Looking back at Dramarama

Dramarama was an anthology series on Children’s ITV from 1983 to 1989. A unique production, being a collaboration of the various ITV franchises, Dramarama enjoyed a separate cast and crew for each edition. The main players were London-based Thames; TVS, which had recently replaced Southern TV (the makers of successful Jon Pertwee-vehicle Worzel Gummidge) and which oversaw the administration and general direction of the programme; Tyne Tees had a good track record in children’s drama with The Paper Lads, Nobody’s House and Andy Robson amongst its output. Indeed, as Dramarama was being developed, Tyne Tees acquired the rights to produce a series based on a book called Super Gran; newly-created Central had recently wrested control of the Midlands region from Sir Lew Grade’s ATV, itself no stranger to kids television having produced The Muppet Show. 

The first season of Dramarama was transmitted in two parts. Dramarama: Spooky was broadcast in April 1983 and produced by Thames Television. The programme was a direct descendant of a series called Theatre Box (screened in 1981), which had given children their first glimpse of the bubblegum-blowing tomboy, Marmalade Atkins. This led to the series Educating Marmalade which starred the much-missed Charlotte Coleman. The series also included 2-part story School for Clowns which starred Ken Campbell as a beleaguered tutor.

Dramarama was  created and developed by the head of children’s drama at TVS, Anna Home. Before defecting to ITV in 1981, Home had spent a hugely successful decade and a half in children’s drama for the BBC. She rebuilt the children’s drama department which had been savaged in the mid-sixties. An overspend on the classic serial Rob Roy saw the head of drama, Owen Reed, removed from his post and the department axed. The overthrow of the old guard had begun, as Biddy Baxter and Edward Barnes observed in their book Blue Peter: The Inside Story, “The chaps in tweed jackets with donnish manners were being vanquished by thrusting young men in crumpled grey suits, who called each other boy and slammed the swing doors in the face of anyone unlucky enough to be in their wake down the BBC corridors” 

The shake-up, which was ordered to redress the audience balance (70% in favour of ITV in 1963) resulted in a new science-fiction serial (being developed by Canadian head of drama, Sydney Newman and a bright, tenacious young female producer, Verity Lambert) being made by the drama department rather the defunct children’s department. Had Doctor Who debuted a year earlier, the now familiar defence to accusations that it’s “merely a children’s show”, couldn’t have been made. 

Anna Home restored many of the BBC’s great drama directors, notably Dorothea Brooking, a former actress who specialised in adaptations of classic serials. Brooking was responsible for the first colour adaptation of Frances Hodgson-Burnett’s The Secret Garden in 1975; next Brooking directed Kizzy, a memorable 1976 production of Rumer Godden’s The Diddakoi about the isolation of a young half-gypsy girl, and A Traveller in Time, Alison Uttley’s 1930s-set tale of a young girl (played by Sophie Thompson) staying on her Uncle and Aunt’s Tudor farmhouse, drawn back in time to a household trying to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I in favour of Mary Queen of Scots. 

Anna Home would often produce projects herself, if she couldn’t find or afford the requisite talent. She produced the ambitious drama serial, The Changes, a shocking, post-apocalyptic thriller set in Bristol, which, even today, is vividly recalled by the generation of children who were scared out of their wits by it in 1975. Home adapted a trilogy of books by Peter Dickinson into ten half-hour filmed episodes. It represented the biggest commitment to children’s drama ever seen pre-Box Of Delights. By the late seventies, Rocky O’ Rourke and King Cinder (which starred a young Peter Duncan) were stealing away the traditional audience for ITV’s kids' drama. Seeking to further redress the balance, Anna Home developed a gritty new serial about a London comprehensive school with its creator Phil Redmond. Debuting in February 1978, Grange Hill enjoyed phenomenal success throughout its thirty-season run and eventually bowed out in 2008.

Once at TVS, Anna Home was keen to develop ITV’s approach to contemporary children’s drama. She instigated a series of seven plays on a theme: Spooky. The umbrella title for the series was Dramarama, the idea being to develop further seasons on other subjects. The first series began on Monday April 18th 1983 at 4.45pm on ITV. The opener War Games with Caroline was a hauntingly effective drama about a girl from the Blitz in need of help from contemporary schoolboy, Kevin, to avert the death of her school choir in a doodle-bug attack. Creepy and enjoyable in equal measure, this well-acted debut set the template for the next six years.

The most striking play from season 2 was Dodger, Bonzo and the Rest about life in a children’s home facing potential closure. It featured Pam Ferris, Cheryl Hall and a young Joanne Bell (later seen in Grange Hill and the Doctor Who serial The Curse of Fenric). A direct antecedent of the Tracy Beaker stories, Jacqueline Wilson may well have been inspired to some extent by this play and subsequent series. Dodger, Bonzo and the Rest announced its conceit from the outset with the clever use of the Madness hit Our House over a shot of the various protagonists stood outside their home, which is then revealed to be a postcard on a busy noticeboard. ITV was impressed by the success of the play and rewarded it with its own series. Dodger, Bonzo and the Rest ran for two series from February 1985 to Christmas 1986.

Next time: A Doctor Who satire and a future Time Lord makes his TV debut…

Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here. And be our Facebook chum here.