After Dark: an introduction by the senior curator, BFI National Archive
Channel 4 in the 1980s is widely credited with breathing fresh life into British television, particularly in comedy, drama, youth programming and scheduling. Less often acknowledged is the extent of innovation in the channel's non-fiction output, which included opinionated current affairs documentaries (The Friday Alternative, 1982-83; Diverse Reports, 1984-87; Dispatches, 1987- ), extended news (Channel 4 News, 1982- ) and science documentaries (Equinox, 1986- ). One of the most successful innovations was also the simplest: a late-night, open-ended discussion programme treating a single topic in detail, with no filmed reports, aggressive interviewers, studio audience, political soundbites, computer graphics or video effects.
After Dark was brought to the UK by Sebastian Cody, a former producer on the emblematic chat show Parkinson (BBC, 1971-82). Cody had acquired overseas rights to the discussion show Club 2, which had run successfully on Austrian television since 1976, for his production company Open Media. He found a buyer in Channel 4, in the context of a broadcasting schedule now extending deeper into the small hours.
After Dark revived a somewhat neglected television format, the live discussion programme, assembling a group of experts to debate in depth a particular topic. Such programmes as In the News (1950-56), in which an august quartet of notables discussed the week's events, were a fixture in the 1940s and 50s, when BBC television still had its own 'Talks' department. By the 1980s, however, expert comment was largely harnessed to short, single-subject interviews in news or current affairs programmes, with perhaps the most direct surviving descendent of the earlier discussion shows being the BBC's venerable (but recorded) Question Time (1979- ), more a kind of gladiatorial theatre than a sober discussion.
But After Dark did much more than restore space for expert debate, introducing several features entirely new to British television. The open-ended format allowed debate to develop and gave less confident participants space to contribute; the host position was rotated weekly, preventing any 'cult of the personality' from developing; alcohol and cigarettes encouraged a relaxed mood. Such editorial choices, combined with a deliberately subdued studio set and unobtrusive camerawork, directed all attention to the guests.
As Cody explained to The Guardian in 1988, the selection of guests was governed by strict principles: "We start with one or two people without whom the discussion wouldn't take place, the catalysts. Then there are the people who are not known television performers but who will bring personal testimony to issues which would otherwise be argued theoretically. Then there are the historians or journalists who provide a context." The result, as Cody wrote in Lobster in 2008, was that "In all the ways that matter the control of After Dark passed from the producer and the broadcaster to the participants."
The series quickly won critical support. Nancy Banks-Smith, reviewing the first edition ('Secrets', tx. 1/5/1987) in The Guardian, predicted that "it will be many a midnight before Channel 4 come up with a subject so on the ball... and such an enthralling group of subjects." In fact, the programme proved capable of matching compelling topics with riveting guests on an almost routine basis. Among many bold choices were a leader of the notorious Nicaraguan Contras, the lawyer who defended Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, a homeless drug addict and a convicted paedophile who confessed to molesting 200 children.
Inevitably, the series was frequently controversial. Michael Randle and Pat Pottle, who had recently confessed in a book to assisting a prison escape by the spy George Blake, were dropped from one programme ('Out of Bounds', tx. 13/5/1989) after Channel Four was threatened with contempt of court proceedings. In September 1988, a proposed edition scheduled to include Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams was abandoned following pressure from a number of Tory MPs and from the Independent Broadcasting Authority, which argued that Adams' appearance would be likely to be "offensive to public feeling" in contravention of the Broadcasting Act 1981. Weeks later, the government announced new broadcasting restrictions aiming to deny the 'oxygen of publicity' to Northern Irish terrorists and their supporters. In the series' most famous incident, a drunken and obnoxious Oliver Reed was asked to leave during an edition about women's position in society ('Do Men Have to Be Violent?', tx. 27/1/1991).
In 1991, to the surprise and frustration of many, Channel 4 announced the series' retirement, although it would return for one-off specials and for a five-edition series in 2003, now on BBC Four.
Mark Duguid, Senior Curator (Archive Online), BFI National Archive
www.bfi.org.uk/inview