The provoca­tive British dra­ma that pre­dict­ed the rise of real­i­ty TV

It’s often sug­gest­ed that we are liv­ing in a future designed by JG Bal­lard. Yet Bal­lard was only one of a num­ber of fig­ures in post­war Britain to come dis­turbing­ly close to map­ping the social, cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal tra­jec­to­ries of the new mil­len­ni­um. Work­ing in tele­vi­sion as opposed to lit­er­a­ture, Nigel Kneale was anoth­er such fig­ure, one whose visions now seem equal­ly prescient.

Though more con­cerned with the ghost­ly, Kneale also had an eye for socio-cul­tur­al trends, court­ing sim­i­lar con­tro­ver­sy to Bal­lard through bit­ing, fan­tas­ti­cal scripts. This man­i­fest­ed espe­cial­ly effec­tive­ly in his rad­i­cal episode of the BBC’s The­atre 625, The Year of the Sex Olympics, a dra­ma direct­ed by Michael Elliott which feels like a hor­rif­ic fore­shad­ow of our cur­rent epoch’s addic­tive broad­cast­ing and empa­thy-drain­ing content.

Kneale’s unusu­al play fol­lows a group of char­ac­ters in an unnerv­ing­ly recog­nis­able future. Like all cloy­ing utopi­anisms, this future masks a hor­ri­fy­ing dystopi­an real­i­ty. At the heart of the set­ting, sim­ply called Out­put, sits the enter­tain­ment sys­tem which keeps the Low­er Grade cit­i­zens numb, expe­ri­enc­ing life sec­ond-hand. Nat (Tony Vogel) is a senior fig­ure in the Sports Sex pro­gramme, a vital­ly impor­tant show with it being the year of the Sex Olympics.

When the new lover of Nat’s ex Deanie (Suzanne Neve) com­mits sui­cide dur­ing a live broad­cast, the Co-ordi­na­tor (Leonard Rossiter) agrees to test out a new, dark­er pro­gramme called The Live Life show, now pro­duced by Nat’s col­league Lasar (Bri­an Cox). Nat, Deanie and their estranged daugh­ter live a tough and har­row­ing life on an island, all wired for sound and vision. But why is their grow­ing pain and tor­ment such a boon for view­er appre­ci­a­tion and reactions?

It’s easy to see why The Year of the Sex Olympics is said to have pre­dict­ed the rise of real­i­ty tele­vi­sion, but there’s more to it than that. The play cer­tain­ly fore­shad­ows the celebri­ty-obsessed vor­tex that would spi­ral out of con­trol in the decades that fol­lowed, espe­cial­ly after the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion. Rather, Kneale antic­i­pat­ed the addic­tive, con­trol­ling qual­i­ties of screen time – espe­cial­ly when that screen shows things pur­port­ing to be true – and the pow­er struc­tures that go to extreme lengths to paci­fy whole com­mu­ni­ties with such con­tent. The cor­po­rate cul­ture lin­go of the play is very much of its time but its like­ness­es can cer­tain­ly be found today in a vari­ety of media industries.

The play is pri­mar­i­ly about the abuse of mass docil­i­ty, where expe­ri­ence is negat­ed in every shape or form out­side of that found on screens. ​“Sex is not to do, sex is to watch,” as Nat puts it. It’s an idea that speaks with star­tling clar­i­ty in an age of bro­ken social abil­i­ties, mass depres­sion and pornog­ra­phy addic­tion. Even the High­er Grade peo­ple of Out­put who work at the sta­tion have a socio­path­ic streak. These High­er Grades enjoy some of the things that they with­hold from the soci­ety around them, such as sex. But it is again a com­mod­i­ty that can be passed off when­ev­er they feel like it. They sim­ply vocalise that process rather than swip­ing left.

Empa­thy has been dec­i­mat­ed by liv­ing total­ly with­in a screen-dom­i­nat­ed realm. The audi­ence dis­turbing­ly only laughs for the first time when the man dies dur­ing the broad­cast, and then lat­er when Nat and Deanie face the awful con­se­quences of their slow destruc­tion on the island. They’re not eat­ing insects or dump­ing each oth­er in an exot­ic loca­tion but the humil­i­a­tion is shared between their real­i­ty and ours: it car­ries a currency.

It’s a macabre cir­cus that we only just see begin­ning to devel­op as the play ends and one that bears more than a fleet­ing resem­blance to the cur­rent atten­tion sur­round­ing real­i­ty tele­vi­sion and its increas­ing­ly dement­ed cousins, YouTube, Tik-Tok and the like. It’s just that the abil­i­ty to broad­cast has been quite hap­pi­ly opt­ed in to; we are vol­un­tar­i­ly a part of this mass sur­veil­lance where­as the play at least explains the lack of sub­ver­sion and resis­tance to be caused by the broad­cast machine itself.

Out­put is a soci­ety so reduced to cata­to­nia by dis­pos­able enter­tain­ment that gen­uine pain and death become the only effec­tive spec­ta­cle left. Tele­vi­sion in Kneale’s world is voyeuris­tic but essen­tial­ly man­ages to con­vince its view­ers oth­er­wise, that this is all nor­mal. The same dis­as­so­ci­a­tion from voyeurism has occurred on a vast scale in our own world, from the very first series of Big Broth­er, right through to Love Island and its grow­ing array of asso­ci­at­ed men­tal break­downs and suicides.

The spec­ta­cle is ongo­ing thanks to the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion and the suc­cess of its mon­eti­sa­tion, a spec­ta­cle that con­tin­ues even once the offi­cial cam­eras have turned off. For a play from over fifty years ago to have fore­shad­owed this shows Kneale’s vast skills and the dar­ing nature of tele­vi­sion in its true gold­en age of rad­i­cal exper­i­men­ta­tion. For a soci­ety such as ours to have calm­ly accept­ed such a real­i­ty, how­ev­er, shows lit­tle else but our own severe self-denial.