Docudramatizing the real: Developments in British TV docudrama since 1990

Abstract

The article discusses the reasons for the growth in television docudrama in Britain since 1990. These stimulating factors include regulatory frameworks, especially the Broadcasting Act of 1990 that affected existing television institutions by introducing increased competition and budgetary pressures. Challenges to television documentary from falling audiences, and to drama from rising costs, also led to a reconfiguration of British television schedules and the emergence of new hybrid programme genres. The pressures of this changed environment led the hybrid form of docudrama to take on some of the functions of history programmes, social affairs, political investigation and responses to key events such as the September 11, 2001attacks. Docudrama makers were increasingly required to seek co-production finance and distribution deals with overseas television channels. Docudrama was already controversial because of its relationship with antecedent documentary and dramatic traditions, but the post-1990 British contexts presented both new problems and new opportunities. The relative immediacy of docudrama and its engagement with public affairs, married with its performativity and personalized mode of address, equipped docudrama to respond to challenging circumstances. It could fulfil the capacities of the television medium for both social extension and intimate involvement in a period when its component genres faced significant obstacles in doing so.

Konferencia vo Wannsee – filmové spracovanie vs. dostupné fakty

“…v ich častej neúplnej alebo úplnej neprístupnosti. Bez kompletných zdrojov a ich dôkladných analýz tak môže pri tvorbe filmu, rekonštruujúceho historickú udalosť, dochádzať k špekuláciám, k spájaniu niekoľkých postáv do jednej či vynechávaniu detailov, nepodstatných pre dejovú dramatizáciu (Bignell 2010). O syntéze postáv v širších súvislostiach hovorí aj Janet Staiger.…”

Television Biopics

“…In the mid-2000s, economic, regulatory and aesthetic pressures in Britain and the USA led to a massive expansion of airtime that broadcasters wanted to fill, and the waning of some established genres and forms urgently required programme-makers to find new stories and 7 new ways of telling them. Fact-based drama of various kinds was one of the key responses to this demand (Bignell 2011), achieved through the hybridization between genres that is an important motor for generating new programme ideas. This led to a spate of programmes that have something in common with the biopic.…”