Play for Today — Season 13

Aired 19 October 1982 • 75 min

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

Aired 26 October 1982 • 75 min

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.

Aired 2 November 1982 • 75 min

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?

Aired 9 November 1982 • 75 min

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

Aired 16 November 1982 • 75 min

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?

Aired 23 November 1982 • 75 min

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.

Aired 30 November 1982 • 75 min

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.

Aired 14 December 1982 • 75 min

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?

Aired 1 March 1983 • 75 min

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.

Aired 8 March 1983 • 75 min

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

Aired 15 March 1983 • 75 min

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.

Aired 22 March 1983 • 75 min

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.

Aired 5 April 1983 • 75 min

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.

Aired 12 April 1983 • 75 min

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.

Aired 19 April 1983 • 75 min

Susan and Jenny are aged 13 and 14 and in care. Jenny's mother has died, Susan hasn't seen hers for years Both influence the close, stormy relationship that develops between the two girls.

Aired 26 April 1983 • 75 min

The 18th century writer Samuel Johnson writes a political pamphlet protesting the British going to war with Spain after the 1790 invasion of the Falkland Islands.

Aired 10 May 1983 • 75 min

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

Aired 24 August 1983 • 75 min

A businessman tries to keep his son from finding out about an unconventional deal he and his secretary are making with a merchant bank.