Sunset Across the Bay

In his essay Knocking-off Time, Dave Rolinson notes that Sunset Across the Bay was Bennett's second play for BBC Television.  He notes that this play introduced the themes that were to be come "Bennett territory".

This was Bennett’s second transmitted television play after A Day Out, which had also been directed by Frears and produced by another Bennett regular, Innes Lloyd. Sharing the critical convention that television drama is a writer’s medium, critics have seen in it Bennett’s movement towards ‘genuine Bennett territory’ because he moves from ‘the historian’s distance’ to ‘the observer’s personal proximity’ and anticipates later plays that feature ‘people on the margins being pushed further off the map’ in ‘the landscape of the aging and changing north’ and is ‘the first’ of many ‘Bennett plays about the concerns of the elderly’, which facilitates ‘his gift for investing the outwardly mundane with immense poignancy’.

In addition he notes the contribution made by Stephen Frears and Innes Lloyd to the development of Bennett's work
One of many impressive collaborations between writer Alan Bennett and director Stephen Frears, the play combines understated emotional power and a sense of the social impact of urban planning with a skilful deployment of cinematic technique that builds mood, character and theme.

Dave Rolinson

The origins of social realism

In the article Social Realism: How the Black Death Changed Art and Literature Conrad Clough argues that the plague caused seminal changes to European story telling:

The plague forced Europeans to readjust their views however, spawning a number of different social movements. The movement this article will be examining really seemed to begin in the 14th century, and is an ability to objectively look at society in a way that might be called “Social Realism”, this social realism examined the ways that all people were alike, cast light on to the lives of people of social classes that had never really been looked at before, and for the first time showed women as persons in their own right, a concept that would later reach fruition in renaissance humanism.

Conrad Clough

David Thomson

In this article David Thompson makes a connection between Film Noir, English Noir and the writing of Alan Bennett and Harold Pinter
David Thompson

Who is Middle England?

In this article from the New Statesman magazine Charlie Lee Potter discusses the difficulty of actually defining the Middle Englanders
Charlie Lee Potter

Continuing Traits

In the article A Taste of Honey-a critical analysis David Savage asserts that class, sexuality and the inability to articulate or discuss them are recurring features of British Cinema.

 "A generation later, another British filmmaker, no doubt influenced by the Woodfall* films and even inheriting their mandate, will pick up roughly the same story outline: Single mother and daughter in teacup-and-hotplate-misery confront race, sex, class, and unspoken resentments." 

Bennett like Sheilagh Delaney , the author of the original play, together with Tony Richardson the film's director draws upon the " unfinished narrative" of British drama, What may be of note is this tradition's depiction of self repression.
David Savage

* Woodfall films was a production company associated with the British New Wave movement.

British Television Drama

The book British televsion drama contains several critical essays on British Television drama.  Please pay attention to the essay on a Bed among the Lentils by Albert Hunt
George W Brandt

A Bed Among the Lentils

Jim Murdoch in his blog The Truth About Lies offers a readable account of Bennett's personal and professional history.  He also offers a useful critique of Bennett's Talking Heads series. He suggests that A Bed Among the Lentils  "is a brilliant analysis of the role of women (wives especially), the diminishing power of religion and the changing face of English society".

The complete blog can bead at the link below
Jim Murdock

The Art of the Monologue

Read this short article by Lynne Truss on the art of the theatrical monologue
Lynne Truss