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.
Showing Season 2 of 15
Season 2
1971
No overview available.
01. Traitor
1971-10-14
A British aristocrat turned Russian spy is visited in Moscow by Western journalists
02. Edna, the Inebriate Woman
1971-10-21
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.
03. Evelyn
1971-10-28
Frank is worried that he's over the hill when he reaches his 38th birthday. Conversations with his wife, lover and best friend do nothing to allay his concerns.
04. O Fat White Woman
1971-11-04
The wife of a headmaster discovers that he has been physically abusing his students
05. Thank You Very Much
1971-11-11
A social satire in which advertisers realise that having a blind beggar as the public face of charities would help make them seem more appealing to donors.
06. Michael Regan
1971-11-18
A man gets revenge on a pub owner
07. Skin Deep
1971-11-25
An awkward relationship develops between the families of a trade unionist and the regional manager when the son of the former wins a university scholarship from their employer.
08. Pal
1971-12-02
Two sworn enemies, one black and the other white, are forced to confront their prejudices when they are forced together by circumstance.
09. The Pigeon Fancier
1971-12-09
A retired miner devotes his waking hours to his racing pigeons.
10. Home
1972-01-06
A story about four elderly "loonies" living in a rest home
11. Still Waters
1972-01-13
A marriage can be lonely when the children have left home, as Nelson and Maud find out. Maud leaves in the middle of an unloving picnic, and Nelson follows - both sharing their stories with a series of strangers.
12. Stocker's Copper
1972-01-20
In Cornwall, just before World War I, a striking miner befriends a cop
13. The House on Highbury Hill
1972-01-27
A married couple move into the house on Highbury Hill and find some eccentric neighbours.
14. In the Beautiful Caribbean
1972-02-03
A story about unemployment and the Black Movement in Jamaica
15. Ackerman, Dougall and Harker
1972-02-10
A salesman learns a few lessons from the locals when he goes to Yorkshire for a business course
16. The Villa Maroc
1972-02-17
A couple and their daughter take a trip to Africa
17. Cows
1972-02-24
A social worker tries to help a painfully shy young man and takes him for a visit to a country farm.
18. A Time to Keep
1972-04-27
No overview available.
19. The Fishing Party
1972-06-01
The adventures of three Derbyshire miners going fishing