What about the aesthetics, not only re aspect ratio (cf Venicelion’s later entry) but things such as camera distance? Is the tendency for TV to use more close-up in contrast to cinema’s more frequent use of medium and long shot breaking down? How far has the whole ‘convergence’ thing come?

There is still an important distinction though. I’ll have to watch the second episode again as we watched it after a few glasses of wine and I and my partner conked out for various stretches, something unlikely to happen in the cinema!

I agree that it seems odd, but don’t forget that the last Ken Loach film, It’s a Free World, was not released in UK cinemas but went out on Channel 4 instead (but became one of only three UK films to have box office success in France in 2007/8).

The truth is that the three films were seen by many more people on Channel 4 than would have seen the films in cinemas and the broadcasts got more coverage than the film releases would have managed. I looked up the BARB figures and they were 3.07 million for 1974 (No4 programme for Channel 4), dropping to 1.99 million for 1980 and back up to 2.05 for 1983. I guess that means that the hype worked to draw people in, but a third of the audience found it too hard to follow or too brutal. Still, 2 million is very encouraging – UK films struggle to get 100,000 punters into cinemas. It’s an indictment of UK film culture.