After the first season, which began on Channel 4’s opening night (2 November 1982) with the Central ITV production Walter (Stephen Frears), the strand moved from Wednesdays to Thursday evenings where it remained for most of the decade. There were two seasons a year (autumn and spring) until 1985; thereafter, the advent of Film on Four International (which featured some of the channel’s growing number of co-financed European projects) saw the domestic season settle in springtime, where it remained an annual fixture until the early 1990s, interspersed with more international co-productions and seasons of commissioned work from Alan Fountain’s Independent Film and Video Department. In the 1990s it reverted to autumn/winter and was re-scheduled briefly to Sundays (season 11, 1991) and later to Tuesdays (seasons 12 (1992) and 14 (1994)), though 9pm remained its standard transmission time.Although, as Senior Commissioning Editor David Rose admitted, season composition remained largely a matter of whatever was ready and available, the strand’s identity grew stronger from the mid-1980s, reflecting the international theatrical success of some of its early hits. This self-confidence is illustrated in the pre-publicity for the 1987 season in the press information pack:

In 1992 Channel 4’s first decade was marked by Film on Four with its ‘most extensive season ever with the television premieres of 16 feature films, many of them following enormous cinema success such as Mike Leigh’s award-winning Life is Sweet (which opens the season on 15 September); Riff-Raff, Ken Leach’s glorious saga of life on a building site which was voted European Film of the Year for 1991; two features written and directed by David Hare, Paris by Night and Strapless; and Stormy Monday, the Newcastle-based thriller which propelled Mike Figgis to Hollywood. Two of the films are receiving world premieres, Ross Cramer’s God on the Rocks and the latest comedy from writer Jack Rosenthal, Bye Bye Baby’.[2] By this time also, the importance of Film on Four to the channel’s identity was clear: ‘This November is not only the tenth birthday of Channel 4 but also one of its most distinctive and enduring creations, Film on Four, the first and now widely emulated initiative by British television to underwrite feature films for release in the cinema as well as for television’.[3]

In January 1993, the channel continued the anniversary celebrations with a repeat season titled ‘Film on Four’s Greatest Hits’. The press packs stated that ‘This season features 13 of the most popular and successful Film on Fours to have emerged over the past decade which proves how closely Channel 4 has been associated with the biggest recent successes of the British film industry’.[4] The season was representative of the diversity of successful films the channel funded, ranging from the obvious – such as My Beautiful Laundrette – to the more obscure, like Michael Radford’s Another Time, Another Place (1983). Also included were John Boorman’s Hope and Glory (1987), Stephen Frears’ Prick up your Ears (1987), Mike Newell’s biopic of Ruth Ellis, Dance with a Stranger (1985), and Terence Davies’ poetic period evocation Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988).

The autumn 1995 season of Film on Four was publicised in the press pack as being ‘the strongest Film on Four Premiere season in the 13-year history of the channel and the strand’, presumably because it included the most commercially successful British film of all time, Four Weddings and Funeral, and Howards End, which was well represented at the Academy Awards in 1993.[5] In the 1990s, Film on Four seasons tend to be organised around one or two big commercial hits – The Crying Game in 1994, Four Weddings and Howards End in 1995, The Madness of King George in 1996 and Trainspotting in 1997. But the types of film shown in the seasons remain largely the same in this decade – a mixture of low budget contemporary British social realism, art-house fare, European co-productions, and the period drama/literary adaptation.

By the mid-1990s, as the international theatrical profile of Channel 4 films grew ever more prominent the broadcast television strand worked in different way, despite the consistency in the mix. It served not simply to provide domestic viewers with the chance to see an eclectic range of new films on television, it drew of the prior success of its ‘tent-pole’ theatrical titles – flagged as ‘premières’ – to promote the channel brand itself. In launching the autumn 1997 season (17), the press pack trumpeted: ‘Film on Four celebrates its 15th anniversary with an exceptionally strong Première season, starting in late autumn with Danny Boyle’s hugely successful Trainspotting, and continuing into the new year with Secrets and Lies and Beautiful Thing’.[6]

When, in 1998, FilmFour Ltd became a quasi-independent producer and distributor, and the specialist film channel FilmFour was launched for subscribing cineastes, the fundamental tie between the Channel 4’s original film commissions and its broadcast strand was severed for good.

Laura Mayne and Justin Smith