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Medieval mystery plays have had a rich and also distinctive life on British television. These performance texts, drawn from the Bible's story of the universe from just before its Creation to its end on the Day of Judgment, have appealed to television practitioners not only for drama adaptations (from the 1938 presentation of the Chester Abraham and Isaac onwards) and the foundation stone for new dramatic writing (such as the BBC's 1959 The Hill by Paul Almond) but also as the focus of documentaries on contemporary civic, social and religious traditions within communities. Charles Parker, for example, cast his own mystery play from the people of York in a 1973 episode of BBC1's Omnibus, and the 2008 BBC1 Miracle on the Estate chronicled how a mystery play was made into a film by north Manchester residents. Indeed, because of television's interest in the rich web of meanings arising from and surrounding mystery play performance, especially with regard to their relationship with place and community, it is not always easy to make clear-cut distinctions between program genres-in particular, between programs that may be considered to be primarily dramatic productions of part or all of a mystery play and programs that contextualize dramatic performance within the overall form of documentary. The first recorded production of a mystery play in 1938 is itself described in Radio Times as a "reconstruction of the preparation and presentation" (Television Listings) of the Chester Abraham and Isaac, wording that strongly suggests that the program, titled Miracle at Chester, may have been part documentary ("preparation") and part performance ("presentation"), with both elements staged in the Alexandra Palace studios.

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This discontented Cynick would turn all time into midnight, and all learning into melancholy Magick. He is so offended at Mirth, as if he would accuse even Nature her self to want gravity, for bringing in the Spring so merrily with the Musick of Birds. 22 No attempt at impartiality is evident: Aristophanes not only refutes Diogenes point by point, but is given the more attractive and persuasive speech, for example when he describes the power of theatre to translate its audience, in imagination, to any site in the world-a power which outrages Diogenes: He is offended at Scenes in the Opera, as at the useless Visions of Imagination. Is it not the safest and shortest way to understanding, when you are brought to see vast Seas and Provinces, Fleets, Armies, and Forts, without the hazards of a Voyage, or pains of a long March? Nor is that deception where we are prepar'd and consent to be deceiv'd. Nor is there much loss in that deceit, where we gain some variety of experience by a short journey of the sight. When he gives you advice not to lay out time in prospect of Woods and Medows, which you can never possess, he may as well shut up his own little Window (which is the Bung-hole of his Tub) and still remain in the dark, because the light can only shew him that which he can neither purchase nor beg. 23

This chapter offers a comparative impression of how the BBC and the independent television company Associated-Rediffusion produced Greek tragedy for non-specialist teen audiences via schools drama strands in the early 1960s, considering the different ways in which these dramas were presented in order to address the potency of teenagers and their imagined role in society at the beginning of this socially and culturally progressive decade. An assessment of the archival evidence for a number of schools productions of Greek tragedy in this period, together with textual analysis of extant programmes, suggests characteristic differences in pedagogic style and broader motivations between the BBC and Associated-Rediffusion, with the BBC focusing on the modernity of the theatrical canon and the independent company being primarily concerned with the imaginative and emotional engagement of the teen viewer. The evidence for audience engagement (pupils and teachers) bears out the greater success of the ITV broadcasts in communicating with teenagers in 1960s secondary moderns (where these ‘off-syllabus’ programmes were most often viewed), especially via the documentary framing techniques which integrated welcome contextual and historical information within the dramatic presentation.

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This special issue arises from a one-day conference on the topic of 'Radio Modernisms: Features, Cultures and the BBC' that we held on 19 May 2016 at the British Library, with the support of the Communications and Media Research Institute at the University of Westminster. Almost all contributors to this issue gave papers at the conference; others who spoke or who had planned to speak (Hugh Chignell, Henry Mead, Kate Murphy and Paul Wilson) enriched the discussions in welcome ways, and we remain grateful for their contributions. The talk by Paul Wilson, Curator of Radio at the British Library, brought the significant issue of archives-and their preservation, curation and accessibility-centre stage; his championing of the series of public listening events ('Louis MacNeice: Radio Writer and Producer', curated by Amanda Wrigley) across May-June 2016 meant that the conference's papers and discussions were followed by an act of communal listening to, and discussion of, a little-known example of MacNeicean radio. The conference was attended by around fifty participants from richly diverse areas of expertise including practice-based research and the historical study of architecture, broadcasting, classics, drama, imperialism, literature, modernism, musicology, radio, sound, television and transnationalism. The enthusiastic engagement of participants across the day underscored the sense that 'radio modernisms' as an idea represented a productive meeting-point for the exploration of common questions from a broad range of perspectives. This not only indicated a hot interdisciplinary topic but it also mirrored distinctive aspects of the conference's particular focus-the programmes, aesthetics, personnel and creative practices of the BBC Features Department in the middle stretch of the twentieth century. In truth, we did not anticipate that this topic would resonate so widely. The idea for the conference had arisen from a specific desire to engage two scholarly constituencies more closely in dialogue with each other. We had observed with excitement the recent flowering of interest from scholars of English literature in 'literary radio' (for want of definitive terminology). The radio programmes of interest to these scholars either adapt and realise in sound modernist works in print, bring to light the radio writings of canonical and more marginal modernist authors, or are radiogenic creations (often feature programmes) that exploit radio technology in a way that engages with the concerns and aesthetics of literary modernism and modernity itself. But the focus is often concentrated on the text and the writer. The second constituency comprises broadcasting historians in the UK-especially those, like ourselves, who have literary backgrounds and are actively researching the literary cultures and modernist aesthetics of BBC radio in the middle decades of the twentieth century. This constituency is rather diffusely spread across a variety of institutions, research centres and departments (of, for example, communications, cultural st...

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