The Weekly Play

A weekly classic TV play. Used to be every Wednesdays, but now could be any time, any place and anywhere

Events

Some nice new TV things to buy: StarzPlay and The Year of the Sex Olympics

10 February 2020 Rob Buckley Post a comment
StarzPlay on Amazon

StarzPlay streaming special-offer

So StarzPlay is quietly shaping up to have some of the best imported content in the UK. There’s Counterpart, Pennyworth, Doom Patrol, Castle Rock, Mr Mercedes, The Rook, Perpetual Grace LTD, and Four Weddings and a Funeral from the US, while from Europe, there’s the likes of Instinto, Sanctuary, Rig 45 and Monster.

And that’s just for starters – why only this very day, it became the UK home of Power and its spin-offs.

It used to have a drawback, though. Until recently, you had to have a subscription to Amazon Prime first, after which you had to take out a second subscription to StarzPlay itself, in order to watch it. That was a slight faff and not cheap, if you weren’t already an Amazon Prime member.

However, it’s now available on Apple TV(+), Android and iOS via its own app, as well as regular web browsers, so you can use any of those apps. Unfortunately, if you want to use your Roku, you’ll need to use the Amazon route in the UK, since although there’s a US Roku channel, there isn’t a UK equivalent.

Another reason to go the Amazon route, though: you can now sign up for a three-month trial at Amazon for 99p/month. Three quid for all for three months is pretty reasonable, I’d have said, wouldn’t you? And you can’t do that through any of the other usual sign-up means.

Anyway, you’ve got until March 31st to sign up for the trial, after which it’ll be back to £4.99/month as usual. What have you got to lose? Apart from £2.97.

The Year of the Sex Olympics

The Year of the Sex Olympics

Meanwhile, TMINE god Nigel Kneale‘s ground-breaking play The Year of the Sex Olympics is being reissued by the BFI, a mere 16 years after its previous release. That’s a snip at £14.99 but it won’t be available until April 20.

An anticipator of the reality TV of our own day and age, it sees Leonard Rossiter trying to find something even more interesting than the constant diet of porn with which the masses are currently being placated – and he hits upon real-life as the option. Unfortunately, real-life is actually a bit dull, so then he thinks adding a murderer to the mix might boost the ratings.

If you’re cunning, you’ll spot the esteemed Brian Cox. No not that one, the other one.

The Ash Tree
The Weekly Play

The TMINE Ghost Story for Christmas – The Ash Tree (1975)

19 December 2019 Rob Buckley Post a comment

As is TMINE’s want at this time of year, let’s celebrate the birth of Christ with a scary story by MR James.

Part of BBC Two’s legendary annual A Ghost Story For Christmas strand, The Ash Tree documents the tale of Sir Richard Fell, who has just inherited Castringham, a country seat with an unfortunate history. The house has been cursed since the day his ancestor, Sir Matthew Fell, condemned a woman to death for witchcraft. It is soon discovered that the ancient ash tree outside his bedroom window is the root of the problem…

Directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, it stars Edward Petherbridge as Sir Richard and features that Lalla Ward off of Doctor Who as well. It was also written not by Gordon Clark for a change, but by David Rudkin of Artemis 81 and Penda’s Fen fame.

Enjoy!

Edward Woodward as Callan
The Weekly Play

The Weekly Play: Callan – A Magnum For Schneider (1967)

4 March 2019 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Just in case for some insane reason you don’t already have them on DVD, this is just a quick reminder that possibly the best TV programme ever made, Callan, is getting a very rare repeat, thanks (of course) to Talking Pictures. I think the last time it was repeated was on UK Gold in the early to mid 90s, so don’t expect it to come round again for another 20 years.

The action starts with the original Armchair Theatre production that launched it, A Magnum for Schneider, which coincidentally again is this week’s Weekly Play. It sees working class ex-spy David Callan (Edward Woodward) blackmailed by his former boss Colonel Hunter into returning to ‘the Section’, SIS’s dirty tricks department responsible for everything from extortion through to assassination. His task? The murder of the titular Schneider, a German businessman who may be more than he seems. But has Callan’s nerve gone? And if it has, will his former employers kill him?

It’s a brilliant, unshowy piece of work, with Woodward showing his star credentials from the outset. But Russell Hunter as his informant ‘Lonely’, Ronald Radd as Hunter and Peter Bowles as Callan’s posh fellow agent Meres are all stand-outs. In an era of spy escapism, Callan was a welcome bit of gritty, down at heel British drama.

