In 1960 Don Taylor joined the BBC as one of its least experienced and most ambitious directors of television drama. With working-class roots, and Oxford education and a passion for poetry, he found himself an initiate of an institution offering almost complete freedom under the sophisticated and kindly eye of Michael Barry. He seized the chance to work with a number of radical working-class writers, significant among them the socialist David Mercer, for whom he directed the trilogy "The Generations". Mercer was one of the first writers to realize the difference between plays for the stage and for television and together they created some of the most vital television drama of the period. In the final section, Taylor outlines his aesthetics, arguing against recent developments in television drama in favour of the use of film.