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By the early 1960s television was more established and widespread, and its conventions were beginning to be tacitly understood by audiences and performers alike. While the introduction of videotape pre-recording, as employed on Doctor Who, did little to change the ‘outside’ rehearsal and multi-camera studio performance template of the live era, it also meant that actors were for the first time able to watch their own performances, and adapt them to the medium. While still arriving at television via a multiplicity of routes, actors now typically shared the same degree of screen experience, leading to a greater uniformity in studio realism. At the same time, the growth of social realism meant a subtle shift in the style of acting that would be acceptable to audiences of the time. Despite its perceived outlandishness in narrative terms, reports show that Doctor Who was more than acceptable to contemporary audiences in terms of performance style.

Just as studio realism reached its apotheosis in the 1970s, BBC television drama showed signs of moving away from the multi-camera practices of Television Centre and out onto location. While technologically primitive compared to the cameras used today, the early employment of Outside Broadcast videotape equipment for drama (as opposed to live sporting events) saw a move towards a less projected performance style, linked in turn to the gradual introduction in English drama schools of Constantin Stanislavski, whose influence in the UK had been signified a decade earlier by the opening of East 15 and the Drama Centre London. While training for television at drama academies remained minimal, this period saw the beginnings of the birth of location realism, whose emergence in Survivors was praised by contemporary viewers.

Though still commonly referred to as the ‘early’ era of television, by 1953 it was possible for actors working in the medium to have acquired over a decade of experience. The Quatermass Experiment features a cast taken from a variety of backgrounds, with differing amounts of television experience. The ways in which this informs performance style are examined alongside the exigencies of live multi-camera television studio production, which required the continuity to which actors versed in theatre would be accustomed, while imposing severe technological limitations on freedom of movement and the need for physical and vocal projection. The extent to which the nascent studio realism of Quatermass was representative of its time is examined via Viewer Research Reports and contemporary press reviews, which already reveal a notable divergence of opinion with regard to what was acceptably verisimilitudinous in television acting.

While location realism would seem to predominate in the 2010s, live drama continues to be popular in the form of ‘one-off’ specials and ‘event’ television. Special anniversary episodes of soap operas EastEnders (BBC, 1985- ) and Coronation Street (ITV, 1960- ) in 2015, plus the 2005 re-mount of The Quatermass Experiment and the combination of theatre and live musical forms that comprised Frankenstein’s Wedding (BBC, 2011), suggest a continuing fascination on the part of both producers and audiences with the practices of live studio realism. In this closing chapter, modern-day practitioners discuss the possibility of multi-camera studio drama once again finding a place in the British television landscape outside of soap and sitcom, and what form the ideal template, balancing rehearsal and performance, might take in the future.