24 hours and American culture

Twenty-Four Hours (24 Hours) was a long-running late evening current affairs and documentary series on BBC 1. Launched in 1965 it focused on investigative journalism.

It brought together the production teams from two BBC television programmes: Gallery, a weekly political programme and Tonight the seminal early evening magazine programme. The editors were Tony Whitby from Tonight and Derrick Amoore from Gallery.

Its first presenter was Cliff Michelmore. With him in the studio were Kenneth Allsop, Michael Barratt and Robert McKenzie , a professor of politics at the LSE.

Its style was very different from other current affairs programmes at the time. Critical to the point of confrontational, Twenty-Four Hours [1] abandoned the orthodox reverential rules of engagement with politicians and took a tougher, more modern approach to interviews. It undoubtedly helped establish an approach to current affairs that can still be seen to this day and is in many ways