Cultural Significance
Edge of Darkness tapped into a cultural zeitgeist of concern about nuclear power and nuclear warfare in the early to mid nineteen-eighties. In 1980, current affairs programme Panorama broadcast “If The Bomb Drops”, a documentary that examined how well prepared Britain was for a nuclear attack; in 1983, The Day After an American TV movie about a nuclear war aired; in 1984, the BBC broadcast On the Eighth Day, a documentary about the effects of a nuclear winter and Threads, a drama about a nuclear attack on Sheffield while 1985 saw the first screening of Peter Watkins' nuclear war television film The War Game, banned on television since 1965. Edge of Darkness also rode on a wave of preoccupation with the secretive nature of the State in both fact (e.g. This Week’s “Death on the Rock” (1988) about the deaths of three Provisional IRA members in Gibraltar and Secret Society (1987) about undisclosed matters of public interest which led to the sacking of BBC Director General Alasdair Milne) and fiction (e.g. the films Defence of the Realm (1985) and The Whistle Blower (1987) and the television serials A Very British Coup (1988) and Traffik (1989)).
Edge of Darkness continues to be well regarded to this day. When it was repeated on BBC2 in 1992, Sean Day-Lewis wrote in The Daily Telegraph, “Edge of Darkness is a masterpiece. It is one of those very rare television creations so rich in form and content that the spectator wishes there was some way of prolonging it indefinitely”. Andrew Lavender, writing in British Television Drama in the 1980s, has said that Edge of Darkness “captured the spirit of its age but went far beyond the drama of its time. It pushed against expectations attaching to the thriller form, often transcending the limits of the genre”. Fred Inglis, in his analysis of the serial in Formations: 20th Century Media Studies, takes it “as one of the most remarkable works of art made for British television”. According to Lez Cooke, in British Television Drama: A History, “In a reactionary climate, when the possibilities for the production of 'social issue' drama were limited, Edge of Darkness proved that, by adapting to changed circumstances and adopting a serialised thriller format, it was still possible to produce ambitious and progressive television drama in Britain in the mid-1980s”, a view echoed by Sean Cubit in EcoMedia who notes that “the series neatly echoed the chill that descended on radical politics in the Thatcher years in the United Kingdom”. The television historian Andrew Pixley has described the series as “possibly the finest BBC drama ever made” and “one of the few television programmes where every element can be said to have worked to complete effect”.
Edge of Darkness was placed fifteenth (fourth position out of the dramas featured on the list) on the British Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes in 2000, the BFI describing it as “a gripping, innovative six-part drama which fully deserves its cult status and many awards.”. Radio Times television editor Alison Graham, in 2003, listed it as one of the forty greatest television programmes ever made. It was one of only seven dramas listed in Broadcast magazine's list of the fifty most influential television programmes, published in July 2004. In March 2007, Edge of Darkness was placed third in Channel 4's list of the Greatest TV Dramas. Also on Channel 4, Darius Jedburgh was listed eighty-fourth in their list of the One Hundred Greatest TV Characters in 2001.
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