Ultraviolet (1998)Four decades ago, Channel 4 began with a mission to be ‘different’, to go beyond the mainstream programming offered by the other broadcasters (then only the BBC and ITV), to serve underrepresented communities and bring new voices to British broadcasting. The burgeoning channel achieved this with innovative magazine programmes, edgy comedy and wide-ranging current affairs programming, which accompanied its flagship bulletin, Channel 4 News.
But Channel 4 was not only innovative in the schedules it was presenting to audiences; the entire setup of the channel and the way it commissioned programmes created a growing new field for independent TV producers in the UK, and Channel 4 began to change the face of British cinema with Film on Four and its funding for independent film workshop collectives.
As one of our major broadcasters, Channel 4 may now feel like more of an institution than a plucky outlier, but it’s still pushing the envelope, particularly with its recent Black to Front initiative and online commissioning, which is where some of our most beloved comedies, such as Chewing Gum and We Are Lady Parts, had their original start.
To celebrate Channel 4 turning 40, our curatorial team have selected some of their favourite titles from the Channel 4 programming on BFI Player and the wealth of archive material available on Channel 4 online (formerly All 4). Featuring animation, artists’ moving image, period drama, sci-fi and comedy, it’s a reflection of the range of Channel 4 from past to present and shows how it remains a vital force in British film and television. Many happy returns!
Majdhar (1984)
One of the very first features made through the groundbreaking Workshop Declaration, which awarded regular funding to film collectives in return for broadcasts on Channel 4 and negotiated union rates, Majdhar radically updated the representation of Pakistani women on television. Made by the South Asian film collective Retake, it told the story of Fauzia (Rita Wolf), who resists pressure to return to Pakistan when her arranged marriage falls through. Instead, she slowly reckons with an unfamiliar and often hostile London, becoming increasingly political and independent.
With its varied location shooting – notably visiting the important Pentonville Gallery – and the ways it pushed traditional drama into unexpected new directions, Majdhar felt rooted in the fabric of contemporary Asian British life, and illustrated the dynamism of 1980s London life as seen from the perspective of filmmakers ordinarily marginalised within the industry.
– William Fowler
The Victor (1985)
Violence Induced, Control Terminated, Operative Reaction? From its outset, Derek Hayes and Phil Austin’s dark science fiction tale of experimental drugs, gory violence and Billy Bunter – yes, that Billy Bunter – feels somehow familiar and yet very different. The opening titles are reminiscent of a classic television action series, while the animation brings to mind Saturday morning cartoons. But as the first blood is spilled from a pool ball to the face, and the scene melts away into dreamlike surrealism it’s clear that neither characters nor audience are on solid ground.
Produced by distinctive talent who were encouraged to explore sophisticated narrative, razor-sharp design and political messaging, The Victor represents much of what was so laudable about Channel 4’s commitment to animation in its first two decades.
– Jez Stewart
Six of Hearts (1986)
In its first decade Channel 4 embraced LGBTQ+ programming, with Paul Oremland’s eccentric agitprop-doc One in Five (1983) broadcast just weeks after the launch. Pioneering strand Out on Tuesday (later OUT) ran from 1989 to 1994, and queer cinema was given a controversy-stoking platform (see Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane).
Devised with Caroline Mylon, Oremland’s 1986 series Six of Hearts presented a genre-bending fantasia of community and creativity, politics and partying; lives lived fiercely in spite of the Thatcher government, the AIDS crisis and the tabloids’ virulent homophobia. Fusing drama, documentary and musical revue, the six films range from the life and times of lesbian feminist comedian Carol Prior and influential music journalist Kris Kirk to a bittersweet celebration of cruising culture. The most fondly remembered edition remains ‘Andy the Furniture Maker’, inviting us into the beguiling world of this unlikely art world star and fixture on London’s burgeoning queer scene, with Jarman among the mentors taking him under their wing.
– Simon McCallum
The Orchid House (1991)
Adapted from Phyllis Shand Allfrey’s novel, The Orchid House is a visually sumptuous period drama set on the Caribbean island of Dominica after the First World War. Telling the story of the decline of a wealthy white family from the perspective of their children’s Black nanny Lally (Madge Sinclair), the series reflects the corrosive effects of colonialism through an array of complicated and passionate characters.
Horace Ové (the pioneering director of the first Black British fiction feature film, Pressure (1975)) shot the series on location and drew on his West Indian background to present the changing dynamics and politics of Allfrey’s heavily autobiographical novel. Allfrey was a founder of the Dominica Labour Party, and the political dimensions of the story are particularly reflected in the character of Baptiste, played by Lennie James in his first major television role.
