The Falklands Play is a dramatic account
of the political events leading up to, and including, the 1982
Falklands War. The play was written by
Ian Curteis, an experienced writer who
had started his television career in drama, but had increasingly
come to specialise in dramatic reconstructions of history. It was
originally commissioned by the
BBC in 1983, for
production and broadcast in 1986, but was subsequently shelved by
Controller of
BBC One Michael Grade due to its pro-Margaret Thatcher
stance and alleged
jingoistic tone. This
prompted a press furore over media bias and censorship. The play
was not staged until
2002, when
it was broadcast in separate adaptations on
BBC Television and
Radio.
The play focuses on the methods by which
British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher and the British
government handled the United Kingdom's largest
Foreign Affairs emergency since the
Suez Crisis of 1956.
The play charts the
behind-the-scenes dealings between Thatcher's Conservative government and the
military, as well as the British, United States
, and Argentine governments, in what became a
diplomatic breakdown that gave way to war
and eventual British victory.
Production
On 22 October 1982, at a meeting of the Writer's Luncheon Club,
BBC Director
General Alasdair Milne gave a
speech during which he praised Curteis's TV play
Suez 1956
(shown three years earlier), which had dealt with the Suez Crisis
from the political and diplomatic perspective, rather than the
"action" on the ground. Curteis - who was present at the meeting -
then sent Milne a copy of the published play, and as an
afterthought said: "In a few years' time, I would like to write a
similar sort of play about the Falklands Crisis." Milne immediately
commissioned the play, and after months of careful negotiation the
contract was signed on 6 April 1983. During discussions between
Curteis and Keith Williams, the BBC Head of Plays, the highly
respected
Cedric Messina was chosen
as
producer, but it was quickly
realised that tempers were still running high about the War -
particularly in relation to the BBC's conduct during it - so it was
mutually agreed to put the project on hold.
Curteis recommenced work on the play at the start of 1985, meeting
many of the key players and visiting most of the locations that
would be portrayed in the play. His research also involved reading
most of what had already been published about the War, biographies
of the chief protagonists,
Hansard
for the relevant Parliamentary debates, official reports, and the
contemporary press coverage. He delivered the fourth draft of the
script to the BBC in April 1986. The budget of £1 million was
approved, Messina officially appointed as producer, and David Giles
as director.
Studio time was booked in TC1 at BBC Television
Centre
(one of the largest television studios in Europe)
for 24 January to 8 February 1987 inclusive, with a planned
transmission date of the following 2 April, the fifth anniversary
of the Argentinian invasion. It was planned to run for
around three hours - with a half-hour break for the
9 O'Clock News - and would be a
"major" drama production.
At a meeting with Milne on 2 June 1986, Curteis raised the question
of the
general
election that was expected to happen the following year, and
asked whether it might compromise the planned transmission date of
the play. Milne dismissed the possibility of an election before the
Autumn of 1987 at the earliest, and stated:
"I don't see that transmission in April presents any
problem."
In early July the new Head of Plays
Peter Goodchild (whose background was in
documentaries, rather than drama) requested considerable
modifications to the script, amongst them objecting to the
portrayal of Thatcher's "private and instinctive self" - as opposed
to the "bellicose Iron Lady of the public scenes" - and requesting
the inclusion of discussions between members of the government
about the possible effect of the War on the
1983 general election.
Curteis declined the latter on the grounds that none of the
relevant people he had interviewed had alluded to such
conversations, and that there was no other record of them. In
addition, he considered that attributing such fictional dialogue to
real people could be libellous, although he had been quite willing
to do exactly that for conversations between - variously - members
of the Argentinian Junta, American envoy
Alexander Haig, and
the Pope.
On 21 July - while Curteis was on holiday in Ireland - the BBC
cancelled the play, citing the forthcoming General Election.
Curteis mounted a robust defence, and as the press became involved
at the end of September, pressure mounted on the BBC, especially
when it was discovered that they were going ahead with
Charles Wood's
Tumbledown, which was claimed to have an
"anti-Mrs-Thatcher's-Government theme," even though at that point
Wood's script had not been published and few people could have read
it.
Tumbledown had a planned transmission date in October
1987, closer to - if not coinciding with - the General Election
than the planned broadcast of Curteis's play.
Bill Cotton, the BBC's Managing Director
of Television, issued a statement claiming: "Ian Curteis completed
the first draft of his
Falklands Play three and a half
years after we had commissioned it... In our professional opinion,
it is not a completed commission." He also said it would be
"irresponsible of the BBC at a time when the country is leading up
to an election to embark on a play portraying a Prime Minister in
office, other serving ministers and MPs." He finished by denying
the play had been cancelled for any other reason, and refuted
suggestions that Goodchild had asked for amendments that would
change the political slant of the script. A second statement by a
BBC spokeman also referred to Curteis's "draft script," and
claimed: "No bookings had been made for studio time. It was too
early for this to be done. There had been no commitment to the
production of this play." All of these claims either misrepresented
the facts, or were completely contrary to either them or the
assurances Milne had previously given to Curteis.
Cotton later reiterated most of these points in a letter to the
Sunday Telegraph on 22
February 1987, in which he also claimed that the BBC would be quite
happy to release their rights to the play to another broadcaster,
but they had had no such requests. In fact, there had been an
approach from
Anglia Television to
buy the rights on the day the cancellation was announced, but it
had been categorically refused "
off the record" by
Michael Grade, then Controller of
BBC One.
Coupled with the decision to continue with
Tumbledown
(although its transmission was eventually delayed until 31 May
1988), the whole furore led to accusations of
censorship and
left-wing bias at the
BBC, particularly as the play depicted Thatcher as both a strong
and sympathetic character. As arranged prior to the cancellation,
the play was published in 1987 as a paperback by
Hutchinson, but with the addition of
an introduction by Curteis in which he gave his account of the
whole affair.
In 1991, as part of a wider season of programmes about censorship,
Channel 4 included a reading of some
dialogue from the play in the documentary
The Liberal
Conspiracy, in which Curteis was also interviewed. Channel 4
was subsequently criticised on its viewer comment programme
Right to Reply for not
having made their own full production of the play for the same
season, as they had done with another banned BBC programme (an
episode of
Duncan Campbell's
Secret Society).
The Falklands Play was eventually produced simultaneously
for both radio and television with almost identical casts,
broadcast by
BBC Radio 4 on 6 April and
the
digital TV channel
BBC Four on 10 April 2002 respectively. The
television version was an amended and abridged 90-minute version of
the script, omitting all of the material involving the Junta and
the Pope. The TV transmission was preceded by a half-hour programme
on the controversy surrounding the original production, and was
followed by a studio debate on the issues raised by both the
cancellation and the play itself.
Cast
Hutchinson Paperback (1987 first edition).
Media information
Script book
DVD release
- Released on Region 2 DVD by BBC Video on 26 March 2007.
- The series was included in the The Falklands 25th
Commemorative Box Set with Tumbledown.
See also
References
External links
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