Adapting Manchester: Granada Studios, Brideshead Revisited (1981) and the “Performance” of Place

Abstract

This article comes out of initial research conducted into The Corporate Archive of Granada Television, on loan to the University of Manchester since 2022. Granada Television, established by Sidney Bernstein in 1954, developed a reputation for innovative and highly acclaimed drama during its lifetime, operating out of the UK first purpose-built regional television studios until 2009. Unseen before now, Granada’s archive offers access to thousands of production and personnel files that provide unparalleled insight into the decisions and processes involved in all aspects of its’ television production and planning, Television historians have frequently lamented the dearth of archive materials relating to commercial and regional programmes and the impact of this in shaping existing studies of the production, text, and reception histories of television in Britain.

The article will focus on archive materials relating to the studio’s lavish and critically acclaimed adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1981), particularly those that relate to the often-hidden administrative, artistic and craft labour involved in finding and adapting locations in and around Manchester and the Northwest. The article will utilise documents in the archive which trace the production journeys of these settings. The use of settings in the North of England have often been understood in terms of how they underpin social realist notions of identity. However, this article will demonstrate instead how Granada’s studio practices and cultures were able to utilise locations in the Northwest to ‘perform’ place, thus demonstrating the medium’s capacity for a different kind of ‘place-making’ and underpinning the region’s often neglected contribution to innovation and creativity in broadcasting.