– Lisa Kerrigan
A Dance to the Music of Time (1997)
Channel 4’s challenge to the BBC’s domination of the high-end literary adaptation reached its pinnacle with this ambitious translation of Anthony Powell’s 12-volume epic charting the progress of a group of English public school graduates from the 1920s to 1971. Hugh Whitemore’s distillation down to four two-hour features is remarkably absorbing, following the central figure of Nick Jenkins (James Purefoy/John Standing) as he moves through the decades observing the foibles of those around him with affection and amusement.
Inevitably episodic and sprawling, the narrative is held together by Nick, supported by a spectacular cast of British actors who craft character studies that generate emotional power or light relief. The most tragic is undoubtedly Stringham, beautifully portrayed by Paul Rhys, who epitomises the central theme: the fragility of the upper classes in a changing Britain.
– Josephine Botting
Ultraviolet (1998)
The sophisticated, dark and moody supernatural thriller Ultraviolet is a strikingly original six-part series about the battle for existence between vampires and a shadowy government team hunting them, with the former fighting against the unwelcome human interference to their food supply. The story arc builds through the eyes of a reluctant recruit to the vampire hunters – Michael, a detective sergeant trying to figure out the good guys from the bad guys.
Written and directed by Joe Ahearne, with a cast including Jack Davenport, Idris Elba and Susannah Harker, Ultraviolet demonstrated many of Channel 4’s unique strengths in the way it sidestepped the clichés of the horror genre, while also reflecting topical concerns such as paedophilia, global warming, CJD and AIDS. This overlooked series drew in audiences over its slow-build six-week run, but is now perfect to binge-watch all in one go.
– Kathleen Luckey
Anna (2008)
The intimate possibilities of broadcast television were explored across four 3 Minute Wonder shorts made by artist Luke Fowler after he won the inaugural Jarman Award in 2008. Anna, one of the four works televised by Channel 4 across consecutive nights, illustrated Fowler’s sensitivity with the 16mm camera and captured some small part of his world and life experience in a flat in a Victorian tenement in the West End of Glasgow.
The connection between Channel 4 and the Jarman Award was and remains an important one, signalling both the channel’s radical history and the powerful new forms and traditions being realised through contemporary artist filmmaking today. Fowler’s tactile approach to moving image-making challenges expectations about what film and television should look like in our technology-saturated world.
– William Fowler
Kids on the Edge (2016)
Kids on the Edge is a seemingly straightforward hospital documentary series, in keeping with Channel 4’s well-trodden inclination to broadcasting health and social inclusion matters. However, this series deals with mental health issues affecting young people being treated at the Tavistock and Portman clinics for emotional wellbeing, and does so with a degree of tact and care not always seen on television.
The first episode, ‘The Gender Clinic’, follows two children as they navigate their gender dysphoria and make choices about their treatment as they enter puberty. ‘Last Chance School’ tackles the education of children excluded from mainstream schooling, and ‘Troubled Girls’ is a moving portrait of teenagers who self-harm. It’s one of the more compassionate programmes broadcast in a time when kindness can seem in short supply.
– Elinor Groom
Red Flag (2022)
Channel 4 has been commissioning short, online-only Comedy Blaps for over a decade. The Blaps have provided the incubator for emerging talent including Michaela Coel in Chewing Gum (2015 to 2017) and a certain London Greek-Cypriot letting agent called Stath. It’s worth remembering that not all Comedy Blaps are picked up for series, and on Channel 4 online there is a wealth of pilot sitcoms and sketch shows not available elsewhere.
As it only debuted earlier this year, we won’t yet know if Red Flag will make it to broadcast. The programme is a gleeful handful of sketches skewering modern life, penned and fronted by Kiell Smith-Bynoe (best known as incredulous straight man Mike in Ghosts). It has a chaotic and somewhat surreal quality arguably not seen in a Channel 4 sketch show since Smack the Pony (1999 to 2003).
– Elinor Groom
Foresight shorts (2022)
Since its founding, Channel 4 has always supported innovative short-form filmmaking. From the early independent film and video department through to the programming of experimental shorts on The Eleventh Hour and artists’ film commissioning strand Random Acts, the channel has encouraged filmmakers to use shorts as a testbed for boundary-pushing narratives. Now it’s looking to tomorrow with Foresight, a bold new anthology series of sci-fi shorts by five emerging Black British directors that imagine alternate futures for Black and Brown protagonists.
Spanning stories of off-world colonies, climate collapse and surveillance technologies, the series uses speculative fiction to explore themes of displacement, parenthood, rehabilitation and survival, while also countering the dominance of white perspectives in the genre. While all of the narratives allude to a present of instability and uncertainty, as a whole the series confirms that the future of sci-fi filmmaking is in talented, imaginative hands.
– Caitlin Smith
