8.1: A medium for education: Early television drama, by Professor Ib Bondebjerg

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From the course by University of Copenhagen

Scandinavian Film and Television

284 ratings

University of Copenhagen

Scandinavian Film and Television

284 ratings

In many ways Scandinavian film and television is a global cultural brand, connected with and exporting some of the cultural and social values connected to a liberal and progressive welfare society. This course deals with the social, institutional and cultural background of film and television in Scandinavia and in a broader European and global context.

From the lesson

Documentary and Early TV Drama

Scandinavian cinema has a long history of strong documentary film making. The seventh lesson moves from the early documentary filmmakers to the contemporary – global and digital – scene for Scandinavian documentaries. Television drama is important for the Scandinavian public service broadcasters, but the notions of good television drama have changed remarkably from the early days of television up until today. In the eighth lesson we focus on the main tendencies in these developments from 1960 to 2000.

8.1: A medium for education: Early television drama, by Professor Ib Bondebjerg10:28

8.2: The birth of modern television drama, by Professor Ib Bondebjerg18:12

8.3: Stories by instalment: Television and serial narratives, by Professor Ib Bondebjerg13:14

Meet the Instructors

Eva Novrup Redvall
Associate Professor
Department of Media, Cognition and Communication

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Welcome to this lecture, which deals with television drama in

Scandinavia between 1960 and 2000.

Public service television in Scandinavia and also in the rest of Europe was

from the beginning based on the strong philosophy of cultural education.

Entertainment was not forbidden of course, but the more popular taste

of a broader audience also had to be challenged by broadcasting

a variety of cultural offers representing the best of the arts.

PSB television had to cater to all forms of taste on just one channel.

But the early television also wanted to educate the audience.

A sign of this ambition is in a way

visible in the name given to the department in television for drama.

In Denmark, Sweden and Normal it was called the Department for

Television Theatre.

And the early program production was very much based on television

adaptations of national and international literary or theatre classics.

One reason for this was, of course, that the cameras available for

transmission restricted the technology for production of drama.

In the beginning, only live broadcast was possible.

But even when tapes and editing became available around 1962, we

were still decades away from today's very advanced digital production and editing.

Television drama in Scandinavia remained very dependent on literary classics and

theatre until the 1970s,

where the balance between more literary and popular formats changed.

But the discussion on how to create a balance between classics,

the modern and between popular forms of television drama started much earlier.

One of the first heads of the Television Theater Department in Danish television,

Felix Norgaard, in 1962 in fact named his department a People's Theatre.

His program philosophy was that the audience should have the opportunity

to see the best of the classics, the best of contemporary stories and

also those modernists and avant garde forms of television theater.

Which was part of the European

culture of the 1950s and 60s.

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It was an ambitious program philosophy, and it did cause heated debate

in the early television culture, but people only had one channel.

When the program they could see was for instance, absurd drama by

authors like Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco or Harold Pinter.

Also in other Scandinavian countries those in charge of drama were eager to

show both the classics and the more modern and avant-gardistic forms of drama.

In Norway, the head of drama, Arild Brinchmann in 1962,

ended up in a heated debate in the press when NRK broadcast an absurd,

modern drama by Ionesco.

It would, however, be an exaggeration to claim that only high culture and

avant-garde dominated early television drama.

In fact, the Scandinavian television audience in both Sweden and Denmark around

1957 already could watch American comedy, crime and western series.

But still the fact that the whole population was watching the same channel

in the period of the PSB monopoly, often meant that

different taste cultures were confronted with each other in in the public debate.

The already mentioned Felix Norgaard, in his definition of the people's theater

in fact, wanted to broadcast both more accessible popular television theater.

As well as products of high cultural quality,

which he thought might not be considered popular in the ordinary sense of the word,

but as he said, in a deeper sense.

The early television theatre in Denmark, Norway, and

Sweden was clearly seen as a window for the audience to a wide

variety of programs representing European and American classics.

And also international contemporary traditions in theatre and literature.

In that sense, it was a public service television with a clear,

cultural education profile.

Television brought world culture to a broad audience in

all parts of the country.

On the program, in Scandinavian television in the early 1950's and

60's, we find television theatre based on adaptations of such international

authors like Tjekhov, Moliere, Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky.

But also more contemporary international writers like Jean Giraudoux, J.B.

Priestly, Jean Paul Satre, William Saroyan, Arthur Miller and Bertolt Brecht.

Early Scandinavia television drama did try to educate it's audience

by presenting to them the best of world classics and

international contemporary drama and literature.

But more importantly than that was the adaptation of national classics and

contemporary literature and theater.

And gradually, also original television drama made for the small screen.

In Danish television, one of the first classics to be presented on television

in 1952 was the Romantic poet, Adam Oehlenschlaeger, and

the national classic Aladdin.

Most of the production is lost today but we know that the production mixed

puppet theater with live, real actors performance.

Many other national classics were translated to television in this period

and well received by the audience.

Although the visual style was rather poor and

very far from the more filmic style of modern television drama,

it was not film that was the most obvious inspiration for television, but theater.

In Denmark, Norway, and

Sweden, the forming of a national tradition, the search for ways to create

a national canon of television drama was of equally high importance.

The exchange of television drama between the three countries

helped extend the individual traditions to a broader Scandinavian.

Adaptations of Scandinavian world classics like August Strindberg,

Alexander Kielland, Knut Hamsun, Henrik Ibsen, and Sigrid Undset and others meant

that they became the basis for both single plays and eventually also miniseries.

Some of the Scandinavian classics to reach popularity outside the country of

production were for instance the NRK adaptation of Alexander Kielland's novel

Skipper Worse, a series in five parts from 1968.

Skipper Worse is a historical series about life in Norway in the late 1800's.

As a historical series, it resembles the Swedish series Hemsoboarne,

the inhabitants of Hemso, which was a miniseries in three parts

made by SVT in 1971, based on the novel by August Strindberg.

The production of miniseries in the beginning of the 1960s marks the watershed

in Scandinavian television drama.

The dominance of single drama productions and the strong orientation towards

adaptations and theatre aesthetics marks the early period.

From the 1960's and on, a new development towards a much stronger

inspiration from film and the American English tradition for series and

serials, changed the basic formats of television drama.

In 1962 SVT made the first of many

Scandinavian crime series Halsduken, The Scarf,

in eight parts based on a book by Francis Durbridge.

In Denmark, the popular and very productive and versatile author

Leif Panduro, wrote the manuscript to the first Danish crime series,

Do you Like Oysters, from 1967, a series in six parts.

Both the TV series based on literary classics and

the crime series was a sign of a new television culture,

a television culture beginning to find its own aesthetic and generic forms.

And this will be the topic of the next part of the lecture.

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