After Dark is a British late-night live television discussion programme that broadcast weekly on Channel 4 between 1987 and 1991, and which returned for specials between 1993 and 1997; it was later revived by the BBC for a single season broadcast on BBC Four in 2003. Roly Keating of the BBC described it as "one of the great television talk formats of all time". In 2010 the television trade magazine Broadcast wrote "After Dark defined the first 10 years of Channel 4, just as Big Brother did for the second" and in 2018 the programme was cited in an editorial in The Times as an example of high-quality television. Broadcast live and with no scheduled end time, the series, inspired by an Austrian programme called Club 2, was considered to be a groundbreaking reinvention of the discussion programme format. The programme was hosted by a variety of presenters, and each episode had around half a dozen guests, often including a member of the public. Programme synopsis The programme featured a different topic each week, with guests selected to provoke lively discussion; subject matter included "the treatment of children, of the mentally ill, of prisoners, and about class, cash and racial and sexual difference", as well as "matters of exceptional sensitivity to the then Thatcher government, such as state secrecy or the Troubles in Northern Ireland"; "places further afield...– Chile, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Nicaragua, South Africa and Russia – featured regularly" and "less apparently solemn subjects – sport, fashion, gambling and pop music – were in the mix from the start". A television historian wrote in 2011 that the programme "was not concerned to allow the revelation of celebrities' private lives or the promotion of their products, they were expected to converse seriously. Oliver Reed appeared drunk, groped Kate Millett and was removed; in contrast Bianca Jagger appeared in intellectual debate with several high-ranking American officials over the Contras in Nicaragua". Other memorable conversations included footballer Garth Crooks disputing the future of the game with politician Sir Rhodes Boyson and MP Teresa Gorman walking out of a discussion about unemployment with Billy Bragg. Other guests included "poets and pornographers, spies and solicitors, feminists and farmers, witches and whalers, judges and journalists". The Daily Telegraph said "the discussion was open-ended. It would stop when the guests decided the debate was over, not when TV executives said so". In 2014 an academic