Though it didn’t seem so at the time, 1984 was close to the end of an era in British television drama. Cameras were getting more mobile, editing equipment cheaper and more flexible. The day of the big central studio was almost done, and the day of the independent production company had dawned. Drama would become more soapy rather than more conceptual, more about emotion and less about situation — television is almost always swinging back one way or the other on this axis — and programmes were increasingly set in present-day England, and filmed in real municipal buildings or housing estates. Television is always about the new and original — a point missed by fans who lament that their shows have been cancelled — and many existing programme-makers happily moved with the tide. The very same people who had once made Tenko (1981-85)[1] and Secret Army (1977-79),[2] about Japanese and Nazi war atrocities, somehow moved camp to Howards’ Way (1985-90),[3] in which a south-coast boatyard is menaced by an uppity chandler. The Tripods[4] was unlucky with the timing of this shift in fashion — commissioned as a three-year serial in the early 80s, it had its final year scrubbed by quite different programme commissioners in 1986. But you could also say that it was made at the only possible moment, when the technology had (just barely) made it practicable, but fashion had not turned away from telefantasy. And if it was made at the only possible time, it was also made in almost the only possible place. Clearly an English proposition, The Tripods was simply too ambitious to be made by any then-existing British studio except the BBC, with the possible exception of Granada.

But that is hindsight. If change was coming in 1984, you would hardly know it as a viewer. BBC1 continued to be programmed to serve the whole family just as if it were the only channel on the air. Sports, children’s, and drama “strands” would take over at predictable times, like the sections of a newspaper. Those cultural conventions have turned out to be very durable, and the Saturday lineup on BBC1 has been more or less the same for the best part of a century. Saturday 15 September 1984 was no exception. BBC1 began before dawn with some Open University lectures, cutting to the traditional children’s magazine — at this point, The Saturday Picture Show[5] — until late morning. A black and white slapstick comedy, It’s in the Bag, then burned off the rest of the morning as cheaply as possible. Sports coverage filled the afternoon, under the omnibus title Grandstand (1958-2007).[6] At 17:00, there were ten minutes of national news and five of regional headlines, together with football scores from the afternoon fixtures. Those football scores were the traditional cue for shared family viewing time, and on this particular Saturday that meant our excursion into post-apocalyptic Hampshire with part one of The Tripods. It was immediately followed by garish variety shows: The Noel Edmonds Late Late Breakfast Show[7] (special guest: Sister Sledge), and Bob’s Full House,[8] whose presenter, born in 1928, had been on the quiz-show circuit since 1956. Drama returned at 18:55 in the form of a rural police show with comfortingly low stakes, Juliet Bravo,[9] but then The Paul Daniels Magic Show (“from Switzerland, the renowned comedy ventriloquist George Schlick”)[10] would run us in to Dynasty,[11] an imported American soap opera. BBC1 was nothing if not all things to all people, though, so it then spent 80 minutes on a stereo broadcast of the Last Night of the Proms, introduced from the Royal Albert Hall by the plummy-voiced Richard Baker in a dinner jacket. (Stereo was new, could be received only in London, and was reserved for musical events: drama was still made in mono until around 1988, and even then few viewers received the effect.) After all the sea-shanties and flag-waving there was a little more news, a little more football, and then that strangest thing of all — BBC1 closed down for the night, giving way to snowy interference.

The Tripods now looks out of place, if not marooned, in its 25-minute crevice in that schedule. Reckoned per minute, it must have been easily the most expensive television of the day, and was the only part of Saturday’s viewing which — forgive me, Juliet Bravo fans — was trying to be anything other than throwaway entertainment. On the face of it, this is not a slot any ambitious drama would want. And yet, broadcasting at 5.15pm on a Saturday was a sort of bid for television glory. These weekend teatimes were marquee points of the week when, potentially, both parents and children might watch side by side.

Saturday teatime, in particular, had been the home of Doctor Who[12] year-round from 1963-68 and then through most autumns and winters until 1981. Because of that, schedulers probably still thought of 5.15pm as a natural sci-fi slot, even though by 1984 it more often held silly, lightweight filler — cartoons, disco competitions filmed in youth clubs, or undemanding comedy dramas like The Dukes of Hazzard.[13] The truth was probably that Doctor Who had thrived in this slot not so much by being sci-fi as by being comedic, colourful, and fun. When the experiment was tried again in 1984/85, running The Tripods through the autumn, and then bringing a more sober-minded Who back to Saturdays in the new year, it somehow didn’t work. Both shows verged on being too grim for the younger children who might be watching at that early hour. Scenes of mutilation in Doctor Who drew particular criticism, and The Tripods also had its darker side. Neither programme quite belonged in the casual world of Hazzard County or the Pink Panther. In 2024, although Doctor Who has become so expensive to make that it is only an occasional visitor to BBC1, it still goes out on Saturday nights: but it transmits closer to 7pm than 5pm.

