You in Your Small Corner
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| "You in Your Small Corner" | |
|---|---|
| ITV Play of the Week episode | |
| Directed by | Claude Whatham |
| Written by | Barry Reckord |
| Original air date | 5 June 1962 |
| Running time | 90 minutes (including adverts) |
"You in Your Small Corner" is a British television play shown in the Play of the Week series on the Independent Television (ITV) on 5 June 1962.[1] It was formerly believed to include the first televised interracial kiss on British television[2][3] until the rediscovery of an earlier interracial kiss featuring the same male actor in an ITV broadcast of Hot Summer Night on 1 February 1959.[4][5][6][7]
The performance, broadcast live as part of the ITV Play of the Week series,[8] was commissioned and produced by Granada Television, one of ITV's regional contractors. It was an adaptation of a stage play of the same name by Jamaican-born Barry Reckord and was directed by Claude Whatham.[9]
The plot involves Dave, a young, intellectual, middle class Jamaican man (played by Lloyd Reckord; the writer's brother), who becomes involved with Terry, a white, working class woman (Elizabeth MacLennan) while living with his aunt in the Brixton district of London, en route to studying at Cambridge University.[3][8][9] A post-coital scene, showing the characters getting out of bed and getting dressed, was also featured.[8]
Unseen for over 50 years, a recording of the broadcast was rediscovered in the British Film Institute's archive in 2015.[3]
The screening predated a better known interracial kiss on British television, on Emergency Ward 10 in 1964, and the first US interracial television kiss, on Star Trek in 1968,[3] each of which feature black women and white men.[8]