Play for Today (1970)
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 - Pasmore
Release Date: 1980-10-21Colin Pasmore tests his strength against his family ties but finds them stronger than he ever imagined.
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Episode 2 - C2H5OH
Release Date: 1980-10-28"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."
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Episode 3 - The Adventures of Frank: Everybody's Fiddling Something
Release Date: 1980-11-04Writer-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.
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Episode 4 - The Adventures of Frank: Seeds of Ice
Release Date: 1980-11-11 -
Episode 5 - Minor Complications
Release Date: 1980-11-18Kay Gilbert goes into hospital for a minor operation which goes badly wrong. This play tells the story of her fight for compensation.
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Episode 6 - Number on End
Release Date: 1980-11-25What 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.
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Episode 7 - Jude
Release Date: 1980-12-02Twelve-year-old Jude has never met Dick, his father. One Sunday afternoon Dick impulsively engineers a meeting, which has distressing consequences.
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Episode 8 - The Flipside of Dominick Hide
Release Date: 1980-12-09Dominick 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.
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Episode 9 - Name for the Day
Release Date: 1980-12-16Clive 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.
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Episode 10 - Jessie
Release Date: 1980-12-23In Victorian times, a nanny cares for a mute boy, who becomes overly attached to her.
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Episode 11 - Beyond the Pale
Release Date: 1981-01-06A vacation at a seaside hotel in Ireland changes the lives of four friends.
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Episode 12 - The Muscle Market
Release Date: 1981-01-13The problems of an owner of a building contractor company in Liverpool
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Episode 13 - A Brush with Mr. Porter on the Road to El Dorado
Release Date: 1981-01-20"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.
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Episode 14 - Dear Brutus
Release Date: 1981-01-27"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.
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Episode 15 - The Cause
Release Date: 1981-02-03A 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.
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Episode 16 - Beloved Enemy
Release Date: 1981-02-10The head of a multinational corporation wants to do business with the Soviets
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Episode 17 - The Kamikaze Ground Staff Reunion Dinner
Release Date: 1981-02-17A group of men hold a reunion dinner in Tokyo
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Episode 18 - The Union
Release Date: 1981-02-24You 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.
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Episode 19 - Sorry
Release Date: 1981-03-03Two very different women share an office, a common enemy, and a sense of humour.
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Episode 20 - Shai Mãlã Khani: The Garland
Release Date: 1981-03-10When 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.
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Episode 21 - The Sin Bin
Release Date: 1981-03-17Six 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.
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Episode 22 - Before Water Lillies
Release Date: 1981-03-24An evening with the Parent-Teacher Association gets out of hand.
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Episode 23 - Bavarian Night
Release Date: 1981-03-31When 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.
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Episode 24 - The Good Time Girls
Release Date: 1981-04-07Nancy 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.
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Episode 25 - Baby Talk
Release Date: 1981-04-14It'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?
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Episode 26 - A Turn for the Worse
Release Date: 1981-04-28Soldiers are subjected to a brutal and sadistic kind of psychological training exercise
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Episode 27 - Psy-Warriors
Release Date: 1981-05-12Soldiers are captured and interrogated by terrorists: but is it real or only a sadistic form of psychological training exercise?