Situating The South Bank Show: Continuity and Transition in British Arts Television

Abstract

This article examines aspects of The South Bank Show (SBS), the UK's long-running and successful series over 35 years, closely associated with its editor and presenter Melvyn Bragg and since 2010 broadcast on the channel Sky Arts 1 rather than on its previous home, the ITV network. After placing this series in the broader history of arts television, the article examines aspects of programme design and address, the diversity of topics treated, and the way in which it has reflected some of the changes at work in the social positioning and evaluation of the arts in Britain. It explores questions about the documentary methods and forms used, the relationship of programme design to different kinds of artistic practice, the way in which artists themselves figure in expositions of their work and the forms of engagement both with the high/popular divide and the playoff between the established and the new. The series is seen to be defined not only by its attempts to be ‘accessible’ but also by its ‘sociability’, often grounded in the settings, informality and tone of the interview exchanges. The article pays attention to the continuation of SBS on Sky Arts 1, including the SBS Specials, before concluding with some more general observations on arts coverage within a changing television economy and an increasingly diverse cultural landscape.