one-offs, an area Newman was especially keen on following the success of Armchair Theatre at ABC. Newman followed BBC Managing Director of Television Sir Huw Wheldon's famous edict to "make the good popular and the popular good," once stating: "damn the upper classes! They don't even own televisions!" While he did personally create populist family-entertainment-based dramas such as Adam Adamant Lives! and the science-fiction series Doctor Who, he also attempted to create drama that was socially relevant to those who were watching, initiating The Wednesday Play anthology strand to present contemporary dramas with a social background the resonance. Says Screenonline of this development, "It was from this artistic high of the 'golden age' of British TV drama (this 'agitational contemporaneity', as Newman coined it) that a new generation of TV playwrights emerged." The Wednesday Play proved to be a breeding ground for acclaimed and sometimes controversial writers such as Dennis Potter and directors such as Ken Loach, but sometimes Newman's desire to create biting, cutting drama could land the Corporation in trouble. This was particularly the case with 1965's The War Game by Peter Watkins, which depicted a fictional nuclear attack on the UK and the consequences of such, and was banned by the BBC under pressure from the government. It was eventually screened on television in 1985. Newman's reign saw a large number of popular and critically acclaimed dramas go out on the BBC, with Doctor Who, Z-Cars, Doctor Finlay's Casebook and the epic The Forsyte Saga picking up viewers while the likes of The Wednesday Play and Theatre 625 presented challenging ideas to the audience. Newman left the staff of the BBC once his five-year contract expired in 1967, departing for an unsuccessful attempt to break into the film industry. He was replaced by Head of Serials Shaun Sutton, initially on an acting basis combined with his existing role, but permanently from 1969. Sutton became the BBC's longest-serving Head of Drama, serving as such until 1981 and during the BBC's move from black and white into colour broadcasting. His era took in the whole of the 1970s, a time when the BBC enjoyed large viewing figures, positive audience reaction and generally high production values across a range of programmes, with drama enjoying a particularly well-received spell. The Wednesday Play transformed into the equally celebrated and longer running Play for Today in 1970; later in the decade the BBC