Before Life on Mars, and Other Roman Gods
The 1970s are conventionally associated with apocalyptic heradlines, ‘3 million face the dole queue’ screamed The Sun (15 01.79), redicting the impact of the events in the ’80s. Others phrased their views as questions: ‘Is anyone running Britain?’ asked the Daily Express (08.02.79) and ‘Is everyone going mad? was the Daily Mirror‘s poser on 05.12.73. However, amidst the petrol and bread shortages and the closedown of TV at 10.30 (due to power cuts and strikes) the decade also saw some exciting use of television for educational purposes. Now associated with the strange messages from another era beamed out to the central character in ‘Life on Mars’ the OU’s TV output was pf significance to many more than this fictional late-night learner. To find out more check out the 22nd International Screen Studies Conference, 29th June – 1st July 2012 at the University of Glasgow. It is there that Amanda Wrigley is to give a paper on ‘Theatre, education, television: the BBC and the Open University in the 1970s’. Amanda is particularly interested in A307. There is a posting about it here.
If you miss this paper you can catch her on lecture 26 February 2013 for the Reading branch of the Classical Association. It is ‘Popular classics: Greek drama on BBC radio and television, 1920s-1990’. Alternatively, next month there’ll be a paper for the Greek Tragedy on the Small Screen symposium, University of Westminster on 22 June 2012 called ‘Oedipus inside-out: translating ancient Greek imaginative and performative spaces to the television studio’.