For the Record (Canadian TV series)

For the Record is a Canadian television drama anthology series that aired on CBC Television from 1976 to 1985. The series aired docudrama-style television films on contemporary social issues, typically airing between four and six films per year.

After a nearly decade run, the series was cancelled in 1985, although the CBC opted to continue commissioning similar television films as standalone productions, beginning with 1986's Turning to Stone.

Concept
For the Record was intended as a series of dramas which would take an honest look at problems in Canadian society, among them many about mental illness and "flawed social institutions". It evolved out of the anthology series Performance, with some of its early films having been originally announced as entering production for that series before ultimately airing as episodes of For the Record instead.

Critical assessment
Gail Henley remarked in 1985 that For the Record dramas were "information laden" when compared to their more emotional American counterparts and emphasises the importance of research and documentation for the series. As Bill MacVicar put it: Topicality is both a blessing and a bane for television. Since the time from concept to telecast can be much shorter than for movies, television appears better briefed and more up-to-date. But the voraciousness of the medium encourages clumsy or cynical abuse of topicality; all too often (as in the slack Lou Grant the mere act of raising an issue is assumed to be tantamount to solving it; in other cases, solutions are so slickly simplified that what purports to be an investigation is little more than a case of special pleading. In contrast to this frequent shortcoming, the CBC's For the Record series tends to do justice to the problems it airs.