At Home on Safari: Colonial Spectacle, Domestic Space and 1950s Television

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which television registered, and broadcast, colonial discourse in the specific context of Kenya and Britain in the 1950s. Focusing on the wildlife programming of the husband and wife team Armand and Michaela Denis as its case study, an examination of programmes such as Filming in Africa (BBC, 1955) and On Safari (BBC, 1957–65) is offered, looking at the ways in which these programmes negotiated the transition between colonial spectacle and a cosy, domestic address for British television. The article will explore what these programmes reveal about Britain's ‘imagined Kenya’ in the final years of colonial rule, and argue that it is possible to trace a colonial lament in this form of popular entertainment on the cusp of the decolonisation of Kenya. These programmes are thus interesting as examples of colonial television, that is, domestic television broadcasting made outside the UK by programme-makers who present themselves as being simultaneously ‘at home’ and ‘abroad’ on the BBC. Importantly, the programmes aimed to bridge a perceived gap between the ‘outside world’ of colonised ‘wild’ space and the ‘inside world’ of television's interior, domestic spaces. A history of the Denises’ programmes is reconstructed by intertwining archival research into scripts, set designs, publicity materials and production notes with analyses of the programmes themselves.