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 (22)
1. Country
Aired 20 October 1981 • 75 min
The story of the disintegration of an aristocratic country estate after World War II
2. London Is Drowning
Aired 27 October 1981 • 75 min
A docudrama about what would happen if London was hit by severe flooding
3. A Room for the Winter
Aired 3 November 1981 • 75 min
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.
4. No Visible Scar
Aired 17 November 1981 • 75 min
A nurse is subjected to an interrogation after giving medical treatment to a terrorist leader.
5. Iris in the Traffic, Ruby in the Rain
Aired 24 November 1981 • 75 min
In Belfast, Ruby has a cold and is caught in the rain while Iris is looking for work and gets caught in traffic
6. Protest
Aired 1 December 1981 • 75 min
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.
7. United Kingdom
Aired 8 December 1981 • 75 min
Two men on a local council fight the system when forced with massive spending cuts.
8. PQ17
Aired 15 December 1981 • 75 min
During World War II, a British officer is ordered to abandon a Russian convoy.
9. The Factory
Aired 22 December 1981 • 75 min
A manager, a foreman, and two workers are all that remains of a factory yet labor relations stay the same
10. England's Green and Pleasant Land
Aired 5 January 1982 • 75 min
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?
11. A Cotswold Death
Aired 12 January 1982 • 75 min
A police inspector investigates the murder of an Arab sheik who had become a village's Lord of the Manor.
12. Under the Skin
Aired 19 January 1982 • 75 min
Three women involved in different ways in the women's movement.
13. Commitments
Aired 26 January 1982 • 75 min
Politics and relationships during the last years of the Heath government
14. Life After Death
Aired 2 February 1982 • 75 min
Meg: We were so close, we loved each other, we made a whole together. I feel cut in half.
15. The Silly Season
Aired 9 February 1982 • 75 min
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.
16. Too Late to Talk to Billy
Aired 16 February 1982 • 75 min
A family in Belfast deals with life after the death of the mother from cancer
17. Willie's Last Stand
Aired 23 February 1982 • 75 min
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?
18. Tishoo
Aired 9 March 1982 • 75 min
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.
19. Home Sweet Home
6.4Aired 16 March 1982 • 75 min
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.
20. A Sudden Wrench
Aired 23 March 1982 • 75 min
"My life is over - and I just didn't notice it passing." A call to a radio helpline leads to depressed housewife Christine finding a new direction in life.
21. Eve Set the Balls of Corruption Going
Aired 30 March 1982 • 75 min
Adolescents will always be obsessed by the same old subject, even when they are educated by nuns. Six ex-Classmates meet for the first time in 12 years and hilarious memories change into highly emotional situations.
22. Whistling Wally
Aired 6 April 1982 • 75 min
While Wally was happy there wasn't much wrong with the world, and pints seemed a small price to pay for what he gave us. But don't forget what we gave him. We gave him the knowledge he was important, at least to us.