Newman's three-and-a-half-season involvement in "Armchair Theatre" concluded at the end of December 1962. He was succeeded by Leonard White, an early producer of "The Avengers". In "Armchair Theatre"'s last years Lloyd Shirley was the series producer. A holdover from the Newman era, Clive Exton's legal satire "The Trial of Dr Fancy" (13 September 1964), was among the first television plays on ITV to be suppressed. The deliberately absurd and savage play was a conscious break on Exton's part from the social realism of which he had grown tired. Although the Independent Television Authority (ITA), the regulator of the commercial channel at the time, had not objected to the production, Howard Thomas of ABC feared that it would give offence to viewers. The programme controller at ABC, Brian Tesler, explained the later change of heart: "We believe that the climate of opinion concerning black comedy has changed in the past two years. When the play was recorded we felt that many people might fail to appreciate the compassion which underlies the irony in Mr Exton's play."