ABSTRACT
Jack Rosenthal’s writing for television is seen to typify the “golden age” of British television drama, and his plays are viewed with nostalgia as an example of the era’s gentle social comedy. The narratives of Rosenthal’s best-known television plays centre on individual and familial rites of passage, revealing how psychic conflict takes on dramatic form in his writing, while the psyche’s formations are fleshed out in the form of individual characters. Indeed, “Victor” appears distant and self-absorbed, confusing his memories of “Eliot’s” childhood with “Lesley’s” and being distracted by the newspaper or television instead of participating in “Rita’s” planning for their son’s bar mitzvah. Jack Rosenthal’s concerns in these two plays, with generational and oedipal conflict, male adolescence, and the nature of good-enough parenting, are represented through visual and verbal comedy. The plays’ dialogue reveals Rosenthal’s uncanny ear not just for everyday speech, but specifically for the utterances of schoolchildren.
