caligula setting the sentry password at a military camp as ‘Give us a kiss’, and Sian Philips, Livia the arch poisoner, warning someone, ‘Don’t touch the figs’. I always thought it was very relatable for a historical drama, and I never found these kinds of programmes to suffer from the lack of big exteriors, or painted trees or buildings seen through windows – the impact was always in the writing and the acting.
You’ve inspired me to dig out the DVDs as soon as I finish my back to back season of Pie in the Sky and Rumpole.
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I thing the quality of the script and performances of the actors is vital in any form of drama. I Cladius is superb television. It’s the actors job to perform and multi camera vt captures this perfectly. My favourite form of TV drama…
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Great post ATM: I would somehow have missed this so it’s great to be reminded.
Also, I couldn’t have put it better regarding the film/tape differences and many pros and cons that both formats are rich with, technically and creatively.
I do recall however the same excitement for a BBC production crew, watching some grainy, 16mm colour reversal, huddled round a Steenbeck in the dusty cutting rooms of Ealing ….and identical to that of walking into one of the sprauncy-new high-tech digital SypherDub/theatre suites at TVC to view rushes.
P
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During the 1980s quite a lot of TV dramas were shot on video tape for both studio & location scenes. The original Auf Wiedersehen Pet, and the early episodes of The Bill & Casualty spring to mind. One drama that does stand out was Roger Marshall’s Travelling Man. An excellent series, but I believe Leigh Lawson was unhappy it was shot on video tape as he believed film would have improved the quality of the programme.
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If you added them all up, I’ve a feeling that there were probably more VT dramas in the 1980’s than film ones. But, as per your comment from Leigh Lawson, tape was beginning to be seen as the poor relation to film (something that didn’t really happen during the sixties and seventies).
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There was certainly a trend towards uniformity in both directions in the 1980s as the old film/videotape mix slowly dropped away and artistic choice or (more usually) budgets forced one or the other onto a production. Unfortunately it tends to be the film productions from this era that get repeated which can distort the view of what was standard at the time.
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Thank you very much for this, there are some excellent comments here and I totally agree with the overall sentiment. The studio/multi-cam VT environment meant that one was watching real performances, with a real rhythm to them, which I think people respond to, whether they realise that consciously or not. I think that’s the reason that so many people talk about television looking “unreal” today. When one looks closely at those statements those people are almost always referencing drama, and sometimes comedy-drama. That’s because the news, the sport, the quiz shows, the panel games, the soap operas (mostly) and the reality shows all still look like the type of television drama that you’re discussing here, they look like video and not film, and we subconsciously know that that means “real”. Even if it’s been recorded weeks or months ago, it seems realistic in a way that the six-part-thriller-with-helicopters-and-explosions-and-an-orchestral-soundtrack simply cannot.
I’m always minded to think of what the pioneering TV writer/producer/director Don Taylor said, where he thought of video/studio as poetry, and film as prose. With a TV studio one starts with a completely blank room – an empty space, as Peter Brook might say – and constructs sets and props and effects around it that feel right: everything one puts in to this space is a considered choice. With film one instead takes existing locations and simply fiddles about with them, often just putting a few things around, or removing things, that slightly alter the fact that you’re in an existing railway station, or some poor sod’s garage or bedroom. Yes, it’s more realistic, I suppose, but that was never the point for the first few decades of TV drama.
For example, as I’m typing this, I have a DVD on in the background as I am (re-)playing the final series of Sam, the 1970s drama series by Brian Finch, which was made in the electronic studios at Granada TV. I had to briefly stop typing and give the screen my undivided attention as there has just been an absolutely electric scene set in a domestic kitchen between Jennifer Hilary and Simon Rouse that must have lasted around 3-4 minutes. The closeness of the cameras to their faces, the expressions, and the rapport between the performers was amazing, and I can tell you that the last thing I was thinking was “Ooh, now, there’s some well constructed cupboard units”.
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This review makes too many assumptions. I found it difficult to understand, because of that. The reviewer is trying to explain the technical issues which distinguish filmed drama and taped drama, without bothering to define any of his terms.
Taped drama necessarily means the action is entirely studio-based. The BBC made shows such as “Dr Who” by combining interior scenes on videotape with exterior scenes filmed on location, sometimes (after 1975) using electronic video cameras to record both. If film was used on location after 1975, it was done only because of budget considerations, not because there was any longer a technical problem. And tv news gathering then extended the use of video outside of the tv studio considerably.
What the reviewer is not acknowledging is that it was always a matter of cost. “I Claudius” was made after 1975, when video could have been used on location. But the BBC is not 20th Century Fox. You could not do exteriors for “Claudius” on tv, because the tv budget could not stretch to building the city of Ancient Rome, except as a studio miniature. You could not show a battle, or even a street riot, because the tv budget could not stretch to engaging hundreds of costumed film extras. Fox could spend millions to film ‘Anthony and Cleopatra’ on location, in huge lifesized sets, with hundreds of extras, in hundreds of expensive period Roman uniforms; but you can’t do that on a tv budget.
To produce Robert Graves’s book, “I Claudius”, for tv you can only treat it as a stage play, and keep the too-expensive scenes off-stage. Otherwise the cost is too impossible to afford. So there can be no location filming for a tv period drama set in Ancient Rome.
