Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.
No reviews, yet!
None.
None.
The Bates sadly care for their severely disabled daughter Pattie. Martin arrives at their door claiming to be her college friend. He charms them into accepting him as a lodger and carer for Pattie. But Martin is not all he seems.
A man tries to break the world's record for nonstop piano playing
A couple look for the proper school, not for their children but for themselves.
""The Lie"" refers to the 8-year marriage of a couple who are constantly hurting each other.
A man claiming to be an angel enters the household of a bored housewife and teaches the family a few lessons.
A man is made redundant but can't bring himself to let anyone know, plunging into a web of deceit as he keeps up the charade he is still in work.
A man has a mid-life crisis in his brother's pub where sees life as a game show
No summary.
A TV host and his architect brother attend their father's funeral
A woman living in a country cottage thinks that someone is trying to get her.
A petty thief and social misfit finagles his way into a church congregation
A civil servant working abroad revisits his old school
No summary.
No summary.
An old couple refuse to move when they find out that they can't take their piano with them
No summary.
A man who attempted suicide by jumping out a window is saved only to live in a coma, in which he has fantasies about his relatives and nightmare creatures.
Charges that the Rev 'Red' Reddick is exploiting his youth club members leads to an explosive confrontation.
An odd menage a trois results when a woman and her lover are visited by her long-lost husband
When an injured baby arrives at the hospital, a social worker looks for the parents
A trilogy of plays--A Time to Keep, The Whaler's Return, and Celia--exploring the life of the islanders in the past and present
The story of the Pilkington glass workers strike of 1970
A succesful novelist Edith lives with her husband and his friend, but she decides to ask the friend to leave.
The story of a disintegrating marriage told through family photos
No summary.
A British aristocrat turned Russian spy is visited in Moscow by Western journalists
Edna, the Inebriate Woman is a British television drama written by Jeremy Sandford which was transmitted by the BBC as part of the Play for Today series on 21 October 1971. Directed by Ted Kotcheff, Irene Shubik produced it. The play deals with an elderly woman, Edna, who wanders through life in an alcoholic haze without a home, a job or any money. A rambling, pathetic yet defiant woman, Edna sleeps rough and begs for food and shelter and the drama follows her progress as she moves from hostel to hostel, going to a psychiatric ward and then prison along the way. Jeremy Sandford, who had previously written Cathy Come Home, researched the play by living rough himself for two weeks. A great deal of the dialogue and the incidents in the play come from the book, 'Down and Out in Britain' published by Jeremy Sandford in 1971; although the majority of the speakers in the book are male, Jeremy Sandford puts much of their speech into the mouth of the female character. The film features the only notable acting role of British actor Vivian MacKerrell, the real-life inspiration for the character Withnail in Withnail and I. At the 1972 British Academy Television Awards, the play won the Best Drama Production category, with Patricia Hayes receiving the award for Best Actress.
No summary.
The wife of a headmaster discovers that he has been physically abusing his students
No summary.
A man gets revenge on a pub owner
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
A story about four elderly "loonies" living in a rest home
No summary.
In Cornwall, just before World War I, a striking miner befriends a cop
No summary.
A story about unemployment and the Black Movement in Jamaica
A salesman learns a few lessons from the locals when he goes to Yorkshire for a business course
A couple and their daughter take a trip to Africa
No summary.
No summary.
The adventures of three Derbyshire miners going fishing
No summary.
The story of a man serving a 30-year prison sentence for killing a cop
A story about the origin of the Stormont state
The story of Robinson Crusoe from Man Friday's viewpoint
A hippie breaks into the house of a middle-aged couple and forms a relationship with them
No summary.
An elderly general woos a shy school teacher.
A washed-up executive is on the verge of bankruptcy.
No summary.
No summary.
The adventures of three Derbyshire miners going to Stratford-upon-Avon on a barge
No summary.
A long-married husband leaves his family for a barmaid.
No summary.
The story of a defiant football manager in terminal decline
As a playwright dictates notes about his newest play to his secretary, scenes from the play are acted out.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
The trials of an overworked and underappreciated housecleaner
No summary.
Three underachievers have fun at a school speech day
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
The problems of four people sharing an apartment
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
A young farmgirl begins a romance with an artist
An elderly politician looks back over his career while being interviewed by a TV producer.
