Play For Today

After Dinner Game, The

Social and sexual intrigue from Malcolm Bradbury/Christopher Bigsby set at a dinner party for the manipulative vice-chancellor of a cash-strapped new university...

696

Breath

By Elaine Feinstein. Angela Pleasance is a young mother isolated by her chronic asthma and descending into paranoia. Gareth Thomas is her...

975

Death of a Young, Young Man, The

By Willy Russell. A delinquent suspended from an urban school gets a job on a farm, which he really enjoys until events...

1.0K

Sunset Across the Bay

Alan Bennett makes his first contribution to Play for Today with some autobiographical sketches of the fag end of family life. ‘Mam’...

893

Funny Farm

By Roy Minton. A day in the life of mental health nurse Tim Preece, struggling with not only the demands of his...

702

Goodbye

By Hugh Whitemore. An 18 year middle-class Maida Vale marriage is under threat when the wife walks out. With Peter Cellier, Paul...

1.0K

Just Another Saturday

Jon Morrison plays an eager young mace-twirling Orange Parade leader in Glasgow, gradually finding out the unpleasant, violent truth behind the symbolic...

597

Child of Hope

Dramatisation by John Elliot and Joel Carlson of the trial of 37 black countrymen from South West Africa, prosecuted for terrorism by...

952

Saturday Party, The

By Brian Clark. Stockbroker Peter Barkworth is made redundant but goes ahead with his planned Christmas party anyway, bringing a different air...

676

Wednesday Love

By Arthur Hopcraft. Two women have romantic encounters on their afternoon off in an out-of-hours drinking club.

712

Dandelion Clock, The

By Wilson John Haire. Examined the Belfast Troubles through the eyes of a young girl missing her AWOL father, and counting the...

1.6K

Brassneck

Brechtian distanciation which is all very well in the theatre but doesn't really work on the telly

755

Floater, The

By Peter Prince. Comic study of a court case awaiting hearing, with Richard Beckinsale as a solicitor’s clerk acting for his sick...

793

By Common Consent

Paul Thompson’s “bourgeois fantasy” about an imaginary fascist regime of the near future, and the tribulations of young dissidents in City Zone...

753

Plaintiffs and Defendants

Peter (Alan Bates), a divorce lawyer in the thick of middle age, wakes up in the bed-sit of his graphic designer mistress...

731

Two Sundays

A companion piece to the previous week’s Plaintiffs and Defendants. Peter (Dinsdale Landen) and Hilary (Georgina Hale) wake up, facing the prospect...

703

Moss

By Bernard Kops. Warren Mitchell is a Jewish East End miser who changes his outlook when his only real love, son Sthephen...

683

84 Charing Cross Road

By Hugh Whitemore and Helene Hanff. Frank Finlay owns the titular bookshop in this famous tale of a real bookshop proprietor’s long-term...

965

Keep an Eye on Albert

PfT acting veteran Brian Glover’s first foray into writing for the strand. Weight-lifting pigeon fancier David Daker neglects wife Susan Tracy, so...

707

Children of the Sun

By Michael O’Neill and Jeremy Seabrook. The passengers caught up in an airline hijack drama sweat it out, among them Georgina Hale...

757

After the Solo

By John Challen. Bleak tale of an awkward young boy whose brief success as a chorister is scuppered by puberty. Leonard Rossiter...

1.2K

Through the Night

Harrowing and immensely popular look at NHS hospital life from the patient’s point of view, written by Trevor Griffiths after reading a...

731

Passage to England, A

By Leon Griffiths. A superficially light-hearted tale of Asians attempting illegal immigration from Amsterdam to British shores on a fishing vessel. Starring...

768

Rumpole of the Bailey

The original outing for John Mortimer's bellicose bailiff

931

Evacuees, The

Jewish wartime misfittery.

783

Other Woman, The

By Watson Gould. ‘Angry young lesbian artist’ Jane Lapotaire disrupts the lives of upper class lover Lynne Frederick and middle-aged alcoholic Michael...

1.3K

Nuts in May (aka The Plastic Tadpole)

A pair of lisping middle-class types getting back to nature

842

Doran’s Box

Experimental codswallop.

687

Packman’s Barn

By Alick Rowe. John Barrett returns to his remote hill farm after 20 years to deal with some unfinished business, and finds...

821

Story to Frighten the Children, A

By John Hopkins. Jon Laurimore and Geoffrey Palmer are police investigating a brutal murder on a high-rise estate, but finding fear of...

837

Happy Hunting Ground, The

By Tom Hadaway. Neil Phillips is a young trawlerman working his way up the fishing hierarchy in various encounters in a harbour.

1.7K

Jumping Bean Bag

Public school glam rock a-go-go!

942

Clay, Smeddum and Greenden

Trilogy of one-act plays adapted by Bill Craig from short stories by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, all dealing with the way the Scottish...

955

Love Letters on Blue Paper

Rare incursion into play for today from the Godfather of the original theatrical kitchen sink explosion, Arnold Wesker. Elizabeth Spriggs tries to...

1.4K

Willie Rough

By Bill Bryden. Story of the beginnings of revolutionary socialism, set amongst the shipyards of greenock during the first half of the...

869

Tiptoe Through the Tulips

By Beryl Bainbridge. Two ‘singles’, Rosemary Leach and Michael Gambon, are ‘introduced’ to each other by well-meaning friends, but the encounter doesn’t...

890

Peddler, The

By EA Whitehead. John Hurt plays a salesman of anti-depressants and other drugs, whose wife discovers his affair with a female doctor.

917

Early Struggles

By Peter Prince. Pop Musician Paul Nicholas is left literally holding the baby when his wife walks out. With Tom Conti, Amanda...

1.4K

Double Dare

Dennis Potter on... Dennis Potter. And sex.

718

House of Bernarda Alba, The

Adaptation of a short story by the famed Spanish poet and author Federico Garcia Lorca of the conflict between a young woman...

1.7K

Bar Mitzvah Boy

Coming of age? Schmoming of schmage. (Hmm, might need to rethink that.)

693

Elephants’ Graveyard

Jon Morrison, supposedly gainfully employed as far as his family are concerned, instead takes off to the Scottish hillsides every day, and...

698

Housewives’ Choice

By Roy Kendall. Trouble arises when Frances de la Tour hires Sharon Duce as a nanny. With Bernard Hill.

786

Yer Man from Six Counties

By Colin Welland. Young boy Joseph Reynolds loses his dad in an IRA bomb blast and moves out to his uncle’s remote...

922

Buffet

By Rhys Adrian. Tony Britton is a businessman hounded by the failing economy and his increasingly hazardous extra-marital affair, getting slowly drunk...

1.8K

2

Brimstone and Treacle

'Bit over the top, isn't it?' 'No idea, it's not actually on telly.'

796

Love on a Gunboat

By Malcolm Bradbury. Brummie couple Stephen Moore and Barbara Flynn court during the Suez crisis. 20 years later, against the backdrop of...

911

Kiss of Death, The

Shy and sarcastic teenage Oldham undertaker’s assistant Trevor (David Threlfall) knocks about with drinking pal Ronnie (John Wheatley) and his girlfriend Sandra...

838

Our Flesh and Blood

By Mike Stott. Maternity comedy with Bernard Hill and Alison Steadman expecting their first baby, and opting for the then-modish ‘natural’ childbirth...

865

Do as I Say

By Charles Wood. Angela Down is a rape victim whom no-one will take seriously.

TV Cream