Television – Page 217 – What Was Pebble Mill?

‘United’, a soap from Gosta Green – Dave Kirkwood

This photo from the 1960s, shows a group of technical operators ‘relaxing’ on the set
of another soap produced at Gosta Green. This was called ‘United’ and was about life in a fictional football club. It was a total flop and hardly mentioned in BBC drama history at all.

Gosta Green (Gosta Green was the BBC studio in Birmingham before the building of Pebble Mill) did a lot of drama, but also general work – Percy Thrower’s gardening programmes and music items for the fledgling immigrants’ programmes among them.

Dave Kirkwood

‘The Golden Oldie Picture Show’ – Siobhan Maher Kennedy

‘The Golden Oldie Picture Show’ was my first and last directing experience. John King was great, he gave me my first chance at directing for this show. I was 20 yrs old and I presented a storyboard idea to one of the Beatles songs, ‘Help!’, and shot on location in my home town of Liverpool. The idea was to show Liverpool in a positive light. IRONY: on the last day of the shoot the camera car was broken into by Liverpool scallywags and the equipment and film reels were stolen. That kind of ended the directing thing for me! It was just too stressful! I had a great little movie somewhere in those film cans.

It was sad at the time. I was so young and ambitious. Everyone worked so hard and we had beautiful weather. We went on the radio and appealed to return the film but no luck. We did re- shoot but the weather was against us and it looked so miserable. It was broadcast I think. I can’t remember the storyline but went everywhere! All my favorite sights. I had a cameraman who went on to be really famous ,Chris …I can’t remember!

Siobhan Maher Kennedy

Dave Lee Travis recording Christmas edition

‘Master of the Marionettes’ – John Greening

These photos are from the 1989 ‘Play on One’ drama: ‘Master of the Marionettes’, produced by Michael Wearing at Pebble Mill. It was written by Guy Hibbert, directed by Pedr James, with Hilary Salmon the script editor.

The Radio Times billing read: “Teddy Rose’s passion is security – selling alarm systems to prosperous yet fearful suburban homes, one of which he and his family inhabit with conspicuous success. Then one Saturday morning a violent street encounter starts a chain of events which calls into question his every assumption and changes his life for good.”

The play starred Kenneth Cranham, as Teddy; Kenneth Colley as Tennyson; Carol Drinkwater as Maggy; John Duttine as Tim; and David Bradley as Harry.

The first photo includes, left to right: Pedr James (director), Terry Ford (props), John Greening (1^st AD), Paul Woolston (camera).

The second photo includes, left to right: (partially hidden) Peter Potter (props), (partially hidden) Terry Ford (Props) Gareth Williams (AFM), John Greening (1^st AD), Pedr James (director).

Thanks to John Greening for making the photos available.

Golden Oldie Picture Show, Minehead – photos from Gail Herbert

Photos by Gail Herbert, no reproduction without permission.

These photos were taken in 1986 on a location shot of the ‘Golden Oldie Picture Show’ in Minehead, Somerset. The camera, on a track and dolly can be seen on the first photo towards the right of shot.

The ‘Golden Oldie Picture Show’, was presented by Radio 1 D.J., Dave Lee Travis. The show was made up of specially shot videos for hit singles which pre-dated the era of music videos. Individual directors would submit ideas for films for individual tracks. It was produced at BBC Pebble Mill; the executive producer was John King.

Gail Herbert was the production assistant on the series.

Please add a comment if you know what hit this video was made for.

‘Fellow Traveller’ – interview with writer, Michael Eaton

This interview with writer, Michael Eaton, was recorded in spring 2011 at an archive screening event of the 1991 drama, ‘Fellow Traveller’. It was the only feature film release from Pebble Mill, and was a co-production with HBO. Michael Wearing was the producer, and Philip Saville the director. It starred Imogen Stubbs, Ron Silver, Hart Bochner, and Daniel J Travanti. The story covered the blacklisted American writers in the McCarthy era. Many of these writers fled abroad, and some ended up working on British television shows like ITV’s ‘Robin Hood’.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

‘Fellow Traveller’ – Michael Eaton from pebblemill on Vimeo.