Play for Today

Malcolm is a GP wrestling with ideas of retirement, while his wife Jo is a frustrated, would-be novelist. Together they dream of a more contented life, but are hampered by the arrested development of their children who won't leave home.

Devon 1940. The boys of the local public school are alerted after a German parachute drop and as members of the Local Defence Volunteers they prepare to put their youthful enthusiasm for war into practice.

Goff and Lytton have a dream - a canal boat of their own on which to cruise the inland waterways: The reality is the boatyard of Josh Adkins and a rusting hulk called Atlantis.

Wayne goes to live with his grandfather Albert. Initial generation gap hostilities between them are eventually overcome as a mutual respect develops through a their shared love of carpentry and snooker.

In 1959 County Antrim, two traveling evangelists help a mentally retarded teenager

Annabel, an upper-middle-class widow, falls in love with Jack, a self-made man of humble origins. Her grown-up children do not approve.

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?

In June 1940 Italy entered the war. With Britain threatened by a German invasion thousands of Italians were seized and thrown into security camps, with other friendly aliens - and Nazis.

After giving birth to a Down's Syndrome baby, Judith decides she doesn't want to keep him. Obliged to register the birth she arbitrarily chooses John David as the name. A few months later she learns the baby has died.

A family of five orphaned children are going to be split up into different homes. What will happen if the eldest is officially made their foster parent?

A man holds a lonely vigil at the bedside of his dying father.

Jack's obsession with the possibility of nuclear war sees him usher his family down into his home made fall out shelter after a nuclear strike hits the country. Will their time in confinement draw them together or push them apart?

Out on the streets, young people looking for fun. They come together at nights to listen to their music. For as long as the song lasts, they're heroes. Three minute heroes.

A story about a homesick Russian journalist in London at the end of the cold war

Frank has dedicated 19 years to researching a cure for the common cold, and is almost ready to publish a paper. Yet budget cuts and his own inability to form real relationships with those around him threaten to derail the project.

Willie and his friends notice the passage of time around them, and how society is changing as their marriages stagnate. Can Willie prove to himself that he still has it, by being able to cheat on his wife just once?

A family in Belfast deals with life after the death of the mother from cancer

Malcolm goes through life hating the mundanity of his existence as a factory worker and an unloved husband. But when students take up summer jobs at the factory, it reawakens both his passion for political feeling and romantic urges.

Meg: We were so close, we loved each other, we made a whole together. I feel cut in half.

Politics and relationships during the last years of the Heath government

Three women involved in different ways in the women's movement.

A police inspector investigates the murder of an Arab sheik who had become a village's Lord of the Manor.

A planning decision must be made, and the motorway extension must go through on either the Golf Course or the Allotments - will the greens survive or the peasant lands?

A manager, a foreman, and two workers are all that remains of a factory yet labor relations stay the same

During World War II, a British officer is ordered to abandon a Russian convoy.

Two men on a local council fight the system when forced with massive spending cuts.

In an adaptation of Václav Havel's play, a dissident, newly released from prison for political reasons, attempts to get his well-connected friend to sign a protest. In this one man play, both the roles are played by Nigel Hawthorne.

In Belfast, Ruby has a cold and is caught in the rain while Iris is looking for work and gets caught in traffic

A nurse is subjected to an interrogation after giving medical treatment to a terrorist leader.

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.

A docudrama about what would happen if London was hit by severe flooding

The story of the disintegration of an aristocratic country estate after World War II

When the dynamic young head-master of St Peter's Primary School decides to liven up a parents' fund-raising social by hiring a Bavarian band, he little suspects the hidden passions that are about to be unleashed.

An evening with the Parent-Teacher Association gets out of hand.

Six lifers living in an experimental self-rehabilitation unit attached to an ordinary prison participate in a group therapy session. All of them have spent many years in prison and have little chance of ever getting out.

When her 17-year-old son Roy falls in love with a Muslim girl, and a Bangladeshi butcher seeks help from her husband Raji, Leela realizes that the tears and romance of Indian cinema are closer to her own life than she has ever imagined.

Two very different women share an office, a common enemy, and a sense of humour.

You know the nuts and bolts of our policy? To penetrate the unions. To use all sorts of stratagems, manoeuvres, illegal measures, evasions, subterfuges, to carry on Communist activities inside them at all cost.

A group of men hold a reunion dinner in Tokyo

The head of a multinational corporation wants to do business with the Soviets

A confused industrial dispute at a London hospital triggers off in trade unionist George Harley's mind memories of his days fighting in the Spanish Civil War, when the issues seemed so much clearer.

"They say that in the wood you get what nearly everybody here is longing for - a second chance." J. M. Barrie's fantasy play, depicting alternative realities for its characters and their eventual return to real life.