A pet shop owner forsakes his religious beliefs when his daughter gets cancer
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
Penda's Fen is a British television play which was written by David Rudkin and directed by Alan Clarke. Commissioned by BBC producer David Rose, it was transmitted as part of the corporation's Play for Today series.
No summary.
Further adventures of three Derbyshire miners
The exploitation of the Scottish land and its people from the 18th century to the present
A young man persuades a woman that he is her son.
No summary.
The friendship of two residents of a retirement home ends up in marriage
About a strike in a textile factory, based on a true story
After the stillbirth of her illegitimate baby, a woman steals a baby at random and is sentenced to 9 months in prison.
No summary.
The first (and last) day at work of a young apprentice in a bevelling shop at a Glasgow glass factory
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
A story exploring the Birmingham underworld
No summary.
A story about an asthma sufferer
Three young students suspended from school face various problems.
A elderly couple become disillusioned when they retire to their favorite holiday resort.
One day in the life a nurse in a mental hospital
No summary.
A young man participating in the Orange Parade in Glasgow becomes disillusioned with the pageant when he discovers its unpleasant and violent history and witnesses the participants' attacks on Catholics.
No summary.
When a stockbroker loses his job, he decides to throw a party.
No summary.
In Belfast, a girl awaits the return of her missing father.
No summary.
No summary.
Political fantasy about a fascist regime
A married barrister's life begins to unravel when it seems that his high-strung mistress may reveal all.
An author tells an old school chum that he is about to publish a novel revealing their old relationship.
No summary.
An American woman corresponds with a London bookshop owner over a period of 20 years
No summary.
No summary.
A boy enjoys success in the choir until his voice breaks at puberty.
A woman goes into hospital to receive treatment for breast cancer.
A group of Asians plans to sneak into England using a fishing boat
Rumpole defends a young West Indian boy accused of attempted murder.
An aggressive lesbian disrupts the lives of those around her.
Smug married couple Keith and Candice Marie “keen exponents of their belief in organic health food, exercise and the environment” are on a camping holiday, where they find that it is not always easy to be tolerant of others when they don't share the same enthusiasms.
No summary.
No summary.
A woman encounters trouble when she arrives home late at night, but her neighbors on a nearby estate claim to have seen and heard nothing.
No summary.
No summary.
A play based on three short stories about the Scottish people and their relationship with the land: ""Clay"" concerns a farmer's obsession with his fields to the exclusion of his dying wife; ""Smeddum"" is about an indomitable woman and her large family; and ""Greenden"" tells the story of an unhappy woman from the city living with her indifferent husband in the country.
No summary.
A story depicting life in a shipyard
No summary.
No summary.
A story about a father's attempts at single parenthood
A playwright spends an afternoon in a hotel room with an actress who takes on the role of call girl for research purposes.
The eldest daughter of a domineering, overprotective mother becomes engaged to an unprincipled young man who has money.
A story exploring the emotions of a boy undrgoing the traditional Jewish ceremony
No summary.
No summary.
Bunny’s wife thinks he is a postman, but in reality he spends his days in the Scottish hills. One day he meets Jody, a fellow walker.
No summary.
A young man from Belfast is sent south to stay with relatives in an attempt to keep him out of trouble.
No summary.
No summary.
A young man's chances at romance are thwarted by his own shyness.
No summary.
No summary.
The rags-to-riches-to-rags story of a 1960s football pools winner, based on a true story
No summary.
A pair of plays, broadcast over two weeks, about mining life: ""Meet the People,"" about a coal mining community preparing for a royal visit, and ""Back to Reality,"" about a coal mining disaster that brings tragedy to a community.
A pair of plays, broadcast over two weeks, about mining life: ""Meet the People,"" about a coal mining community preparing for a royal visit, and ""Back to Reality,"" about a coal mining disaster that brings tragedy to a community.
A student holds his teacher hostage in the classroom on the last day of school.
No summary.
The story of Father Borelli who in Rome during World War II must choose between freedom and his principles
Richard Elkinson, the former stockbroker, is now running a country restaurant. His daughter decides to spring a surprise on him in an attempt to change his life for the better.
A worker discovers a radioactive leak at the nuclear power plant where she works and tries to make it public knowledge.
No summary.
Comedy of manners focusing on the bourgeois affectation and sexual frustration of a young married couple. Abigail's mother Sue is invited to take refuge from her teenage daughter's party with a neighbouring couple, Beverly and Laurence. They have also invited Angela and Tony, new arrivals in the street. Beverly plies her guests with alcohol as Sue becomes increasingly withdrawn and embarrassed by the pretentious goings-on. Slowly, marital tensions emerge and the evening is breaking up in disarray.
