TV Cream
The Wednesday Play
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3.1K1Way Off Beat
A fine comedy of class and ambition from the Mary Whitehouse-baiting David ‘Swizzlewick‘ Turner, set in the suburban ‘scampi belt’ of an...
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2.5K
Executioner, The
By Robert Muller. Sandor Eles and Rosalie Crutchley play a Russian man and his mother, charged with carrying out the execution of...
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2.2K
Toddler on the Run
By Shena Mackay. Four-and-a-half-foot petty thief Ian Trigger faces social prejudice and an uneasy romance on the run with girlfriend Anneke Willis.
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2.1K
Ape and Essence
John Finch’s adaptation of Huxley’s post-nuclear story of an impoverished, devil-worshipping land.
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2.4K
Retreat, The
Hugh Leonard’s dialogue-free sequel to Silent Song, with Gerry Sullivan as a wet-behind-the-ears country priest contending with the earthier side of Dublin...
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2.0K
Connoisseur, The
By Hugo Charteris. Derek Francis is an unscrupulous housemaster in a public school teeming with abuse and covert homosexuality.
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2.0K
Cheery Soul, A
By Patrick White. Hazel Hughes’ excessively charitable lifestyle brings her few friends.
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2.0K
Snow Ball, The
At a sumptuous New Year’s Eve costume ball, a torrid relationship blossoms between Patrick Allen and Katherine Blake (the play’s co-writer Ursula...
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2.1K
Big Man Coughed and Died, The
Comic study by Brian Wright of the beleaguered relationship between redundant machinist George Baker and mysterious young girl Eileen Atkins.
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2.2K
Pity About the Abbey
John Betjeman tackles the intrigue and double-crossing prevalent in the world of the ecclesiastical heritage lobby. With Henry McGee, first shown as...
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2.2K
Portsmouth Defence, The
The first in a trilogy of wry courtroom satires from Jimmy O’Connor’s wife and former barrister Nemone Lethbridge, who’d represented the Kray...
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2.2K
Barlowe of the Car Park
Jack Woolgar is the ramshackle, tragicomic custodian of a municipal car park. An experiment with semi-silent comedy techniques from Paul Ableman, that...
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2.2K
Boy in the Smoke, A
The fortunes of two Irish immigrant labourers in the tiny community centred around London’s Paddington station. Sean Caffrey and Ray Mort star,...
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2.0K
Walk in the Sea, A
Lyrical study by James Hanley of the lives of elderly Nora Nicholson, vicar Marius Goring and other rural community members, including Kenneth...
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2.2K
Macready’s Gala
By Hugh Whitemore. The governors of a public school find events taking a turn for the strange as they find themselves trapped...
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2.5K1
Why Aren’t You Famous?
By Ernie Gebler. Irish girl Fionnuala Flanagan arrives in London and shacks up with northern bohemian artist Alan Dobie.
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2.2K
Game – Like – Only a Game, A
A lower-middle-class terraced house in a northern town, elderly Mrs Everton (Susan ‘Angels Are So Few’ Richard) receives a routine visit from...
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4.6K
Who’s A Good Boy Then? I Am
The uneasy relationship between elderly couple Thora Hird and Ron Moody and a cheerful stranger who moves in with them (Ronald Lacey)....
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4.6K1
Silent Song
Frank O’Connor and Hugh Leonard’s dialogue-free study of the antics and hardships of two Trappist monks (Milo O’Shea and Jack MacGowran) in...
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3.6K
Calf Love
An Edwardian teenager travels to Prussia to study German. Lodging at the house of Warren Mitchell, he becomes infatuated with his two...
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3.0K
Rodney, Our Intrepid Hero
Baroque goings-on at Graham Crowden’s exclusive organisation dedicated to the facilitation of illicit pleasures, exposed by ace reporter Jim Norton. Script by...
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2.8K
Man on Her Back, A
By series producer Peter Luke, with William Sansom. An uneasy love triangle develops between Norman Rodway, a pianist in a slightly shabby...
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2.8K
Boneyard, the
Wednesday Play series producer James MacTaggart was succeeded by Peter Luke at this point in the series, leading the overall tone of...
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5.3K3
War Game, The
The first Wednesday Play to be banned (famously decried by the then Home Secretary as a danger to the mentally unstable), Peter...
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3.4K
Coming Out Party, The
James O’Connor ends the strand’s first full year with a raucous and touching comedy set around a London family’s Christmas. With George...
