The annual MacTaggart Lecture is the centrepiece of the Edinburgh TV Festival and has, for over four decades, been an agenda-setting address that makes headlines and reverberates throughout the TV and wider industry.
For the first time, four of the previous MacTaggart speakers will appear together on stage to discuss the legacy of the lecture they gave, reflect upon each other’s messages, and talk about the present-day relevance of their words.
In 2015, Armando Iannucci argued for us all to ‘champion’ and ‘defend’ UK television both domestically and on the world stage. He will be joined by Dorothy Byrne whose 2019 lecture asked searching questions about TV, politics, and trust, David Olusoga, who in 2020 decried a lost generation of Black TV talent, and the most recent MacTaggart, Jack Thorne, who delivered an impassioned cry for the industry to do better in terms of treatment for disabled people.