Even BBC staff showed concern over the strength of the material. During pre-production designer Barry Learoyd wrote to Micheal Barry stating : " This really is none of my business, but I'm working on 1984 and I feel so strongly about it that I wonder if others will not do the same. Every time I refer to the script I feel it should not be put on." Despite the hue and cry Micheal Barry decided to go ahead with the planned second broadcast without altering or making any cuts to the script. Unsurprisingly the viewing audience was even higher, attracting the largest number of ratings since The Queen's Coronation. Cartier defended the tone of the show in an interview with The Daily Express : "Our job was to shake, and if we have succeeded shaking half the nation then we have done the job we set out to do. It was right and wise to put this terrible vision before the largest possible audience - as a warning against totalitarianism in all its forms."

Reviewing the production on Monday 13th December The Daily Telegraph gave the production an favorable review: "The final scenes, depicting the brain washing of a diversionist by torture, both physical and psychological, achieved an almost unbearable reality. As the revolutionary Winston Smith, who longs for the freedom of the forgotten past and commits the crime of love, Peter Cushing gave a remarkable performance, being epsecially convincing in his prtrayal of fear." Elsewhere the Evening Standard as "A landmark in the at-present short history of television drama." Letters to the BBC itself told a different story with many of the correspondence condemning and angry in tone: "Unspeakably putrid. I hope you will not again pollute the air with similiar muck."

Special effects for the programme were provided by the pioneering BBC effects men Bernard Wilkie and Jack Kine who had previously worked on The Quatermass Experiment and would go on to establish the BBC Visual Effects Department as televised drama began to demand more work of this nature. Amongst their responsibilities was the rats used during the torture of Winston in Room 101. They initially used brown rats, but these went to sleep under the studio lights. Two white rats were purchased from a pet shop which where made up with cocoa powder and enticed to rush towards Winston's face with the aid of smeared fruit juices. The play recieved a third broadcast in July 1977 as part of BBC Two's celebration of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. In 1984 there was a screening at the National Film Theatre together with the 1954 film version. In 1986 during the celebrations to mark fifty years of television the BBC was refused permission to rescreen the production by Virgin Films who had produced an updated film version starring John Hurt and feared the screening may effect profits. The final broadcast of the production was on July 1st 1994 to mark the death of Rudolph Cartier.

Copyright on George Orwell's work was meant to have expired in 2000 leaving the BBC free to transmit or release on video or DVD their outstanding 1954 production. However a ruling by the EU in 1993 extended copyright after death to seventy years which would mean the copyright to Orwell's book will be free again in about 2020.

The final word that sums up the power of this production is left to Cartier: "When Orwell's novel was made into a film nearly a year later, all the directorial skill of Michael Anderson could not recapture the impact of the TV transmission. I had to admit he had to contend with an 'Americanized' script and cast, but the main reason was that the subject could only frighten spectators who were 'conditioned' to experience fear by sitting alone in darkness, and unable to find help or comfort by looking around the mass audience in a modern cinema - where they would feel safe from Big Brother. It was decidely different in the TV viewer's own home, where cold eyes stared from the small screen straight at him, casting into the viewers' heart the same chill that the characters in the play experienced whenever they heard Big Brother's voice coming from their 'watching' TV screens."

Text © Andrew Screen, 2003.