The Newcomers at Watershed

About this event

Before John Boorman went to Hollywood to make the neo-noir cult classic Point Blank, he worked for BBC Bristol making documentaries and docudramas. This little-known period of his life and work is ripe for rediscovery. In 1964, Boorman helped launch the new BBC2 with a six-part series about Bristol. The Newcomers presents a unique view of the city in the early 1960s – a time of great social, cultural, political and economic change. This series now stands as a kind of filmic time capsule of the city, offering a window into its cultural and intellectual scene. It is centred around the lives of Alison Kennedy, who came to Bristol as a student, and Anthony Smith (who later took the pen name A.C.H. Smith), who came to work for the Bristol Post and then Western Daily Press. They met by chance, married, and Bristol became their home, with this documentary tracking the five and a half months leading up to the birth of their first child. Many familiar faces from Bristol at the time feature, including playwright Tom Stoppard (then a journalist) and Patrick Dromgoole, who would later become the dynamic head of HTV in the golden age of regional TV drama and arts coverage. But the real star is

Event details

Date

Saturday, 21 November 2026

Start time

12:00

Venue

Watershed

See venue website, Bristol,

Getting there & venue info

Good to know

More at Watershed

• First Born Second: Voices of the Children of the Windrush Era (15) at WatershedThu, 29 Oct 2026 · 12:00
• We, The Hated (15) + Q&A at WatershedMon, 2 Nov 2026 · 12:00
• Film London Jarman Award 2026 Screening and in-conversation with Sadia Pineda Hameed at WatershedWed, 4 Nov 2026 · 12:00
• Tracking Wolves and Bringing Back Lynx at WatershedWed, 25 Nov 2026 · 12:00

More in Bristol over the next two weeks