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4.0K3
Stand Up, Nigel Barton/Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton
Two outings in two weeks for Dennis Potter’s semi-autobiographical hero. Upwardly mobile Keith Barron goes to Oxford and is disowned by his...
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3.0K
Bond, The
By Terry Wale and Dawn Pavitt. Portrait of a superficially perfect marriage between young couple Barry Lowe and Hannah Gordon.
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3.0K
Tomorrow, Just You Wait
James Chase is a factory-working teenager in desperate love with Janina Faye. Tony Selby, Charles Lamb and Joss Ackland feature. Words by...
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2.7K
End of Arthur’s Marriage, The
Director Ken Loach made a rare foray into the territory of the musical by directing this script from future Cavatina composer Stanley...
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2.8K
Trial and Torture of Sir John Rampayne, The
Jack Hawkins is the eponymous Old Tory bigwig whose bluff, traditional values are brought crashing round him one fateful night. With Ian...
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2.8K
Up The Junction
Possibly the most celebrated of the strand’s early successes, Nell Dunn’s slice of the highs and lows of working class Battersea life,...
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2.6K
Designing Woman, A
More tragicomedy of manners from Julia Jones. Lancashire housewife Rhoda Lewis’ obsession strains relationships with family, friends and husband Reginald Marsh.
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2.6K
Girl Who Loved Robots, The
Peter Everett’s near-future take on the film noir genre, with a detective on the trail of an embittered former astronaut for the...
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2.7K
Alice
The Wednesday Play wasn’t afraid to approach the same source material from different directions, as here, with Dennis Potter’s exploration of the...
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2.7K
Seven O’Clock Crunch, The
Peter Jeffrey’s marriage to Zena Walker comes under strain as he eyes friend Nigel Stock’s carefree bachelor lifestyle with mounting envy. Written...
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2.6K1
Pistol, The
Troy Kennedy Martin’s adaptation of From Here to Eternity author James Jones’ novel in which a platoon of US Army officers find...
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3.5K2
Man Without Papers, The
Study of an American beatnik (Benito Carruthers) from the creator of Z-Cars, Troy Kennedy Martin. Bob Dylan supplies the songs, garage band...
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3.1K
And Did Those Feet?
Maverick writer David Mercer’s first play for the strand departs from much of his previous work, and in the process goes further...
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3.5K1
For the West
Highly controversial offering from Michael Hastings. The story of the Belgian Congo massacres, given a necessarily bloody production which caused much consternation,...
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2.5K
Knight in Tarnished Armour, A
By Alan Sharp. Bored teenager Paul Young fantasises his way through an impoverished Scottish adolesence.
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2.7K
Cemented with Love
Sectarian divisions in Ulster – a long-running source of material for The Wednesday Play – gets its first treatment here, in an...
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2.2K
Good Shoe Maker and the Poor Fish Pedler, The
Jean Benedetti’s dramatisation of the famous trial of Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in ’20s Massachusetts, accused of murder during a payroll...
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2.5K
Auto Stop
David Hemmings is a young man hitching his way across Europe to Athens, accumulating a string of casual relationships on the way....
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2.7K
Interior Decorator, The
Millionaire Michael Finlayson buys and furnishes a sumptuous Georgian townhouse with help from master decorator Barry Foster. As Foster shows Finlayson’s wife...
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3.2K
Three Clear Sundays
Second go-round for ex-con turned writer James O’Connor. Tony Selby plays a convicted murderer reflecting on his life and circumstances in his...
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2.7K
Cat’s Cradle
Hugo Chateris’s tale of retired couple Leo Genn and Barbara Murray moving out from town into a country cottage, but coming up...
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2.8K
Moving On
During the Korean War, Welsh MO David Collings is courtmartialed for accidentally killing a fellow soldier. Bill Meilen writes, Jack Watson, Eric...
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2.9K
Little Temptation, A
Ageing poet Denholm Elliot leaves his wife for single mother Barbara Jefford, but her daughter’s antipathy and the attentions of Jefford’s housemate...
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2.8K
Horror of Darkness
More from John Hopkins. Couple Glenda Jackson and Alfred Lynch’s quiet London lives are disrupted by the arrival of old art college...
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2.8K
Campaign for One
Tense drama during a space mission when astronaut Barry Foster loses his grip on reality while in orbit. Jeremy Kemp is Ground...
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