Watch Play for Today (1970) Online!
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.
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Episode 1 - Traitor
Release Date: 1971-10-14A British aristocrat turned Russian spy is visited in Moscow by Western journalists
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Episode 2 - Edna, the Inebriate Woman
Release Date: 1971-10-21Edna, the Inebriate Woman is a British television drama written by Jeremy Sandford which was transmitted by the BBC as part of the Play for Today series on 21 October 1971. Directed by Ted Kotcheff, Irene Shubik produced it. The play deals with an elderly woman, Edna, who wanders through life in an alcoholic haze without a home, a job or any money. A rambling, pathetic yet defiant woman, Edna sleeps rough and begs for food and shelter and the drama follows her progress as she moves from hostel to hostel, going to a psychiatric ward and then prison along the way. Jeremy Sandford, who had previously written Cathy Come Home, researched the play by living rough himself for two weeks. A great deal of the dialogue and the incidents in the play come from the book, 'Down and Out in Britain' published by Jeremy Sandford in 1971; although the majority of the speakers in the book are male, Jeremy Sandford puts much of their speech into the mouth of the female character. The film features the only notable acting role of British actor Vivian MacKerrell, the real-life inspiration for the character Withnail in Withnail and I. At the 1972 British Academy Television Awards, the play won the Best Drama Production category, with Patricia Hayes receiving the award for Best Actress.
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Episode 3 - Evelyn
Release Date: 1971-10-28Frank is worried that he's over the hill when he reaches his 38th birthday. Conversations with his wife, lover and best friend do nothing to allay his concerns.
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Episode 4 - O Fat White Woman
Release Date: 1971-11-04The wife of a headmaster discovers that he has been physically abusing his students
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Episode 5 - Thank You Very Much
Release Date: 1971-11-11A social satire in which advertisers realise that having a blind beggar as the public face of charities would help make them seem more appealing to donors.
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Episode 6 - Michael Regan
Release Date: 1971-11-18A man gets revenge on a pub owner
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Episode 7 - Skin Deep
Release Date: 1971-11-25An awkward relationship develops between the families of a trade unionist and the regional manager when the son of the former wins a university scholarship from their employer.
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Episode 8 - Pal
Release Date: 1971-12-02Two sworn enemies, one black and the other white, are forced to confront their prejudices when they are forced together by circumstance.
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Episode 9 - The Pigeon Fancier
Release Date: 1971-12-09A retired miner devotes his waking hours to his racing pigeons.
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Episode 10 - Home
Release Date: 1972-01-06A story about four elderly "loonies" living in a rest home
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Episode 11 - Still Waters
Release Date: 1972-01-13A marriage can be lonely when the children have left home, as Nelson and Maud find out. Maud leaves in the middle of an unloving picnic, and Nelson follows - both sharing their stories with a series of strangers.
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Episode 12 - Stocker's Copper
Release Date: 1972-01-20In Cornwall, just before World War I, a striking miner befriends a cop
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Episode 13 - The House on Highbury Hill
Release Date: 1972-01-27A married couple move into the house on Highbury Hill and find some eccentric neighbours.
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Episode 14 - In the Beautiful Caribbean
Release Date: 1972-02-03A story about unemployment and the Black Movement in Jamaica
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Episode 15 - Ackerman, Dougall and Harker
Release Date: 1972-02-10A salesman learns a few lessons from the locals when he goes to Yorkshire for a business course
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Episode 16 - The Villa Maroc
Release Date: 1972-02-17A couple and their daughter take a trip to Africa
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Episode 17 - Cows
Release Date: 1972-02-24A social worker tries to help a painfully shy young man and takes him for a visit to a country farm.
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Episode 18 - A Time to Keep
Release Date: 1972-04-27 -
Episode 19 - The Fishing Party
Release Date: 1972-06-01The adventures of three Derbyshire miners going fishing