Play for Today

When his father leaves Belfast to seek work in England, a young man looks after his sister

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

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.

Politics and relationships during the last years of the Heath government

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Soldiers are subjected to a brutal and sadistic kind of psychological training exercise

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

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

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

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

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.

During World War II, an idealistic young woman joins the Army Transport Service

A story about the regulation of the bus industry in 1930

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

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

A young man quits school and joins the army.

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.

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

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

A closeted homosexual writer is content to lead a double life

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

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."

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

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

The story of a well-meaning charity worker

A story dealing with racial tensions and fascism during a by-election in a West Midlands town

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

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

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.

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

The story of Father Borelli who in Rome during World War II must choose between freedom and his principles

A student holds his teacher hostage in the classroom on the last day of school.

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.

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

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

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.

A playwright spends an afternoon in a hotel room with an actress who takes on the role of call girl for research purposes.

A story depicting life in a shipyard

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

In Belfast, a girl awaits the return of her missing father.

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

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.

One day in the life a nurse in a mental hospital

Three young students suspended from school face various problems.

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

The exploitation of the Scottish land and its people from the 18th century to the present

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

The story of a defiant football manager in terminal decline

A long-married husband leaves his family for a barmaid.

The adventures of three Derbyshire miners going to Stratford-upon-Avon on a barge

An elderly general woos a shy school teacher.

A hippie breaks into the house of a middle-aged couple and forms a relationship with them

A story about the origin of the Stormont state

A couple and their daughter take a trip to Africa

A story about unemployment and the Black Movement in Jamaica

In Cornwall, just before World War I, a striking miner befriends a cop

A story about four elderly "loonies" living in a rest home

A man gets revenge on a pub owner

The wife of a headmaster discovers that he has been physically abusing his students

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.

The story of a disintegrating marriage told through family photos

The story of the Pilkington glass workers strike of 1970

When an injured baby arrives at the hospital, a social worker looks for the parents

Charges that the Rev 'Red' Reddick is exploiting his youth club members leads to an explosive confrontation.

A civil servant working abroad revisits his old school

A woman living in a country cottage thinks that someone is trying to get her.

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.

""The Lie"" refers to the 8-year marriage of a couple who are constantly hurting each other.

A man tries to break the world's record for nonstop piano playing