Talk:Thirty-Minute Theatre

List of Productions

I've added a full tabulated list of productions (including sortable columns and id="Title" tags to allow direct links to the individual productions) and improved the Infobox, in line with the articles for similar BBC drama anthology series of the period. Points to note:

1. I increased the number of episodes from 286 to 291; the additional 5 all clearly belong to the group of productions broadcast in the period Feb-Aug 1973 without the Thirty-Minute Theatre billing in the Radio Times (according to the BBC Genome database), but which are clearly a continuation of the anthology, based on timeslot, duration, production team and remarks in the RT listings. Such productions are identified under the colspan heading at the end of the table.
2. I have assumed the Genome database entries to be more authoritative than those of the BFI, TV Brain, IMDB and the British Television Drama 1955-1994 Databases of the University of Reading. Genome highlighted some missing entries, incorrect dates and misspelled titles in the other sources.
3. Still more authoritative would be to check the production paperwork, Programmes As Broadcast records and on-screen title captions, where available.
4. Beyond the start of Season 6, the ends and starts of seasons are somewhat unclear; I have made a best guess based on the gaps in transmission around the summer period, with the assumption of one season per year, as was the case for the first five seasons.
5. Based on the titles, it looks like there were actually five, not four (as currently stated in the text at the top) John Mortimer plays about London.
6. The text at the top refers to two three-part Inspector Waugh series, but it seems that there was in fact just one six-part series, of which five of the episodes were repeated in Sep-Oct 1972.
7. Links to articles about the specific productions (of which there are only a couple so far) are made in the Title column, while those to original theatrical or literary sources are made in the Notes column.
8. I have not attempted to identify links to earlier BBC Radio productions of the same works, which exist for some of the productions.
9. The article could benefit from a 'Not to be confused with...' remark at the top referring to Thirty-Minute Theatre on BBC Radio or perhaps elsewhere(?).
10. I deleted a couple of references with broken links, having not managed to find the sources (possibly blog articles) online or archived.
11. Performers listed are generally those identified as 'starring' in the RT listing; otherwise the first few are listed.
12. I have not gone through checking to add links to articles on performers.
13. Still to add: identification of those surviving productions available on DVD/Blu-Ray or online.

CaptainZond (talk) 18:23, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

References