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 (19)
1. The Bar Mitzvah Boy
Aired 14 September 1976 • 75 min
A story exploring the emotions of a boy undrgoing the traditional Jewish ceremony
2. Bet Your Life
Aired 21 September 1976 • 75 min
Like alcoholism, gambling is a disease. Ches, a compulsive gambler, is sent for medical help. A wonder drug perhaps? Or hypnosis maybe? Ches finds that his psychiatrist has other ideas.
3. Rocky Marciano Is Dead
Aired 28 September 1976 • 75 min
Harry Marcus is a former welterweight champion mourning the loss of the past and dreaming of a return to the glory years of boxing. When a squatter moves in next door, does he have what it takes to fulfil Harry's dreams?
4. The Elephants' Graveyard
Aired 12 October 1976 • 75 min
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.
5. Housewives' Choice
Aired 19 October 1976 • 75 min
When Joyce appears on the door-step she looks like the perfect 'kindly, respectable lady whom Marcia needs to look after her baby. But Joyce only seems to be the average housewife.
6. Your Man from Six Counties
Aired 26 October 1976 • 75 min
A young man from Belfast is sent south to stay with relatives in an attempt to keep him out of trouble.
7. Buffet
Aired 2 November 1976 • 75 min
Freddie is going through an existential crisis as everyone around him seems to doubt their own identity and the entire purpose of conversation. Surrounded by inflation and extra marital affairs, his only solace is in buffet room drinking.
8. Love on a Gunboat
Aired 4 January 1977 • 75 min
In 1956 Britain staggers through crises in Suez and Cyprus while Leslie Potter pursues and marries Monica Dobbs. Twenty years later the nation has still not recovered. Neither has Leslie.
9. The Kiss of Death
Aired 11 January 1977 • 75 min
A young man's chances at romance are thwarted by his own shyness.
10. Our Flesh and Blood
Aired 18 January 1977 • 75 min
How Mums and Dads feel when they have one.
11. Do As I Say
Aired 25 January 1977 • 75 min
A quietly unhappy housewife finds a stranger in her house and is raped at knife-point by him. But when she turns to friends, neighbors and her parents-in-law for sympathy, they all seem preoccupied by other matters.
12. Spend, Spend, Spend
Aired 15 March 1977 • 75 min
The rags-to-riches-to-rags story of a 1960s football pools winner, based on a true story
13. A Photograph
Aired 22 March 1977 • 75 min
A couple receives a photograph in the mail of two girls sitting in front of a caravan and neither can identify the people or the place.
14. The Price of Coal: Meet The People
Aired 29 March 1977 • 75 min
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.
15. The Price of Coal: Back To Reality
Aired 5 April 1977 • 75 min
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.
16. Gotcha
Aired 12 April 1977 • 75 min
A student holds his teacher hostage in the classroom on the last day of school.
17. Campion's Interview
Aired 12 April 1977 • 75 min
A story about school.
18. A Choice of Evils
Aired 19 April 1977 • 75 min
The story of Father Borelli who in Rome during World War II must choose between freedom and his principles
19. The Country Party
Aired 26 April 1977 • 75 min
Richard Elkinson, the former stockbroker, is now running a country restaurant. His daughter decides to spring a surprise on him in an attempt to change his life for the better.