Guest post: ‘Centre Play’ recalled and ranked

We are delighted to showcase as a guest post this richly interesting and and remarkably useful guide to the BBC drama series Centre Play by our friend and television scholar Billy Smart (who himself blogs here). Our thanks to him for permitting us to share more widely his reflections that were originally compiled for a group of friends and colleagues. We very much hope he will contribute other posts that draw on his extraordinarily extensive viewing and deep understanding of the history of television drama. Billy Smart writes: In 1973 the long-running BBC2 Thirty-Minute Theatre (1965-73) strand bifurcated into two separate series. Second City Firsts (1973-78) plays were produced from BBC Birmingham at Pebble Mill, with a specific remit to create new writing and filmmaking from the regions. If you have a keen interest in old British television drama you will probably recognize the name and have seen one or two. But the complementary Centre Play strand, which ran until 1977, has never…