Monitor (TV series)
Encyclopedia
Monitor was a BBC arts programme that was launched on 1 September 1958 and ran until 1965.

Huw Wheldon
Huw Wheldon
Sir Huw Pyrs Wheldon OBE MC was a BBC broadcaster and executive.Wheldon was born in Prestatyn, Wales and educated at Friars School, Bangor. His father, Sir Wynn Wheldon, was a prominent educationalist, who had been awarded the DSO for gallantry in the First World War...

 was the first editor from 1958 to 1964. He was also the principal interviewer and anchor. Wheldon set about moulding a team of talents, including John Schlesinger
John Schlesinger
John Richard Schlesinger, CBE was an English film and stage director and actor.-Early life:Schlesinger was born in London into a middle-class Jewish family, the son of Winifred Henrietta and Bernard Edward Schlesinger, a physician...

, Ken Russell
Ken Russell
Henry Kenneth Alfred "Ken" Russell was an English film director, known for his pioneering work in television and film and for his flamboyant and controversial style. He attracted criticism as being obsessed with sexuality and the church...

, Patrick Garland
Patrick Garland
thumb|right|200pxPatrick Garland is a British actor, writer, and director.Garland started Poetry International in 1963 with Ted Hughes and Charles Osborne. He was a director and producer for the BBC's Music and Arts Department , and worked on its Monitor series...

, David Jones
David Jones (director)
David Hugh Jones was a British stage, television, and film director.-Personal history:Jones was born in Poole, Dorset, the son of John David Jones and his wife Gwendolen Agnes Langworthy...

, Humphrey Burton
Humphrey Burton
Humphrey Burton, CBE is a British classical music presenter, broadcaster, director, producer, and biographer of musicians....

, John Berger
John Berger
John Peter Berger is an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text.-Education:Born in Hackney, London, England, Berger was...

, Peter Newington, Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg FRSL FRTS FBA, FRS FRSA is an English broadcaster and author best known for his work with the BBC and for presenting the The South Bank Show...

, Nancy Thomas and Alan Tyrer. Monitor ranged in subject over all the arts.

The hundredth show was a film directed by Ken Russell and written by Wheldon, the celebrated Elgar
Elgar (film)
Elgar is a drama documentary made in 1962 by the British director Ken Russell. Made for BBC Television's long-running Monitor programme, it dramatised in vigorous style the life of the archetypically English composer Edward Elgar....

. The Elgar film was innovative because it was the first time that an arts programme showed one long film about an artistic figure instead of short items, and also it was the first time that re-enactments were used. Russell however still met resistance from Wheldon in allowing actors to play the subjects of his films. The Elgar film includes sequences of the young composer riding his bicycle on the Malvern Hills accompanied by Elgar's Introduction & Allegro for Strings. Russell has said that he had a particular empathy with Elgar's music because, like the composer, he is a Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

.

Monitor was ground-breaking because it featured films, sometimes just one full-length item, using actors to re-enact the subjects' lives. Prior to this, only photos or location shots had been used in programmes.

Wheldon's Monitor lasted until he had "interviewed everyone I am interested in interviewing", and he was succeeded by Jonathan Miller
Jonathan Miller
Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE is a British theatre and opera director, author, physician, television presenter, humorist and sculptor. Trained as a physician in the late 1950s, he first came to prominence in the 1960s with his role in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with fellow writers and...

 for the series' last season.

The theme tune was "Marcia" from Serenade for String Orchestra (Op. 11,1937) by Dag Wirén
Dag Wirén
Dag Ivar Wirén was a Swedish composer.-Life and career:Wirén was born at Striberg near Nora. His father had a roller blind factory, and there were various musical activities in the family home; he took piano lessons, and was a student at the Karolinska school in Örebro, and played the bass drum...

. The book Monitor: An Anthology, edited by Huw Wheldon, was published by Macdonald in 1962.

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