This article examines the ways in which adult education series For the Love of Albert (1977) represents and advises people living on benefits by hybridising different factual and fictional forms and embracing the potential of the television studio. Interweaving genres – including light entertainment, Ken Campbell Road Show routines, plays by Alan Plater and audience discussion formats – the programme's televisuality and theatricality construct a potential community space. The programme's mixed modes provide a platform for testimony and interaction that helps it to challenge discourses on welfare and the knowledge claims of factual modes, opening up issues in documentary hybridisation.
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