it in their 2004 obituary of Sutton. Or in the words of the Royal Television Society, "...an era that championed new writers, young directors and challenging drama. The amazing diversity... helped to make it the golden age of broadcasting." However, despite this high esteem, much television drama of the era does not exist in the archives. The live output was generally not recorded at all, while programming from the 1960s was usually wiped for contractual reasons or perceived as being of no further use. This practice means some series are completely missing, such as United!, a football-based soap opera which ran from 1965 to 1967. Others have large gaps; Dixon of Dock Green has only about thirty of its more than four hundred episodes surviving from its twenty-year run. Changing attitudes in the 1980s and beyond Following Sutton's departure from the Head of Drama role in 1981 and his return to front-line producing duties in the Shakespeare cycle, his place as Head of Drama was taken by Graeme MacDonald. MacDonald had been Head of Serials and later Head of Series & Serials under Sutton, with the two departments having been merged in 1980, remaining so for most of the decade before separating again at the end of it. MacDonald maintained the status quo, and was only Head of Drama for a short time before he was promoted again to run a channel as Controller of BBC2. He was succeeded in turn by his own Head of Series & Serials, Jonathan Powell. Powell had been a producer of high-quality all-film drama serials such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and its sequel Smiley's People (1982), and he very much favoured this form of short-run, self-contained filmed serial over longer-running videotaped drama series. It was under his aegis, therefore, that the BBC produced some of its highest-quality examples of this type of drama, of particular note being 1985's Edge of Darkness by Troy Kennedy Martin, and the following year's Dennis Potter piece The Singing Detective, both regarded as seminal BBC drama productions. "A gripping, innovative six-part drama which fully deserves its cult status and many awards," was the British Film Institute's verdict on Edge of Darkness in 2000. Powell also oversaw the rise of more populist continuing drama series, however, encouraged by the ratings-chasing strategy of the then Controller of BBC1, his friend Michael Grade. It was during Powell's tenure that the