The story of the romance between a Jewish boy and an Irish Catholic girl
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
Three schoolteachers in Belfast give up teaching to become singers/songwriters.
No summary.
No summary.
A Liverpool teenager has a hectic night out on New Year's Eve.
During World War II, a young woman joins the propaganda department and makes radio broadcasts to Germany from a British country house.
A stone axehead links three couples living at different times in the same place in Wales.
The story of a single mother of four living on welfare
A story dealing with racial tensions and fascism during a by-election in a West Midlands town
No summary.
The story of a well-meaning charity worker
The story of the trial of Willie Gallagher, convicted of bombing the Strabane British Legion Hall in 1976.
The story of two Soviet dissidents living in London and slowly coming apart under the strain of his drinking and her enforced separation from her child
No summary.
A young man is declared a hero when he catches a burglar until it's discovered that the burglar is a dwarf.
A story about young boxers whose fighting provides entertainment for diners at a sporting club
No summary.
Consists of two plays ""Audience"" and ""Private View"" about a brewery worker and writer who incurs the wrath of the autocratic government
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
A young man and an old woman try to fit in when their neighborhood goes West Indian
The play activities of seven children living in the countryside during the summer of 1943 end in tragedy; the children were played by adults in childrens clothing. The title is taken from A.E. Housman's 1896 poem: "Into my heart an air that kills; From yon far country blows; What are those blue remembered hills..." It's 1943 on a summer's afternoon and 7 children play in the fields & woods of old England. The children's roles are all played by adults to act as "A magnifying glass to show what it's like to be a child." "When we dream of childhood," said Dennis Potter, "we take our present selves with us. It is not the adult world writ small; childhood is the adult world writ large." Since Potter viewed childhood as "adult society without all the conventions and the polite forms which overlay it," he repeated the device he had introduced 14 years earlier (in "Stand Up, Nigel Barton"); children's roles were cast with adult actors in this naturalistic memory drama of a "golden day" that turns to tragedy. On a sunny, summer afternoon in bucolic England of 1943, seven West Country children (two girls, five boys) play in the Forest of Dean. Their games and spontaneous actions (continuous and in real time) reflect their awareness of WWII, but no adults are present to intrude. As the group moves through the woods and back to the grassy hills, their words and actions illustrate how "childhood is not transparent with innocence." When the two girls push a pram into a barn to play house, the casting concept is heightened, doubling back on itself in a remarkable moment: adults are suddenly seen to be acting as children who are pretending to be adults, and lines from Housman echo across the years: "That is the land of lost content/I see it shining plain/The happy highways where I went/And cannot come again."
A story about a dinner party given by the managers and employees of a brokerage house
The Irish troubles as seen by residents of a boarding house called ""The Crumlin View""
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
A closeted homosexual writer is content to lead a double life
A young wife tries to cope with her abusive husband.
A fanatical Elvis Presley fan is working as a disc jockey when his idol dies
No summary.
Budding comedians take an evening class taught by a retired performer and, for their final exam, must perform for an impresario in a nightclub.
Stephen Piper is a quiet young man. A virgin, he shows no interest in sex, and is cruelly scorned by an aggressive female neighbour when he rebuffs her advances. He lives with his mother, an overbearing woman who mocks him for being wet. But Stephen has a secret. An accurate and heartfelt depiction of the challenges he faces and a fascinating glimpse at the gender politics of the day.
In Glasgow, a young man's sole aim is to be as tough as his dying grandfather once was
A 4-year-old boy is abused by his father
Exploration of the events leading up to 1975 Spaghetti House siege in London and the motivation of its three protagonists, T-Bone Wilson, Archie Pool, and Trevor Thomas.
The story of a young man who works in a carpet factory
No summary.
No summary.
A young man quits school and joins the army.
No summary.
A journalist moves to London and gets caught up in the big city and his romance with a rich debutante.
No summary.
No summary.
Weekend enlightenment seminars serve as a form of brainwashing.
No summary.
No summary.
The marital and career problems of a middle-aged, middle-class man in Glasgow in the 1960s
A compassionate elderly woman comes to the realization that she can no longer care for herself or others.
A story about the regulation of the bus industry in 1930
The problems of an 11-year-old boy living in the Catholic part of Londonderry
No summary.
