Fable (TV play)

Fable
Written by	John Hopkins
Directed by	Christopher Morahan
Starring	Ronald Lacey, Eileen Atkins, Thomas Baptiste, Barbara Assoon
Narrated by	Keith Barron
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
Production
Producer(s)	James MacTaggart
Running time	75 minutes
Release
Original network	BBC1
Original release	27 January 1965

Fable is a British television play, shown on 27 January 1965 as an episode of The Wednesday Play series on BBC 1. Written by John Hopkins, the play is set in a parallel totalitarian Britain where those in authority are black people, and white people are their social underdogs - a reversal of the situation in contemporary apartheid South Africa.

It was directed by Christopher Morahan and produced by James MacTaggart.

Although Hopkins had anti-racist intentions in writing the play, Audience Research at the time of the original broadcast suggested that, rather than eliciting compassion from whites in the audience, they saw the role reversal as threatening.Carmen Munroe has said that for the actors the production was a frightening experience "because suddenly you were being asked to perform the sorts of acts that were performed against you in real life". The programme's original screening, scheduled for 20 January 1965, was postponed by the BBC for one week "to avoid accentuating the colour issue" during the Leyton by-election to be held on 21 January. In an era when negative responses to immigration were very high, some viewers interpreted the play in the opposite way to the one intended by Hopkins and his colleagues.

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