Concept and creative process
Titles for ‘The Year of the Sex Olympics’, an episode of ‘Theatre 625’, a drama anthology series transmitted on BBC Two from 1964 to 1968. It was a play written by the acclaimed writer Nigel Kneale (‘Quatermass’, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’) and set in a world dominated and controlled by TV. For the tiny minority who wanted no part of this TV world there was only one way out: become a programme themselves. The play has been credited with foreseeing the ultimate rise and popularity of reality TV, such as ‘Big Brother’ and ‘Love Island’. The title captions were filmed on a rostrum camera to a soundtrack of trumpet fanfares, replacing the five Olympic rings with matching gender symbols and bold title captions, prefaced by the warning caption: “sooner than you think …”.