Play for Today - Season 9

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Episodes

Season 9Episode 175 min

Nina

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

Victims of Apartheid

Season 9Episode 275 min

Victims of Apartheid

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

A Touch of the Tiny Hacketts

Season 9Episode 375 min

A Touch of the Tiny Hacketts

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

Dinner at the Sporting Club

Season 9Episode 475 min

Dinner at the Sporting Club

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

Donal and Sally

Season 9Episode 575 min

Donal and Sally

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.

Season 9Episode 675 min

Sorry

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

Butterflies Don't Count

Season 9Episode 775 min

Butterflies Don't Count

"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."

Soldiers Talking Cleanly

Season 9Episode 875 min

Soldiers Talking Cleanly

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.

One Bummer Newsday

Season 9Episode 975 min

One Bummer Newsday

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

The Out of Town Boys

Season 9Episode 1075 min

The Out of Town Boys

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

Season 9Episode 1175 min

Vampires

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

The Chief Mourner

Season 9Episode 1275 min

The Chief Mourner

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

Waterloo Sunset

Season 9Episode 1375 min

Waterloo Sunset

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

Blue Remembered Hills

Season 9Episode 1475 min

Blue Remembered Hills

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."

Season 9Episode 1575 min

Who's Who

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

The Last Window Cleaner

Season 9Episode 1675 min

The Last Window Cleaner

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

Ploughman's Share

Season 9Episode 1775 min

Ploughman's Share

"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."

Degree of Uncertainty

Season 9Episode 1875 min

Degree of Uncertainty

"I'm 37 years old, remember? I'm not a dead-pan, genned-up, discreetly nymphomaniac ex-head-girl like the majority of your female students. I'm an innocent. I'm vulnerable."

Season 9Episode 1975 min

Light

A village in Cheshire. A deserted cinema. A poet murdered by Stalin. A blown fuse. Victor Silvester. Pickets on trial. Trimmers and fishwires.

Season 9Episode 2075 min

Coming Out

A closeted homosexual writer is content to lead a double life

Season 9Episode 2175 min

Don't Be Silly

A young wife tries to cope with her abusive husband.

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