In other types of drama, it is usually cheaper (for many reasons) to film on location, with only a single camera and crew to pay for, and no sets to build. But a well equipped tv studio might have four electronic cameras, so – and only in the tv studio – can you do the director’s favourite trick of keeping one camera in close-up on each actor, and cut between them, so that the actors can perform each scene as a single continuous take. Filming with a single film camera, on location, means each actor can do only his own lines to camera, without the other actors present; a form of production in which there can be no interaction with the others in the cast, so all spontenaiety is inevitably lost. You film the script one line at a time, or one speech at a time, with no possibility of doing it one scene at a time.
Multi-camera implies continuous filming, doing each scene completely, without a break. That means you need a lot of rehearsal! The actor must know his lines, must learn them in rehearsal, and must know how his part interacts with those of other actors in the scene. That is a crucial difference from single-camera drama: audiences never do adequately understand the importance of rehearsal to a production. Without it, you get lifeless performances.
Only with adequate rehearsal can the cast give an adequate performance, through understanding the dynamics of the scene and the intention of the scriptwriter. Single-camera filming is cheap in part because no time is “wasted” on rehearsal: the actor only needs to memorise one line at a time, and if he fluffs it you can go for a re-take. Multi-camera drama needs rehearsal, and the more rehearsal there is the better is the final performance. Multi-camera drama is an ensemble performance, as in the theatre, where single-camera drama is not. “I Claudius” demonstrates why this is a better production method, but modern drama productions prefer to cut costs by using the inferior single-camera method, with the inevitable harm which that does to the result.
Movies are the ultimate embodiment of the single-camera form of drama, which is why cinema films feel so different from multi-camera tv drama: there is more ‘distance’ between the actors on screen and the audience because there is more distance, literally, between the actors in the scene: by a trick of the camera, they appear to be talking to each other, but in a sequence of close-ups, every time one actor has the screen the others are not really there to interact with, and most actors, even very good ones, do not perform at their best when conversing with empty air.
‘I Claudius’ seems “old fashioned” simply because it is a step nearer to a live performance in the theatre than single-camera drama is. Most tv audiences today have never seen a live performance on a stage, hence they deride live acting as ‘old fashioned’, but multi-camera drama was once a means of getting very much closer to the higher quality drama of live theatre than cinema or modern drama has ever achieved.
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After criticising my post for making too many assumptions, you’ll have to forgive me if I had a little chuckle when you boldly stated that I, Claudius could, in the mid 1970’s, have only been produced as a studio-bound drama.
Had ITC acquired the rights of Robert Graves’ novels at this time, then a glossy, big-budget, location-based serial (similar to, say, Jesus of Nazareth) could have been produced.
I see no evidence to suggest that videotaped drama wasn’t quicker and cheaper to make than single camera filmed drama (even allowing for the fact that lengthy rehearsals were required) which is why it was the dominant form of British drama production for decades.
In a multi-camera studio, the scenes were recorded simultaneously with a vision mixer editing on the fly. This had positives (complete scenes could be recorded very quickly) and obvious negatives (with studio time- especially at the BBC – always limited, minor fluffs and production mishaps would sometimes have to be broadcast as retakes weren’t always possible).
So I’m afraid that I find your assertion that single camera film productions were cheaper than multi-camera vt productions a little difficult to swallow – do you honestly believe that The Sweeney cost less to make than Dixon of Dock Green in the mid seventies?
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My comments, which I stand by, are based on the fact that location filming in the 1970s was very cheap, because there were no expensive sets to build, and there was often only one cameraman and a sound engineer on location, and because studio time was – at the BBC – the most expensive production element, with dozens of people employed on the studio floor.
And the actors were only hired for the time they spent in front of the camera.
A one hour BBC drama recorded in-studio usually required 2 weeks of rehearsal, plus a 2-day camera rehearsal. So the actors – the whole cast – had to be paid for 2 weeks work, as they had to learn / memorise the script, and their moves, rather than being paid only for the time actually spent in front of the camera.
Sets do not rig themselves! Setting up the set in-studio overnight, an item not involved on location, and striking the sets afterwards, required a whole army of BBC riggers. And the sets had to be built, by the carpenters, and painted, by the painters, and designed, and decorated. It was a major additional expense.
And the studio time was so expensive that minor fluffs had to be left in, not because it was done on-the-cheap, but because the director was banned from going past the 10pm studio closedown, as absolutely no extra time could be afforded.
Multi-camera recording involved paying 3 cameramen, 3 sound men, and 3 camera crews; whereas for single-camera production, the cost of that element was reduced to only one-third.
Today, it is proved beyond argument that single camera filming is cheaper, because today everyone uses that method, as no one can afford all the extra costs of multi camera studio production.
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We’ll have to agree to disagree on this. Location filming during this period would, as a rough rule of thumb, produce around five minutes usable of footage each day compared to (again roughly) around twenty five minutes from a multi-camera vt studio session.
So the additional costs of vt recording (rehearsal time, additional cameraman, etc) were offset by the fact that a programme could be “in the can” a great deal quicker.
If filming on location was cheaper than taping in the studio then I fail to see why it didn’t happen more often (especially as the mid to late 1970’s was a period when budgets were squeezed and squeezed).
All this is slightly by the by though, as my original post was simply designed to express my appreciation of studio-based videotaped drama and lightly ponder why it’s a form of television that isn’t appreciated so widely now by the general viewing public (as apposed to the archive television enthusiast).
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