Rock & Roll

1995 · documentary · music · PBS

Rock & Roll (U.S. title) or Dancing in the Street: a Rock and Roll History (U.K. title) is a 10-part American-British television documentary series about the history of rock and roll music produced by the BBC and WGBH , and which screened in 1995 on PBS in the United States and on BBC Two in the United Kingdom during 1996. Elizabeth Deane and Hugh Thomson were executive producer and series producer, respectively, for both the PBS and BBC versions. However different narrators were used for the two countries, with Liev Schreiber narrating for a US audience and Seán Barrett used in the UK. The music critic Robert Palmer was chief consultant on the series, [2] which received a Peabody Award . [3] On PBS, funding was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting , PBS viewers, Experience Music Project (five years prior to opening), the National Endowment for the Arts , RadioShack (promoting its then-sponsorship of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum ) and Boston Beer Company . Most of the titles used for the PBS "Rock & Roll" episodes differed from those given for the BBC's later "Dancing in the Street" versions. Coincidentally, in the same year as "Rock & Roll" first screened, another 10-part documentary miniseries, " The History of Rock 'n' Roll ", was produced for US television by Andrew Solt and Quincy Jones, which also covered the background of rock music.