A story about the highs and lows of peacetime army life
No summary.
No summary.
During World War II, an idealistic young woman joins the Army Transport Service
A writer gets involved with a Soviet dissident
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
Dominick Hide, a time traveller from London in the year 2130, is studying the city's transport system of 1980. Breaking the rules, he lands his craft to seek out his great-grandfather. Compared to his anaesthetised home, 80s London is filthy and polluted...and yet...it exudes an excitement that soon draws him in.
No summary.
In Victorian times, a nanny cares for a mute boy, who becomes overly attached to her.
A vacation at a seaside hotel in Ireland changes the lives of four friends.
The problems of an owner of a building contractor company in Liverpool
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
The head of a multinational corporation wants to do business with the Soviets
A group of men hold a reunion dinner in Tokyo
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
An evening with the Parent-Teacher Association gets out of hand.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
Soldiers are subjected to a brutal and sadistic kind of psychological training exercise
No summary.
The story of the disintegration of an aristocratic country estate after World War II
No summary.
James, an expatriate South African anti-apartheid fighter, deals with his nightmares and his complaining landlady in a run-down area of London, while dreaming of his lover Stephen, left behind.
No summary.
In Belfast, Ruby has a cold and is caught in the rain while Iris is looking for work and gets caught in traffic
No summary.
Two men on a local council fight the system when forced with massive spending cuts.
During World War II, a British officer is ordered to abandon a Russian convoy.
A manager, a foreman, and two workers are all that remains of a factory yet labor relations stay the same
No summary.
A police inspector investigates the murder of an Arab sheik who had become a village's Lord of the Manor.
No summary.
Politics and relationships during the last years of the Heath government
No summary.
No summary.
A family in Belfast deals with life after the death of the mother from cancer
No summary.
No summary.
Home Sweet Home is a 1982 television film devised and directed by Mike Leigh, for BBC TV, 'about postmen, parenthood, social workers and sex.' It was Leigh's second collaboration with Play for Today producer Louis Marks, and cinematographer Remi Adefarasin, and with composer Carl Davis - the music score featured a quartet of basses -. It stars Timothy Spall, here working with Leigh for the first time, Eric Richard, Tim Barker, Kay Stonham, Su Elliot, Frances Barber, Sheila Kelley, and Lorraine Brunning. It was first broadcast on 16 March 1982. The film was shot on location in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. 90 minutes.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
A story about a homesick Russian journalist in London at the end of the cold war
No summary.
No summary.
A man holds a lonely vigil at the bedside of his dying father.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
Two years after his journey to the past, Dominick Hide has been promoted to instructor and is no longer a time traveller. Then one of his pupils, Pyrus Bonnington, goes missing during a visit to 1982 London. Hide must track him down and prevent Pyrus damaging the past, but will the temptation to re-visit his own history be too strong to resist?
No summary.
In 1959 County Antrim, two traveling evangelists help a mentally retarded teenager
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
The 18th century writer Samuel Johnson writes a political pamphlet protesting the British going to war with Spain after the 1790 invasion of the Falkland Islands.
When his father leaves Belfast to seek work in England, a young man looks after his sister
A businessman tries to keep his son from finding out about an unconventional deal he and his secretary are making with a merchant bank.
James Grout and Bert Parnaby are rival chairmen of a northern football club in the run-up to an important cup match. As tempers fray, retiring president Charles Lamb provides a calming voice of sanity.
Cynical teenager Andrew Groves re-evaluates his attitude to life and his parents after his sister dies in a plane crash.
When his father comes home to Belfast after more than 2 years in England, conflicts arise with Billy
After a nuclear holocaust, only a man and a woman survive in a Welsh valley.
No summary.
An expedition tracing the path of long-lost missionaries meets with tragedy in the Kalahari Desert.
A group of unemployed Oxford drop-outs living in a Brixton commune get their come-uppance by one of them.
Concerning the life of the artist Vincent Van Gogh
A man who has had a good life in England wants to retire to Jamaica, but the celebration with his daughters doesn't go as expected.
In 1940, during World War II, an officer is sent to investigate rumors of German spies in a sleepy village where various people are the victims of war hysteria
In a future society where euthansia is common, a man signs papers to have his father put down
No summary.
In 1959 Ulster, a journalist witnesses the beating of a youth
No summary.
No summary.
No summary.
