Seite 73 [73]
JONATHAN BIGNELL
Pinters work on Play of the Week and Television Playhouse, was politically
advantageous for the commercial network because it was repeatedly criticized
for screening too many undemanding programs like guiz shows and imported
Western series. Ihe commissioning of original dramas by Pinter, Beckett and
other theatre writers, and adaptations of their theatre plays, advertized theatre
itself and supported it as a national cultural institution.
BBC’s first television production of Beckett’s work was Waiting for Godot
on Monday, 26 June 1961, and an Audience Report was produced.”’ It attracted
only 5 percent of the UK population, compared to 22 percent of the population
who were watching ITV instead. The Reaction Index for the play (a measure of
appreciation scored out of 100) was 32, well below the average of 66 for plays
transmitted from London in the first quarter of 1961. The BBC audience survey
quoted some of the viewers’ opinions of the play: “the whole thing was much
too abstract for my taste” and “a lot of fatuous nonsense,” for example. One
viewer declared “I’m no Royal Courtier praising the Emperor’s new clothes,”
clearly aware of Beckett’s significance as a theatre dramatist and making
reference to the Royal Court Theatre’s reputation for introducing British
social realism and European drama to London audiences. Unlike Beckett’s,
Pinter’s work could be assimilated as drama about entrapping domesticity, a
form deriving from the Naturalistic style of 1950s British theatre that became
dominant in television drama’s mise-en-scene.”* Beckett’s plays were still
framed in 1961 as abstract and obscure, but by this time Pinter’s work on ITV
television had gained a popular audience that Beckett’s never achieved.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anon.: Ihe Birthday Party, Cambridge Review, 28 April 1958,
http://www.haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_bdayparty.shtml.
Audience Research Report on Waiting for Godot, 26 June 1961, BBC Written
Archives Centre, R/9/7/52.
Audience Research Report on Molloy and From an Abandoned Work, 14
January 1958, Caversham, BBC Written Archives Centre, R/9/7/37.
BIGNELL, Jonathan: Beckett on Screen: The Television Plays, Manchester,
Manchester University, 2009.
BILLINGTON, Michael: Harold Pinter, London, Faber, 2007.
BILLINGTON, Michael: Fighting Talk, The Guardian, Books section, 3 May 2008,
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/may/03/theatre.stage.
27 Audience Research Report on Waiting for Godot, 26 June 1961, BBC Written Archives
Centre, R/9/7/52.
?® Raymond Williams: Television, Technology and Cultural Form, London, Fontana, 1974, 56.
«726