"They're nice affable gobblers and we're in the nice affable gobbling business." Tom and Gwen soon find that their gastronomical retreat from the rat race is anything but an escape when the Porters come to dine.

The problems of an owner of a building contractor company in Liverpool

A vacation at a seaside hotel in Ireland changes the lives of four friends.

In Victorian times, a nanny cares for a mute boy, who becomes overly attached to her.

Clive admits himself to a psychiatric hospital after undergoing a breakdown. His wife wants him back home, but in order for Clive to be released, he has to want to be cured.

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.

Twelve-year-old Jude has never met Dick, his father. One Sunday afternoon Dick impulsively engineers a meeting, which has distressing consequences.

What could Steve Jackson's documentary film expose that must be concealed from the African leaders meeting in Brussels? Steve Jackson is on the run and the wrong decision could prove fatal.

Kay Gilbert goes into hospital for a minor operation which goes badly wrong. This play tells the story of her fight for compensation.

Writer-director John McGrath deliberately shies away from naturalism in an experiment that mixes blue screen, songs, and characters realising they're acting within a play. This first of two parts sees Frank travel to a hostile London.

"In heaven there is no drama - drama depends on failure and conflict. My trade is a scrutiny of hell. For any proud dramatist his style is his prejudice."

Colin Pasmore tests his strength against his family ties but finds them stronger than he ever imagined.

A story about the highs and lows of peacetime army life

The A Shift at the MHS department store are organising a wedding gift presentation for Elaine. But what's on Miriam's mind, and why does she seem so out of sorts?

The problems of an 11-year-old boy living in the Catholic part of Londonderry

A story about the regulation of the bus industry in 1930

A compassionate elderly woman comes to the realization that she can no longer care for herself or others.

The marital and career problems of a middle-aged, middle-class man in Glasgow in the 1960s

Twenty years ago, at the age of 56, this extraordinary woman became a national hero by walking from John O'Groats to Land's End. One of the last great English eccentrics (even though she was Russian) in the last days of English innocence.

Mr. Germanou arrives from Cyprus with his family to settle in England. But on his arrival he's arrested for an historical rape with seemingly no defence.

Weekend enlightenment seminars serve as a form of brainwashing.

An Englishman's home is his castle, and Wally aims to prove it.

Various characters have adventures on the way to a black pudding festival in Normandy.

A journalist moves to London and gets caught up in the big city and his romance with a rich debutante.

Family picnics should not be like this: bugging devices, men with X-ray eyes. Mary doesn't understand what terrifies Simon, nor the bizarre events of the next six months.

A young man quits school and joins the army.

What do Rose from Devon and Christina from Stuttgart have in common? And in what way is their fate linked to that of wealthy Fiona Dunkerley?

A teenage girl from a family of Irish Travellers is left to look after her brothers and sisters while her father is away.

The story of a young man who works in a carpet factory

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.

A 4-year-old boy is abused by his father

In Glasgow, a young man's sole aim is to be as tough as his dying grandfather once was

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.

Budding comedians take an evening class taught by a retired performer and, for their final exam, must perform for an impresario in a nightclub.

A watchmaker finds his livelihood is threatened by cheaply imported digital watches.

A fanatical Elvis Presley fan is working as a disc jockey when his idol dies

"Ploughman. Nobody calls you that. You're a has-been. Your head and heart went into a museum wi' that lot you keep in there. Face it: you're redundant."

The Irish troubles as seen by residents of a boarding house called ""The Crumlin View""

A story about a dinner party given by the managers and employees of a brokerage house

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 young man and an old woman try to fit in when their neighborhood goes West Indian

For a successful man with public responsibilities Alan Berry is strangely reluctant to help the police when his wife is murdered.

Three boys watch horror films on late night TV and see a man in a local cemetery whom they believe to be a vampire.

"This could be a bit special, Maggie. This could be the first case of an office block falling down during the topping-out party."

What happens to provincial journalists when there's nothing in the news and they have a paper to fill?

A freelance TV presenter has been hired by the BBC to film a documentary about the British army stationed in Germany. Unfortunately the budget is so low he is only allowed to film soldiers talking, and all bad language must be censored.

"Whether priest or thespian, never once let yourself doubt that the role you're playing is real. Lead your little flock from childhood to the grave via God's sweet sacraments and let no doubts intrude - ever."

Consists of two plays ""Audience"" and ""Private View"" about a brewery worker and writer who incurs the wrath of the autocratic government

Adolescent love can be difficult at the best of times, but Donal and Sally have special problems - problems which alarm their families and the instructors at Strathvale Centre.

A story about young boxers whose fighting provides entertainment for diners at a sporting club

A young man is declared a hero when he catches a burglar until it's discovered that the burglar is a dwarf.

George, a black South African, finds it hard to settle down in London after his experiences in South Africa.