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What does any of this matter? All this scheduling context might affect how its first viewers saw it, but not us. Had it gone out only at half past midnight on alternate Tuesdays, it would still be what it is.

Except, of course, that shows usually weren’t made first and then scheduled. They were crafted to suit the audience and timeslot they needed to fit into. It is because The Tripods was aimed at this Saturday slot that it was structured as thirteen 25-minute segments, and given a consequent cycle of posing and resolving cliff-hangers. Since much of the action consists of a long sequence of 5- to 15-minute mini-adventures, the plot lends itself easily enough to being parcelled up like that, so the scheme did basically work. All the same, thirteen parts was about three too many, and if you’re going to broadcast something truly unusual, perhaps it’s best not to do so in a stop-start way. The telefantasy Artemis 81,[14] in which angels of light and darkness fight over the future soul of mankind, dealt with its extreme oddity by drawing viewers into a single continuous broadcast οf 3 hours 5 minutes, late into one of the darkest nights of winter.

Thirteen short episodes or one humungous one are extreme positions, of course. Another alternative would have been a six or eight-part run on Sunday teatimes on BBC2, for example — a slot often taken by classic novels. In autumn 1984 that space was occupied by The Prisoner of Zenda (1894)[15] and by Trollope’s early Barchester novels (1855-57).[16] Alternatively again, the books could have been given a straight-up children’s drama treatment, in a midweek after-school slot. Productions as serious in tone as the apocalyptic The Changes (1975),[17] or the occult fantasy Children of the Stones (1976),[18] or the conspiracy thriller Codename Icarus (1981),[19] had all been made successfully enough as children’s drama with a harder edge.

So why weren’t these alternatives taken? One reason was no doubt budgetary. The Tripods needed a lot of resources, so it had to go big or go home. The BBC’s most expensive children’s drama of 1984, The Box of Delights,[20] used some of the same production techniques, but its running time was less than half as long, and there weren’t any thirty-meter-tall walking machines. And so, for better or worse, The Tripods ran as thirteen 25-minute snippets. Fans who wanted a more continuous immersion got their way in the long run, of course. The condensed laser-disc release recast the programme as a movie, and VHS releases presented it in 90-minute slices, which became 180 on subsequent rounds of DVDs. But the experience of viewing today is profoundly unlike catching a single episode off-air amid the big-top gala of Saturday scheduling.

Works cited:

  1. Tenko (BBC, 30 × 50 minutes + 1 × 140 minutes, 1981-85), produced by Ken Riddington. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  2. Secret Army (BBC, 43 × 50 minutes, 1977-79), produced by Gerard Glaister. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  3. Howards’ Way (BBC, 78 × 50 minutes, 1981-85), produced by Gerard Glaister. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  4. The Tripods (BBC, 25 × 25 minutes, 1984-85), produced by Richard Bates. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  5. The Saturday Picture Show (BBC, 66 × 2 hours approx., 1984-86), produced by Tony Harrison. IMDB.
  6. Grandstand (BBC, weekly editions, 4 hours approx., 1958-2007). Wikipedia; IMDB.
  7. The Noel Edmonds Late Late Breakfast Show (BBC, 77 × 1 hour approx., 1983-86), produced by Michael Hurll. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  8. Bob’s Full House (BBC, 105 × 35 minutes, 1984-90), produced by John Bishop. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  9. Juliet Bravo (BBC, 88 × 50 minutes, 1980-85), produced by Terence Williams. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  10. The Paul Daniels Magic Show (BBC, 142 × 45 minutes, 1979-94), produced by John Fisher. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  11. Dynasty (ABC, 222 × 50 minutes, 1981-89), produced by Aaron Spelling. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  12. Doctor Who (BBC, 695 × mostly 25 minutes, 1963-89), produced by Verity Lambert and many successors. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  13. The Dukes of Hazzard (CBS, 145 × 45 minutes, 1979-85). Wikipedia; IMDB.
  14. Artemis 81 (BBC, 185 minutes, 1981), by David Rudkin. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  15. The Prisoner of Zenda (BBC, 6 × 30 minutes, 1984), produced by Barry Letts. IMDB.
  16. The Barchester Chronicles (BBC, 7 × 55 minutes, 1982, though repeated in autumn 1984), produced by Jonathan Powell. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  17. The Changes (BBC, 10 × 25 minutes, 1975), produced by Anna Home. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  18. Children of the Stones (HTV, 7 × 30 minutes, 1976), produced by Peter Graham Scott. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  19. Codename Icarus (BBC, 5 × 30 minutes, 1981), produced by Paul Stone. Wikipedia; IMDB.
  20. The Box of Delights (BBC, 6 × 30 minutes, 1984), produced by Paul Stone. Wikipedia; IMDB.

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