Play for Today Season 6 Episodes

Episode 1

Plaintiffs and Defendants

64 mins

Torn between a long-suffering wife and a neurotic, demanding mistress, a lawyer suffers a series of personal crises.

Episode 2

Two Sundays

57 mins

Two boys at school in the 1950s. Two professional men in their dubious prime today. Two Sundays and two crises. What have they to do with each other and which child is father of the man?

Episode 3

Moss

76 mins

Moss is a miser whose only love is his grandson. Then tragedy strikes, and Moss is "reborn."

Episode 4

84, Charing Cross Road

74 mins

True story of a transatlantic business correspondence about used books that developed into a close friendship.

Episode 5

Keep an Eye on Albert

76 mins

Pubs, pigeons, weight-lifting - that's Terry's life, and his wife Glenda feels neglected. But now Terry's best friend, Albert, is on leave from the Merchant Navy, and Albert knows how to treat a lady. "Fireworks assured," says the wrestling poster.

Episode 6

Children of the Sun

"You expect to face a bit of danger when you travel. Half the fun of it. But you keep cool and bluff your way out. After all, we're all British aren't we?" This edition is missing from the BBC archives.

Episode 7

After the Solo

59 mins

"The voice will make its effect. And it will, undoubtedly, be very touching. But, tell me: after his voice has broken, can you make anything of him then?" After the solo, after the chorus, after the applause?

Episode 8

Through the Night

80 mins

Christine Potts, in hospital for a routine operation, comes to face the most important crisis in her life.

Episode 9

A Passage to England

81 mins

Anand, his pretty cousin and their sick uncle. Stranded in Amsterdam. To them England is still the land of fair play and the village green. They seem prepared to offer all they have to get there. And Onslow is prepared to take them -on his terms. Are the two parties wise to trust each other?

Episode 10

Rumpole of the Bailey

61 mins

Horace Rumpole is an iconoclastic, poetry-quoting "Old Bailey hack," whose irreverence is not particularly popular with judges. He has a dysfunctional marriage to "she who must be obeyed" and a rather tenuous one with Nick, his only son, who has always believed his father cares more for the Bailey than him. Although Nick is scheduled to leave for college in America, Rumpole opts to defend a Jamaican teenager who has apparently confessed to randomly stabbing a pedestrian at a bus stop after a cricket match. Nick does stop by the courthouse to have lunch with his father and try establish communication with him before he leaves.

Episode 11

The Other Woman

71 mins

A feisty lesbian moves in with a beautiful younger gay woman. But one of the women also has a boyfriend.

Episode 12

'Nuts in May'

81 mins

Their Morris packed to the gills, the punctilious Keith and the more spontaneous Candice-Marie arrive at a Dorset campground where they pay £10 in advance for ten nights. It's peaceful: they visit Corfe Castle, eat vegetarian food, and go in search of raw milk. Then a fellow with a loud radio pitches his tent near theirs: Keith is beside himself and it doesn't help when Candice-Marie decides to befriend the young man. Things get worse when a couple arrive on a motorcycle, make noisy love in their tent, and then start an illegal campfire. It's too much for Keith: he loses it. Will our middle-class couple find a bucolic corner, or are they doomed to brawl with the noisy and unwashed?

Episode 13

Doran's Box

69 mins

A long-distance lorry driver; a spaceman; a volunteer under reduced environmental conditions; a man in solitary confinement: the discomfort of these people is shared by Doran - when he can't put his finger on the panic button.

Episode 14

Packman's Barn

59 mins

John Barrett returns to his remote hill farm after 20 years to deal with some unfinished business, and finds himself once again in conflict with the locals.

Episode 15

A Story to Frighten the Children

84 mins

Carol Mclain hurries home late one night, and encounters trouble. No one on the nearby estate claims to have seen or heard anything. And why should they care. A woman out so late on her own. She's asking for trouble. Isn't she?

Episode 16

The Happy Hunting Ground

72 mins

The fish quay is a happy hunting ground for an ambitious young rogue like Bob, who has an eye on the boss's business - and all that goes with it.

Episode 17

Jumping Bean Bag

68 mins

An end-of-term play with a difference as Ozzie and the boys break into a hard rock number. But even though they make the big time, success has its darker side.

Episode 18

Clay, Smeddum and Greenden

83 mins

A dramatisation of three short stories by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, adapted by Bill Craig. Loosely interlinked, they explore relationships with land and obsessional nature, all three featuring Fulton Mackay, Bill Fraser and Joan Fitzpatrick.

Episode 19

Love Letters on Blue Paper

76 mins

Why has Sonia taken to writing letters to her husband, posted to him in the letter-box just outside their house - love letters, on blue paper, recalling with increasing vividness the early days of their courtship and marriage?

Episode 20

Willie Rough

78 mins

"Ah walked 15 miles tae Greenock tae get a job and ah'm no' going hame without wan. Ah've got tae stay. Ah've got tae show folk what it's like tae live by somethin' ye believe in."

Episode 21

Tiptoe Through the Tulips

73 mins

A divorced woman is introduced to a separated man at an awkward dinner party.

Episode 22

The Peddler

81 mins

One pill, and you're floating on air. A different one, and you're full of lead. Married, mortgaged, broke, a love-affair gone sour - which drug can help Alec?

Episode 23

Early Struggles

60 mins

Kevin's wife walked out, and left him holding the baby. No sleep, dirty nappies - and a career in pop music at risk. And ahead lies a visit to the clinic. Will Kevin succeed as a mother?

Episode 24

Double Dare

70 mins

For the BBC's PLAY FOR TODAY series, Dennis Potter wrote this reflexive commentary on writers and actresses, the first Potter production to be done entirely on film. Playwright Martin Ellis intends to write a play about a call girl visiting a client at a hotel. So he invites the actress he plans for the part to join him for a drink at a hotel, hoping this will give him some material to work with. As they talk in the hotel lobby, the boundaries between fantasy and reality begin to blur and overlap.