After Dark (TV programme)

"Money", 13 August 1988

From late April in 1987, Channel 4 screened a Nighttime strand, a mixture of films and discussion programmes that ran until 3am on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.[7] Channel 4 launched After Dark in an open-ended format broadcast on Friday nights (later Saturday nights), as an original piece of programming that would be inexpensive to produce. There was no 'chair', simply a 'host', and the discussion took place around a coffee table in a darkened studio. Due to its late-night scheduling the series was dubbed After Closing Time by the BBC1 comedy series Alas Smith and Jones.[8]

Jeremy Isaacs, the founding Chief Executive of Channel 4, said that the programme allowed him to realise one of his longest-held ambitions: "When I first started in television at Granada... Sidney Bernstein said to me that the worst words ever uttered on TV were, I'm sorry, that's all we have time for. Especially since they were always uttered just as someone was about to say something really interesting." After Dark would only end when its guests had nothing more to say.[9]

The series was made by production company Open Media. The series editor, Sebastian Cody, talking about the programme in an interview in 2003, said that "Reality TV is artificial. After Dark is real in the sense that what you see is what you get, which isn't the case with something that's been edited to give the illusion of being real. Other shows wind people up with booze beforehand, then when they're actually on the programme they give them glasses of water. We give our guests nothing until they arrive on set and then they can drink orange juice, or have a bottle of wine. And we let them go to the loo."[10]

The media academic David Lee described the programme:

A topical talk show format that allowed quite unique forms of political and personal discussion evolve and take place on British television ... After Dark was created as a counterpoint to the dominant (and rather conventional) talk show ecology of the time, which included the 'twin pillars' of broadcasting talk, Parkinson and Question Time ... Participants were encouraged to discuss a topic intensively but also exhaustively, until there was no more to say. It also encouraged a more reflective kind of discussion, with guests often modifying their original position as a result of the interactions on the show ... The format encouraged dissent, controversy and also reflective frankness ... Its lack of a determined end point was critical, ensuring an open-ended, somewhat indeterminate quality to proceedings ... Participants were often positioned as outside of the mainstream political and social agenda, and the programme relished its outsider status.[11]

In August 1991, Channel 4 announced the end of the series, an action which became the subject of an editorial in The Times.[12]

The show ended in 1991 but a number of one-off specials were broadcast from 1993 and 1997.

In 2003, it was revived by the BBC for a single season, broadcast on BBC Four.

In October 2007, as part of its 25th anniversary celebrations, Channel 4 repeated the first ever After Dark on the More4 channel.[13]

In 1987, The Guardian wrote: "After Dark, the closest Britain gets to an unstructured talk show, is already finding that the more serious the chat, the smaller the audience ... Channel 4's market research executive Sue Clench ... says that around three million saw some of After Dark in its first slot."[14]

The audience survey conducted later by Channel 4 reported that After Dark was watched by 13% of all adults, rising to what the research company referred to as a "staggering figure" of 28% amongst young men.[15] One viewer is quoted in the academic study Talk on Television as follows:

After Dark is far better because it allows people to go over all sorts of stages in a discussion and they are not shut off. Well I suppose they are on for three or four hours, but I think that is a really good idea, that you can really work everything out for yourself.[16]

The programme is still fondly remembered by viewers. For example, in 2016, Gail Walker, the editor of the Belfast Telegraph, recalled After Dark programmes about nuclear issues[17] and in 2020 the Cardiff-based writer Joe Morgan wrote a tribute A Sword in the Darkness, saying the show "broke all existing rules and conventions. There has been nothing like it ever since".[18] In 2022 the Liberal Democrat Jonathan Calder published Remembering After Dark, the best TV discussion programme ever.[19]

"Abortion - Whose Choice?", 1 November 1997

After Dark earned critical praise, from the Socialist Worker ("my favourite chat show") and The Guardian ("one of the most inspired and effective uses of airtime yet devised"), and The Daily Telegraph ("A shining example of late-night television"), to more media focussed journals such as the BFI's Sight & Sound ("often made The Late Show look like the Daily Mirror") and the American publication Variety in its review of the year ("compulsive for late-night viewers").[5] The Listener magazine called it "The programme in which you can see the people think".[20]

In 2012, on the 30th anniversary of Channel 4, After Dark featured in a number of tributes in British newspapers.[21]

Author James Rusbridger wrote in The Listener magazine: "When I appeared on a Channel 4 After Dark programme recently my postman, milkman and more than two dozen strangers stopped me in the street and said how much they'd enjoyed it and quoted verbatim extracts from the discussion."[22]

In 2021 author David Hebditch wrote an article about appearing on After Dark to discuss pornography. It is available here.

Journalist Peter Hillmore described appearing on After Dark:

In the age of the glib, packaged sound-bite, a discussion programme that is long and open-ended, lasting as long as the talk is remotely interesting, occasionally longer, seems a necessity. For all its faults, as when Oliver Reed appeared tired and emotional as a newt, the programme fulfilled its purpose and filled a gap. I appeared on it once. It was a strange feeling to realise that if you had failed to make your point properly, you had more time a short while later. So Channel 4's decision to axe it seems incomprehensible and wrong ... In his book on the channel, its founder Jeremy Isaacs gave a long list of programmes that he felt summed up its ethos. With the ending of After Dark, not a single programme from the list remains. That is not a coincidence.[23]