Bring back the big one-off television drama, says the acclaimed screenwriter

The television landscape has changed dramatically over the last few decades. When I started writing TV dramas in the 70s, the single episode drama was king. Not only was there BBC1’s Play For Today, but also ITV’s hugely popular Armchair Theatre, which had pulled in enormous ratings since it launched in 1956. For instance, Harold Pinter’s A Night Out – about a loner emotionally suffocated by his mother – was viewed by around 13 million people in 1960, at that time a record for a single television drama.

Other single TV dramas of the past, which often tackled big issues of the day, include Ken Loach’s 1966 Cathy Come Home (about homelessness), Dennis Potter’s 1979 Play For Today, Blue Remembered Hills (in which a group of children face tragedy), and Alan Bleasdale’s 1980 drama The Black Stuff (about Liverpool road workers, which inspired the series Boys From The Blackstuff). In its heyday, audiences never knew what was going to come out of the screen and across the carpet at them, and there was a real hunger for the unexpected.

Right up until the late 90s, the BBC was putting a lot of money into single dramas, resulting in such hits as Mrs Brown, with Judi Dench as Queen Victoria, and Truly, Madly, Deeply, with Juliet Stevenson as the grieving Nina. Then various executives left the corporation and because those who succeeded them didn’t have much interest in the format, it died virtually overnight.

No other form of fiction can look at an issue of the day with so much urgency and reach such a large audience. You can make a one-off TV drama in three to four weeks – it takes 18 months to make and edit a new drama series. I’d like to see a strand of new one-off films dramatising some of today’s burning issues, such as children being bullied on the internet, fracking, or how many young couples are forced to carry on living with their parents.

I know some people think that the Plays For Today of the past were all written by long-haired Lefties, but that’s simply not true. The beauty of the format was that it could reflect a wide range of voices. Any new one-off dramas should not only continue this vibrant tradition, but have something vital to say, and be fresh and provocative.

We’ve got so many theatre writers who, as yet, haven’t been asked to write for television, and who would be brilliant at reflecting the modern world back at us, and making us see it in a different light. Now all we need is a TV executive with the nerve and imagination to commission such dramas. Plays For Britain, an anthology of one-off dramas including Poliakoff’s Hitting Town, is out now on DVD. Order it from www.networkonair.com.