John Caughie skrev i boken (som analyserer britisk TV fra 1960- til 1990-årene) at det var Newmans ikke-teatralske natur som var hans største bidrag til sjangeren i Storbritannia: «Newman's insistence that the series would use only original material written for television made a decisive moment in the history of British television drama, and both he and Ted Kotcheff, the ambitious young director he brought with him from Canada, belonged to a television culture which had no particular reverence for the classics of theatre and literature».