The final live teleplay from BBC2’s Thirty-Minute Theatre (1965-73) was called The News-Benders aired in 1968. With its themes of extreme surveillance and television as tools to control the masses, this drama echoes Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four refers to a ‘Ministry of Morality’, whose name recalls Orwell’s ministries of Truth, Love and Plenty. Whereas Orwell’s novel depicts an overtly oppressed Britain, The News-Benders suggests that in 1968 similar control could be effected invisibly via manipulation of the media.
Read More: BBC Drama Predicted in 1968 Microchipping and World Government Control of All Information
