Month: September 2013

It’s often said that science-fiction never truly predicts the future, only comments on the present – that trying to imagine what the future will bring only ever shows you what the writer thinks about the now. Perhaps never on TV has this been more highlighted than in the 1982 BBC1 series Play For Tomorrow. 

When The Flipside of Dominick Hide proved a hit for Play For Today, the BBC commissioned a series of six plays all set in what was then the distant future: the end of the 20th century and start of the 21st. However, with the obvious benefits of hindsight, we can see just how wrong they were – and how much what they predicted was predicated on the future being not too different from the present, even when it seemed to be.

After the jump is your chance to visit a 2002 when nuclear war was perilously close, a 1999 when the EU is at war, a 1997 when cricketers practised guerilla warfare, another 1999 when married women couldn’t work, yet another 1999 when everyone had virtual reality shades and finally a 2016 where Kenneth Branagh will still have a Northern Irish accent.

Continue reading “The Wednesday Play: Play For Tomorrow (1982)”