After A Magnum for Schneider, Talking Pictures will continue airing the series proper with the show’s surviving black and white episodes (no, the BBC wasn’t the only broadcaster to wipe its archives from time to time), in which the marvellous Anthony Valentine took over from Bowles as Meres, and a legion of other great actors eventually took over, Number 2-style, from Radd as ‘Hunter’.

After that, we head into the colour Thames episodes, which thankfully still survive. If you miss it, you’ll be sorry!

UPDATE: Actually, checking Talking Pictures schedules, it looks like A Magnum For Schneider isn’t getting an airing, so it’s straight into the black and white episodes tonight with The Good Ones Are All Dead at 9pm. That means you should definitely watch this week’s Weekly Play!

Talking Pictures TV
The Weekly Play

The Weekly Play: Armchair Theatre – A Bit of A Lift (1973)

1 February 2019 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Readers of the somewhat irregular and increasingly badly named TMINE feature The Weekly Play will recall classic ITV play strand Armchair Theatre, which as I mentioned here, resulted in numerous classics of the small screen.

While at least some of those plays have been releases on DVD, it’s never (AFAIK) been repeated on TV, beyond the occasional special, but this month changes that. Talking Pictures TV, one of the ‘nosebleed’ channels on your EPG (Virgin 445; Freeview 81; Sky channel 328; Freesat 306; Youview 81), is one of the rare channels out there on UK TV worth watching these days, particularly if you’re a classic film or TV buff. Airing all manner of rarities of both the silver and the small screen – it had Hannay last month and I can see it’s got the Roger Moore The Saint next month, too – it’s worth checking out if you can, although it really could do with a Roku/iOS/Android app, if you ask me.

And starting this Sunday, every week, it’s going to air a play from Armchair Theatre.

The season starts on Sunday with 1973’s A Bit of A Lift, directed by Dennis Vance and starring Ronald Fraser, Ann Beach, Donald Churchill and Denise Shaw.

A man meets a woman at a wedding and manages to sweet talk her, only to end up inadvertently helping out another male.

But it’s also this week’s Weekly Play. What serendipity, hey?

The Man With The Flower in his Mouth
The Weekly Play

The Weekly Play: The Man With The Flower in His Mouth (1967)

13 November 2018 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

July 14 1930 was an auspicious day for TV plays, as it marked the first time that a play was ever transmitted on TV. The BBC had been experimenting with John Logie Baird’s TV technology since 1929, running test transmissions from both Baird’s premises and their own radio headquarters at Savoy Hill. In the summer of 1930 it was decided that a drama should be produced as a new test for and demonstration of the medium.

The lucky title was Luigi Pirandello’s The Man with the Flower in his Mouth. Val Gielgud (yes, a relation), the production’s director, chose the play as it was only about half an hour long, had a confined setting and only had three characters: The Man (Earle Grey), The Woman (Gladys Young) and The Customer (Lionel Millard).

The production was broadcast live from a set at the Baird company’s headquarters, 133 Long Acre in London. Generally regarded as a successful experiment, it was watched by prime minister Ramsay MacDonald with his family at 10 Downing Street, where Baird had installed one of his prototype ‘televisors’ two months previously so MacDonald could view the test transmissions he and the BBC regularly broadcast.

Given it was early days for TV, don’t be too surprised to learn that it wasn’t shown in 1080p high-def or 4K Ultra. Instead, the video was a mere 30 lines – 1/36th the resolution of HD and a 1/20th the resolution of PAL. It also also wasn’t recorded, so that first ever TV play is lost to history, I’m afraid.

Recreated

However, in 1967, a shorter version of the play was remade entirely in 30-lines by Bill Elliott of Granada TV in Manchester. He used student actors to play the parts and recorded the performance a stereo tape recorder: one track held the 30-line video signal; the other track held the audio. Not only did use his own home-built recreation of Baird’s televisor to act as camera and monitor for the recreation, he also brought in the play’s original producer, Lance Sieveking, to authentically reproduce and present it. Sieveking was also able to provide the original artwork used in the play and the same 78-rpm gramophone record that had provided the music in 1930.

This clip is restored from a Betamax copy of the 1967 video, filmed off-screen at 30 lines. And it’s this week’s TMINE play. Enjoy!