Broadcast and Critical Reception
Edge of Darkness was promoted on the cover of the listings magazine Radio Times and was broadcast on Monday nights on BBC2 at 9:30pm, beginning 4 November 1985. The serial averaged an audience of 4 million viewers over its run. The critical response was generally positive with most commentators concentrating their praise on Peck's performance as Craven and the scale of the programme's political themes. “A good television thriller is very hard to find but Edge of Darkness promises to be one of the best”, wrote Celia Brayfield in The Times, “The central character is played by Bob Peck, who has the gift of looking tragic and intelligent simultaneously. There was humour to lift the gloom and superb characterisation to flesh out the stock situation”. Ruth Baumgarten, in The Listener, praised the serial as “a grandiosely ambitious and compelling piece of fiction”. Speaking on the BBC's review programme Did You See...?, the writer Sarah Dunant said, “this is a very classy piece of television drama, on all levels, I think on the plot level, I think on the level of emotion and I think stylistically it looks absolutely wonderful, it's shot like a feature film”. Not so impressed was Byron Rogers, television critic of The Sunday Times, who initially hailed the series as one that “stayed in the mind and will stay there long because of its portrayal of human grief” but later felt he was “beginning to find Edge of Darkness slightly irritating” and decried the final episode as “an insult to its considerable following”.
Aware of the critical buzz surrounding the show, BBC1 Controller, Michael Grade, quickly announced that the series would be repeated on BBC1, stating, “I think it will reach a wider audience and it deserves it”, and so Edge of Darkness was duly shown, in double episodes, over three consecutive nights between 19 December and 21 December 1985, the fastest time between original broadcast and repeat in the BBC's history. These repeats were accompanied by a disclaimer that the GAIA organisation depicted in the programme was not connected with the Gaia publishing company supported by Prince Philip. It was a move that paid off – Edge of Darkness doubled its audience on BBC1 to 8 million viewers.
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