About this season
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.
Episodes (27)
1. Pasmore
Aired 21 October 1980 • 75 min
Colin Pasmore tests his strength against his family ties but finds them stronger than he ever imagined.
2. C2H5OH
Aired 28 October 1980 • 75 min
"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."
3. The Adventures of Frank: Everybody's Fiddling Something
Aired 4 November 1980 • 75 min
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.
4. The Adventures of Frank: Seeds of Ice
Aired 11 November 1980 • 75 min
5. Minor Complications
Aired 18 November 1980 • 75 min
Kay Gilbert goes into hospital for a minor operation which goes badly wrong. This play tells the story of her fight for compensation.
6. Number on End
Aired 25 November 1980 • 75 min
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.
7. Jude
Aired 2 December 1980 • 75 min
Twelve-year-old Jude has never met Dick, his father. One Sunday afternoon Dick impulsively engineers a meeting, which has distressing consequences.
8. The Flipside of Dominick Hide
Aired 9 December 1980 • 75 min
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.
9. Name for the Day
Aired 16 December 1980 • 75 min
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.
10. Jessie
Aired 23 December 1980 • 75 min
In Victorian times, a nanny cares for a mute boy, who becomes overly attached to her.
11. Beyond the Pale
Aired 6 January 1981 • 75 min
A vacation at a seaside hotel in Ireland changes the lives of four friends.
12. The Muscle Market
Aired 13 January 1981 • 75 min
The problems of an owner of a building contractor company in Liverpool
13. A Brush with Mr. Porter on the Road to El Dorado
Aired 20 January 1981 • 75 min
"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.
14. Dear Brutus
Aired 27 January 1981 • 75 min
"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.
15. The Cause
Aired 3 February 1981 • 75 min
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.
16. Beloved Enemy
Aired 10 February 1981 • 75 min
The head of a multinational corporation wants to do business with the Soviets
17. The Kamikaze Ground Staff Reunion Dinner
Aired 17 February 1981 • 75 min
A group of men hold a reunion dinner in Tokyo
18. The Union
Aired 24 February 1981 • 75 min
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.
19. Sorry
Aired 3 March 1981 • 75 min
Two very different women share an office, a common enemy, and a sense of humour.
20. Shai Mãlã Khani: The Garland
Aired 10 March 1981 • 75 min
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.
21. The Sin Bin
Aired 17 March 1981 • 75 min
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.
22. Before Water Lillies
Aired 24 March 1981 • 75 min
An evening with the Parent-Teacher Association gets out of hand.
23. Bavarian Night
Aired 31 March 1981 • 75 min
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.
24. The Good Time Girls
Aired 7 April 1981 • 75 min
Nancy and Ella are two bored housewives starved of affection when their husbands are away on the oil rigs. The rules are simple: have some fun, just make sure nobody finds out, and you don't get emotionally involved.
25. Baby Talk
Aired 14 April 1981 • 75 min
It's such a simple, natural thing to have a baby, thinks Mary. But she and husband Paul are preoccupied with their careers. Can their young neighbour Tessa help - or are the emotions around a new baby more complex than anyone had expected?
26. A Turn for the Worse
Aired 28 April 1981 • 75 min
Soldiers are subjected to a brutal and sadistic kind of psychological training exercise
27. Psy-Warriors
Aired 12 May 1981 • 75 min
Soldiers are captured and interrogated by terrorists: but is it real or only a sadistic form of psychological training exercise?