Talk:Funeral Games (play)

Flyer
Have added some refs. I'm sourcing a suitable programme or flyer. Shouldn't be too hard, it's put on a lot in the UK.

There is some disagreement between sources as to whether the first broadcast date of the play was the 25th or 26th of August 1968. 26th had more votes, and the 25th was a Sunday, and I seriously doubt whether Yorkshire Television would have first shown FG on a Sunday in 1968! Centrepull (talk) 16:33, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Broadcast
There is some confusion in the listing here, but the following is my original research, which is why I'm not merely updating the article.

First of all, although the play was submitted for the series Seven Deadly Virtues (as a representation of "justice") it was not accepted. That series, which incidentally wasn't made by Yorkshire Television in any case but by Rediffusion, did include one Orton play, namely "The Good and Faithful Servant" (representing "faith"). "Justice" was represented by John Bowen's "The Whole Truth".

"Funeral Games" was then offered to Yorkshire Television whose production was broadcast as part of ITV's Playhouse series on Monday, 26 August 1968. I do not know whether there were any material differences between the version submitted to Rediffusion and the version produced by Yorkshire.

James Ormerod, who had directed "The Good and Faithful Servant" as well as "The Erpingham Camp", Orton's play for the Seven Deadly Sins series, also directed the Yorkshire production of "Funeral Games". Simon Coward (talk) 15:12, 16 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi Simon. Yes, quite clearly the play was shown in Playhouse rather than Seven Deadly Virtues. The "problem" is that one of the cited sources claims otherwise. We can, however, rely on the "hard facts" of the actual transmission as per the Kaleidoscope Drama Guide, so I will re-write the text to reflect this. Nick Cooper (talk) 09:33, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

"Funeral games"
The usage of Funeral games is under discussion, see talk:Funeral games (antiquity) -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 03:49, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Claim r.e. Lord Chamberlain's Office
The page currently claims:


 * "Funeral Games is often mentioned as one of the plays that changed the cultural climate in England sufficiently to end the practice of the Lord Chamberlain acting as official censor to English theatre productions."

There are a couple of problems with this claim. In the first instance, as a TV play it was not subject to approval by the Lord Chamberlain's Office. It could be argued that the fact that as TV - both BBC and ITV - could circumvent such censorship, it added to the pressure to resceind that role, but clearly that's beyond the scope of this page. In the second instance, the Lord Chamberlain's power in this regard was ended by the Theatres Act 1968, which was already being discussed in Parliament prior to the broadcast of both Entertaining Mr Sloane and Funeral Games in the Playhouse series.

It should be noted that of the two cited sources, the first states only that the play appeared at the time the Lord Chamberlain's censorship role was coming to an end, while the second is the BBC's blurb for the 2008 Radio 4 production, which is not particularly robust. I think this is one of those cases where we can make a judgment that what would be reliable sources have got it wrong, so I am deleting the claim. Nick Cooper (talk) 12:26, 13 July 2017 (UTC)