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

The story of a single mother of four living on welfare

A stone axehead links three couples living at different times in the same place in Wales.

During World War II, a young woman joins the propaganda department and makes radio broadcasts to Germany from a British country house.

A Liverpool teenager has a hectic night out on New Year's Eve.

"Five days of darkness then. Unless you get it together we will have five days of darkness. And on the sixth day you will say, let there be light, and no doubt it'll be such an effort that on the seventh day you'll have to rest!"

"We've just got to get it right. It'll be our little secret. When all the other servants have gone out, we'll play this little game to amuse ourselves. A sort of private charade."

Three schoolteachers in Belfast give up teaching to become singers/songwriters.

Olive Major is determined that her year of office as Mayor will be a happy and successful one. But her appointment of Ex-Warrant Officer Higham as Attendant and Mace-bearer causes the storm-clouds to gather over Medburgh Town Hall.

"People coming to their first AA meeting, prosperous people, sometimes, accustomed to the best. They look round the places where we meet, and you can see them thinking: what am I doing here? I owe my life to these rooms!"

Teenager Jimmy's life begins to unravel after the death of his father. With his mother promiscuous and his new stepfather and stepbrother difficult to get along with, he begins to fall into a cycle of petty crime and self harm.

The story of the romance between a Jewish boy and an Irish Catholic girl

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.

Mike and his commune have a performance of their musical theatre "Diver" at the local pub, and ITV's Beth Bailey is coming along to see it. But will Beth's visions for the play as an incitement to revolution please everyone?

A worker discovers a radioactive leak at the nuclear power plant where she works and tries to make it public knowledge.

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 couple receives a photograph in the mail of two girls sitting in front of a caravan and neither can identify the people or the place.

The rags-to-riches-to-rags story of a 1960s football pools winner, based on a true story

A quietly unhappy housewife finds a stranger in her house and is raped at knife-point by him. But when she turns to friends, neighbors and her parents-in-law for sympathy, they all seem preoccupied by other matters.

How Mums and Dads feel when they have one.

A young man's chances at romance are thwarted by his own shyness.

In 1956 Britain staggers through crises in Suez and Cyprus while Leslie Potter pursues and marries Monica Dobbs. Twenty years later the nation has still not recovered. Neither has Leslie.

Freddie is going through an existential crisis as everyone around him seems to doubt their own identity and the entire purpose of conversation. Surrounded by inflation and extra marital affairs, his only solace is in buffet room drinking.

A young man from Belfast is sent south to stay with relatives in an attempt to keep him out of trouble.

When Joyce appears on the door-step she looks like the perfect 'kindly, respectable lady whom Marcia needs to look after her baby. But Joyce only seems to be the average housewife.

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.

Harry Marcus is a former welterweight champion mourning the loss of the past and dreaming of a return to the glory years of boxing. When a squatter moves in next door, does he have what it takes to fulfil Harry's dreams?

Like alcoholism, gambling is a disease. Ches, a compulsive gambler, is sent for medical help. A wonder drug perhaps? Or hypnosis maybe? Ches finds that his psychiatrist has other ideas.

A story exploring the emotions of a boy undrgoing the traditional Jewish ceremony

A divorced woman is introduced to a separated man at an awkward dinner party.

A story depicting life in a shipyard

Why has Sonia taken to writing letters to her husband, posted to him in the letter-box just outside their house - love letters, on blue paper, recalling with increasing vividness the early days of their courtship and marriage?

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.

An end-of-term play with a difference as Ozzie and the boys break into a hard rock number. But even though they make the big time, success has its darker side.

The fish quay is a happy hunting ground for an ambitious young rogue like Bob, who has an eye on the boss's business - and all that goes with it.

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.

John Barrett returns to his remote hill farm after 20 years to deal with some unfinished business, and finds himself once again in conflict with the locals.

A long-distance lorry driver; a spaceman; a volunteer under reduced environmental conditions; a man in solitary confinement: the discomfort of these people is shared by Doran - when he can't put his finger on the panic button.

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.

An aggressive lesbian disrupts the lives of those around her.

Rumpole defends a young West Indian boy accused of attempted murder.

A group of Asians plans to sneak into England using a fishing boat

A woman goes into hospital to receive treatment for breast cancer.

A boy enjoys success in the choir until his voice breaks at puberty.

"You expect to face a bit of danger when you travel. Half the fun of it. But you keep cool and bluff your way out. After all, we're all British aren't we?"

Terry has begun to neglect his wife for a life of drinking, weight lifting, pigeon racing and other women. But when his best friend Albert returns from the navy and begins to pay Terry's wife some attention, what will be the outcome?

An American woman corresponds with a London bookshop owner over a period of 20 years

Moss is a miser whose only love is his grandson. Then tragedy strikes, and Moss is "reborn."

