| "In Two Minds" | |
|---|---|
| The Wednesday Play episode | |
 Opening title | |
| Episode no. | Season 6 Episode 17 |
| Directed by | Ken Loach |
| Written by | David Mercer |
| Produced by | Tony Garnett |
| Original air date | 1 March 1967 |
"In Two Minds" is a television play by David Mercer commissioned for The Wednesday Play (BBC 1) anthology drama series. First transmitted on 1 March 1967, it was directed by Ken Loach and produced by Tony Garnett and features Anna Cropper in the lead role.
The play depicts the experiences of Kate Winter (Cropper), a young woman with schizophrenia, and her experiences with the medical professionals who attempt to care for her in a mental hospital. She is shown being given Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as a clinical treatment and being discussed at a lecture for medical students. [1]
In Two Minds was influenced by the ideas of R. D. Laing expressed in his co-authored book, Sanity and Madness in the Family. [2] Attempting to demonstrate that schizophrenia lacks an organic basis in the brain, Laing believed that the family had the potential to make people mentally ill. Mercer and producer Tony Garnett were introduced to Laing and his colleague David Cooper, by the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan; [3] Laing and Cooper served as official consultants on the project. [4]
It is the earliest of Loach's television works to be shot entirely on location, without any use of the television studio. Loach's previous Wednesday Play, Cathy Come Home , contains five brief scenes which were shot electronically. [5] By the time In Two Minds was in production, an agreement had been reached between Equity, the actors' union, and the BBC to allow the shooting of drama entirely on film in the conventional manner. [6]
The play gained mixed response from psychiatrists at the time of its first broadcast, with some arguing that Kate is depressed and hysterical rather than truly schizophrenic. [2]
In his review for The Listener , the novelist Anthony Burgess felt the play had not found a resolution for Kate's problems and found the form of the play problematic. Despite accusing the whole Wednesday Play series as being 'anti-art,' he wrote that In Two Minds "was better than art because it was so real". [7] Conversely, within the BBC Drama department, the play had led to intense discussions between producer Tony Garnett and department head Sydney Newman over its status as drama and its veracity. [7] [8] Television critic Anthony Hayward wrote that Cropper displayed "a rollercoaster of emotions, from breaking down on pondering her dilemma to giving a beaming smile, eyes sparkling, while recalling an ex-boyfriend. At times, she talks as if 'Kate' is another person." [9]
In Two Minds won the Writers' Guild Award for the Best Television Play of 1967. [9] It is included in the Ken Loach at the BBC 6 DVD box set.
Family Life (1971), again directed by Loach and with a screenplay by Mercer, is a feature film remake of this television play. [10]
Ronald David Laing, usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness—in particular, psychosis and schizophrenia. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of psychopathological phenomena were influenced by his study of existential philosophy and ran counter to the chemical and electroshock methods that had become psychiatric orthodoxy. Laing took the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of personal experience rather than simply as symptoms of mental illness. Though associated in the public mind with the anti-psychiatry movement, he rejected the label. Laing regarded schizophrenia as the normal psychological adjustment to a dysfunctional social context, although later in life he revised his views.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 for six seasons from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually original works written for television, although dramatic adaptations of fiction also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
"Cathy Come Home" is a 1966 BBC television play about homelessness. It was written by Jeremy Sandford, produced by Tony Garnett and directed by Ken Loach. A 1998 Radio Times readers' poll voted it the "best single television drama" and a 2000 industry poll rated it as the second-best British television programme ever made. Filmed in a gritty, realistic drama documentary style, it was first broadcast on 16 November 1966 on BBC1. The play was shown in the BBC's The Wednesday Play anthology strand, which often tackled social issues.
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Anna Cropper was an English stage and television actress.
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Family Life is a 1971 British drama film directed by Ken Loach from a screenplay by David Mercer. It is a remake of In Two Minds, an episode of the BBC's Wednesday Play series first transmitted by the BBC in March 1967, which was also written by Mercer and directed by Loach.
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"The Big Flame" is a 1969 BBC television play by socialist playwright Jim Allen, produced by Tony Garnett and directed by Ken Loach. The play tells the story of 10,000 dockworkers occupying the Liverpool docks in a "work-in". Filmed in a gritty, realistic drama documentary style, it was first broadcast on 19 February 1969 on BBC1, at a time when unemployment was rising in Britain. The play was shown in the BBC's The Wednesday Play anthology strand, which was noted for tackling social issues.
"Up the Junction" is an episode of the BBC anthology drama series The Wednesday Play directed by Ken Loach and produced by James MacTaggart. It was first broadcast on 3 November 1965 on BBC 1. The play was adapted by Nell Dunn and (uncredited) Ken Loach from Dunn's short story collection of the same name. It tells the stories of three young women living in North Battersea and Clapham and, to a lesser degree, their boyfriends.
Kenneth Charles Loach is a British film director and screenwriter. His socially critical directing style and socialism are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as poverty, homelessness, and labour rights.
"The End of Arthur's Marriage" is a television satirical musical drama that was an episode in The Wednesday Play series first broadcast on 17 November 1965. It was an early work of director Ken Loach, and the script was written by poet Christopher Logue. It is unusual in Loach's catalogue for the surrealism, and the director later said that he believed himself to have been "the wrong man for the job". Main actor Ken Jones had previously worked with Loach on Wear a Very Big Hat and 3 Clear Sundays and later featured in the controversial 1969 play The Big Flame.
Topsy Jane was a British actress of the 1960s. She was in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) and was cast as Liz in the 1963 film Billy Liar but was forced to pull out owing to mental health issues.
