Technological advances brought new possibilities - lighter, more maneuverable, electronic cameras reduced the reliance on film for outside work. Electronic editing became less of a chore, enabling programmes to become technically and artistically more polished. Video recorders became, if not exactly portable, then certainly transportable. (Early 2" quad machines had to be run with water cooling apparatus to stop them bursting into flames, according to some hoary old technicians!). The boffins introduced teletext (text data carried in the 'blanking' pulse of the video signal), stereo TV, and a host of other advancements.
And the programmes weren't bad either.
A feast of drama
The seventies brought some classics of TV drama. Middle brow drama series such as Upstairs Downstairs, The Waltons and All Creatures Great and Small became long lasting hits around the world. All Creatures also started a tourist tradition in Britain which has turned some unlikely parts of the countryside into attractions. It wasn't long before the real-life, wild, hill country featured in the adventures of the Yorkshire vets became a star in its own right. Tours of "Herriot country" (named after the series' hero) became the staple diet of coach tours in the north of England. It wasn't long before we saw "Lovejoy country" (rural East Anglia was the home of loveable Antiques-dealing rogue Lovejoy), while "Poldark country" was in Cornwall - it was no small mercy that "Fawlty Towers country" didn't feature trips round all the bad hotels in Torquay.
Television also brought challenging drama to our screens in the seventies. The late Quentin Crisp was the unlikely hero of The Naked Civil Servant, probably the first series to truthfully examine the plight of some homosexual men. The BBC's I Claudius, another world-wide hit, was a 13-part adaptation of Robert Graves' novel about one of the less sane areas of world history.
Lord Lew Grade was the unlikely maker of the movie Jesus of Nazareth, which emptied churches around the world and even gained a plug from the Pope ("Go Home and watch the rest of 'Jesus of Nazareth'", he's alleged to have said on Easter Day 1977). Washington Behind Closed Doors was based on the corruption of the Nixon regime and, although it was a fictionalization of John Erlichman's book The Company, Washington proved to have plenty in common with real life when we saw David Frost interview Nixon himself in the same year, 1977. Perhaps the series that had the most impact on world-wide consciousness was Holocaust, the story of a Jewish family in Nazi Germany. Holocaust featured a then-fairly unknown actress called Meryl Streep. While critics harped on about cheesy scripting, corny music and sanitized horrors, viewers were moved to tears. Critic Clive James (while acknowledging the hack writing and occasional dips into melodrama) wrote, "People who thought they knew a lot about the death camps might have been unmoved by Holocaust, but people who knew little were often moved to tears. Meryl Streep is a greatly gifted artist who will spend her life doing famous things, but I doubt she will ever do anything more important."
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