If you have been Christmas shopping in HMV, the BBC shop or Tower Records, you may have already noticed one striking development: the rise and rise of the television DVD. There are two kinds: newly reissued classics and the box sets of recent hits, especially new series. Each tells a different story about where television is now heading.
The most welcome development is the reissue of classic dramas and comedy programmes, mainly by the BBC and BFI. The BBC recently brought out some of the best of its 1980s Shakespeare series: Jonathan Miller's King Lear with Michael Hordern, Hamlet with Derek Jacobi and Claire Bloom, and the Nicol Williamson Macbeth. It has also reissued some of the best dramas of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s: Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party, Stephen Poliakoff's Caught on a Train with Peggy Ashcroft, and Alec Guinness as George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The BBC has also started to bring out great comedy series, such as the first Steptoe & Son and Hancock's Half Hour.
The BFI has been even more adventurous with its strand, Archive Television, bringing out more recherché works like Nigel Kneale's The Year of the Sex Olympics, Peter Watkins's The War Game, two of Jonathan Miller's dramas, the ghost story, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, and Ken Russell's BBC films on Delius and Elgar. These reissued classics coincide exactly with what some of us call "the golden age" of public service broadcasting, the one Mark Lawson thinks is mythical. Lawson and other critics have recently sneered at the idea of a 1960s-70s golden age, but the programmes being reissued are precisely the ones that can be considered part of the great period of British television.
And these new releases are just the beginning of a process that will change our attitudes to television archives. Instead of relying on the "generosity" of the BBC or Channel 4, who rarely repeat much of the best television from the past, especially if it seems esoteric, we will be free to click on to Amazon or go to the high street and buy them, in the same way we would collect music or films. This is part of a larger trend in which DVD technology has injected new life into cinema and television industries (see Mark Cousins, "Widescreen," Prospect, March 2004). And because DVDs are so much more user-friendly than the unlamented VHS, they also enhance the way we watch programmes, searching for interesting details or snatches of dialogue.
But this is still a small corner of the television DVD market, which is dwarfed by the mountains of recent hit shows: comedies like The Office and Little Britain, gardening with Alan Titchmarsh or natural history with David Attenborough, and The Michael Palin Collection. This is pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap television. The BBC shop's bestsellers are mostly from the last ten years.
Here too, though, there is an interesting trend. Among the boxed sets of recent series, a whole section is dedicated to contemporary American dramas and comedies: 24, The Sopranos and The West Wing. These are perfect for viewers who have just given up on BBC2 or Channel 4 schedulers. Instead of staying up until almost midnight to see Six Feet Under, the latest episode of Malcolm in the Middle or throwing a hammer at the set next time some smug Channel 4 announcer says your favourite series will be shown on E4 first, just wait a little, buy the whole series and treat yourself to a blowout of Larry David or Aaron Sorkin. BBC2 and Channel 4 are starting to look like increasingly unreliable middlemen, unwilling to schedule the best American programmes properly. So watch them when you want. Just make sure your Christmas stocking is rectangular.
However, this isn't just a question of the occasional? present. Something more important is going on. Put together, these trends mark a new shift in control from the broadcasters (sitting on treasure from the past or from the US) to the consumer, who wants these programmes but without the dumbed-down middlemen. At the rate things are going, we may be able to just get the programmes we want by cable straight from the archive or the American producers, while the British broadcaster will charge a handling or licensing fee, or perhaps Channel 4 or the BBC will even start new digital channels dedicated to archive or imported television. Then we won't have to bother with their current output at all. A new golden age beckons.
