Monitor: The Creation of the Television Arts Documentary

Abstract

Monitor (BBC, 1958–65), a series which showcased the arts and their creators and was presented by Huw Wheldon, is now remembered as the flagship of late 1950s and early 1960s arts documentary television broadcasting. In Arts TV: A History of Arts Television in Britain, John Walker describes Monitor as ‘a crucially important early series’ (1993: 45), arguing that ‘no one could deny its ground-breaking achievements’ (ibid.: 49). John Wyver, in Vision On: Film, Television and the Arts in Britain, called Monitor ‘among the BBC’s most celebrated contributions to “good broadcasting’’ ’ (2007: 27). In the edited collection Experimental British Television, Jamie Sexton refers to Monitor as the ‘BBC’s critically acclaimed arts series’ (Mulvey and Sexton 2007: 90), while Kay Dickinson, in the same collection, refers to it as a ‘well respected fortnightly Sunday arts magazine programme’, pointing out that this was where Ken Russell first made his name (ibid.: 70). Indeed the series is now most admired for Russell’s innovative composer biographies, the highlight of which is generally accepted to be his film on Elgar (BBC, 11 November 1962). Indeed, this film was chosen to mark the hundredth edition of the programme.