The Family, Paul Watson, 1974
12 x 30’ – First “fly on the wall” documentary serial.
Press Critics Prize – National Archive.
A ‘fly on the wall’ look at the working-class Wilkins family from Reading.
Modelled on the 13-part observational series, An American Family (US, d. Craig Gilbert, 1972), producer Paul Watson’s 12-part The Family (BBC, 1974) is credited with creating the concept of the ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentary in Britain. Regardless, Watson’s cinema verité-style, warts-and-all portrait of the working-class Wilkins family certainly popularised an ‘observational’ style still seen as the defining characteristic of British documentary some twenty-five years later.Read More »