Nineteen Eighty-Four (TV Programme) - Legacy

Legacy

Although it is fortunate that the second performance survives from an era when little television was preserved, the play is well known only amongst archive television enthusiasts and science fiction fans. It was twenty-three years before it received a repeat broadcast in 1977. Another proposed repeat as part of the BBC's fiftieth anniversary of television celebrations in 1986 was overruled by the producers of the 1984 John Hurt/Richard Burton feature film, who felt that earlier versions would affect income for their film. The BBC was permitted to show the play again in 1994 on BBC Two, as a tribute to the recently deceased Cartier and again in June 2003 on digital station BBC Four as part of the George Orwell centenary celebrations.

Kneale's adaptation was produced again by the BBC, with some modifications in 1965. Starring David Buck, Joseph O'Conor, Jane Merrow and Cyril Shaps, it was broadcast in BBC2's Theatre 625 anthology series as part of a season of Orwell adaptations sub-titled The World of George Orwell, on 28 November 1965. Long believed lost, on 12 September 2010 it was announced in various media outlets that a copy had been located at the American Library of Congress, although an approximately seven minute segment in the middle was unrecoverable from the NTSC video tape recording. It was recovered amongst a horde of over 80 lost British television episodes dating from 1957 to 1970. In 1965, a radio adaptation starring future Doctor Who star Patrick Troughton was transmitted on BBC radio.

Scenes from Nineteen Eighty-Four, along with the 1954 adaptation of Animal Farm, were featured in "The Two Winstons", the final episode of Simon Schama's program A History of Britain.