An author tells an old school chum that he is about to publish a novel revealing their old relationship.

A married barrister's life begins to unravel when it seems that his high-strung mistress may reveal all.

Two women, looking for amusement on their afternoons off, visit a drinking club.

When a stockbroker loses his job, he decides to throw a party.

Thirty-seven men from the disputed territory of South West Africa are on trial for their lives in Pretoria, 1,000 miles from their home. They are to be tried under South Africa's Terrorism Act despite the UN ruling that South Africa must abandon its "illegal administration" of their country.

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.

"All I said was the gramophone's too loud." Tony and Zoe Lyle 's silly row starts like any other, but Tony finds that Zoe means it this time. She's walking out and he's got a week to save a marriage that he hasn't looked at in 18 years, and with it all the trappings of a good life in Maida Vale.

One day in the life a nurse in a mental hospital

A elderly couple become disillusioned when they retire to their favorite holiday resort.

Three young students suspended from school face various problems.

A story about an asthma sufferer

Vice-Chancellor Bartley Humbolt has problems. His young university is almost bankrupt, his wife is threatening to leave him, his protége professor from industry is threatening to overshadow him, and his prestigious professor of history is threatening to resign. But Bartley is a born manipulator. And when he gives a dinner party, he has something very special in mind - for afters.

A story exploring the Birmingham underworld

Eleanor is unable to communicate her inner thoughts as she's bullied at school and virtually ignored by her parents. With a mundane working existence awaiting her, she desires a chance at another life - but at what cost?

After 18 years as a friar, Peter is no longer sure of his vocation. It is a happy life, maybe too much so, and now he has met Clare. Will his doubts run away with him? Runaway friars are officially "fugitives" who must be persuaded back to their order.

"Well, I hope I won'be seeing you come home in that uniform much more. Six years - that's long enough out of any man's life." Mike's time is nearly up. The army gives him a weekend pass so he's home from Ulster to decide whether to sign on again. His parents want him to stay but he's wondering whether the family's own flare-ups aren't a bit too like the Troubles he has left behind.

The first (and last) day at work of a young apprentice in a bevelling shop at a Glasgow glass factory

Olwen lives in a tumbledown farm up in the mountains - a lonely widow, virtually a recluse. Her only human contact is with the occasional shopkeeper and young Rachel, who delivers her papers. For Rachel, her visits to Olwen are half adventure, half honest friendship. But they also mean a time to 'put aside childish things.'

After the stillbirth of her illegitimate baby, a woman steals a baby at random and is sentenced to 9 months in prison.

About a strike in a textile factory, based on a true story

Further adventures of three Derbyshire miners

At the climax of the School Sports something went drastically wrong. Now, Wallace Pidgeon faces the contradictory demands of the bird-watching headmaster, his pupils, his pork-magnate father-in-law and his "child bride."

Summer 1955, and pastor's son Stephen must come to terms with his own identity amid societal pressure, religious guilt and his own imaginings. 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.

Fisher is good at his job but in new circumstances that isn't enough: he has to face the risks of competition for something bigger.

A group of Deptford youngsters hang about by the River Thames on a hot day. When they and some nearby dockers spot a valuable copper boiler floating in the river the two rival factions try to get at it first. The youngsters succeed, but on their way to the totter's yard they are waylaid by the adults, who take the copper off them.

Sauna baths are supposed to relax you, but it rather depends who you meet in there.

A pet shop owner forsakes his religious beliefs when his daughter gets cancer

An elderly politician looks back over his career while being interviewed by a TV producer.

A young farmgirl begins a romance with an artist

Family Christmas, presents, drink, Christmas Eve at the club, Boxing Day football - but, among the celebrations, some hard home-truths.

After ten years of trying, Lavinia, and a large team of medics, finally manage to produce a live baby. She should now be able to start living her dream, but what happens next is not at all the paradise she has been looking forward to.

Bernie gets a temporary job as an electrician during a factory's annual minimal workforce period. But what secrets is Bernie hiding, and is he really all he claims?

Why does Sylvia Payne , with her successful husband and luxurious home, get in such a flap about her daughter's school friend coming to visit?

An early retirement and a seaside bungalow-for Arthur and Marion it's not a chance to miss, especially since their son is buying the bungalow. Arthur's full of plans - GCE, garden, beach-not to mention his own "bit of an interesting diversion." But after a year the delight is beginning to tarnish.

Dean has a rare talent. He can be made happy. He exudes happiness and confidence like a rare blossom. Both Sarah in the past, and Julia now, could do this for him. But where are they now that he is alone in Battersea Park with two suitcases and no memory?

An amateur operatic society is preparing a Gilbert and Sullivan production, and someone new is needed for the role of Jack Point - but who will break this to the veteran who's always done it?