The Weekly Play

David Edgar is one of the most prolific playwrights of modern British history. So far, more than 60 of his plays have been published and performed on stage, radio and television around the world, but his best known work is probably the prize-winning Destiny, which was also the first play he wrote for the Royal Shakespeare Company and which Colin Chambers, literary manager of the RSC, calls “the best modern example of the English dramatic tradition”.

The play was inspired by Edgar’s work as a journalist in Bradford, where he came across a group led by an ex-Conservative councillor that called itself the ‘Yorkshire Campaign to Stop Immigration’. This group, which later merged with the National Front, apparently “addressed many real needs and some real fears” by holding meetings… at which they showed films upside down with no sound. 

Destiny tries to address the question of how such a group could gain purchase, given that Britian had fought against fascism during the Second World War. It starts in India, on the day of independence, introducing four main characters whose lives intercept 30 years later in a small town in the English West Midlands: a colonel who later becomes a Conservative MP; a major who is hoping to succeed him; a sergeant who is a candidate for a far-right party; and an Indian who works in a local foundry. During the election campaign, a strike breaks out at the foundry and a local by-election is transformed into a multi-cultural battleground, which results in the fascists turning for protection and support to the forces they oppose.

The play went on to win the John Whiting Award, presented by the Arts Council for new dramatic writing and was televised by the BBC as part of the Play for Today series in January 1978, with Frederick Treves as the colonel, Nigel Hawthorne as the major, Saeed Jaffrey as Gurjeet Singh Khera and Colin Jeavons as the sergeant. And it’s this week’s Wednesday Play. 

As we all know, The Sweeney was one of the most influential shows of the 70s, making stars out of both Dennis Waterman and John Thaw. But all good things have to come to an end and stars have to move on. So what did Waterman and Thaw do next? Waterman, of course, went on to the more comedic Minder, created by writer Leon Griffiths. And Thaw? Well, oddly enough, he went on to star in a BBC1’s Play For Today, also written by Griffiths, in which Griffiths – who had also written for Thaw in the 60s when he starred in Redcap – rehearsed many of the techniques that he would use in Minder.

Dinner At The Sporting Club sees Thaw play a small-time London boxing promoter, disillusioned by the fact all seven of his fighters have zero ambition. One night he has to send one of his fighters to a sporting club to fight the reigning featherweight champion; the fighter isn’t the best, just the whitest. The rest of the play then depicts the events of that night in all their seedy glory.

In contrast to a lot of Play For Today but in common with Minder, there’s no real social message and no judgement. People are people, life’s just life and this is what it’s like for them, good and bad. And, as well as Thaw, Ken Campbell and Maureen Lipman, if you squint, you’ll spot Liam Neeson in a very early role.

As always, if you enjoy the play, buy it on DVD to support thems who made it!

The heyday of theatre on television has long gone. Indeed, by the early 80s, with television’s constant drive to become more filmic and more ‘mimetic’, pretty much all the play strands on all the UK’s channels had disappeared, leaving film strands or even nothing at all behind them. However, occasionally, one channel or another would try to revive theatre on TV.

In 1987, BBC2 launched its Theatre Night strand, which televised staged adaptations of classic plays. One of those chosen was Ibsen’s Ghosts, directed by Elijah Moshinsky and starring Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Michael Gambon, Freddie Jones and Natasha Richardson.

Given the year, it should be no surprise that Ibsen’s story of a venereal disease passed down from father to son should have been selkected. Working entirely in a studio set of interconnecting rooms created by designer Gerry Scott, the adaptation shows the power theatre has, even without the trappings and verisimilitude of film, but it wasn’t enough to convince the powers that be that plays should still be part and parcel of television output. All the same, you can enjoy it on YouTube or buy it on DVD.

Despite being the European city of culture not so long ago, Glasgow has a reputation for being rough and its people have a reputation for being just as tough. Consider 17 things overheard in Glasgow if you want proof.

But 1979’s Play For Today, Just A Boy’s Game, depicts a Glaswegian wrestling with the notion of hardness, which some might argue is ‘just a boy’s game’. Jake (Frankie Miller) lives in the shadow of his dying grandfather (Hector Nicol), who was once Greenock’s hardest. Jake hates his grandfather – and vice versa – but his sole aim is to be as tough as him. But one day, Jake’s life of drifting, drinking and fighting leads to a bleak realisation. 

The play, written by Peter McDougall, a former Glaswegian docker and the recipient in 2008 of a BAFTA for services to Scottish broadcasting, and directed by fellow Scot John Mackenzie (The Long Good Friday), has an absolute degree of authenticity and is unafraid of showing every miserable, decaying facet of Glasgow in the late 1970s. Look hard enough and you’ll even spot the likes of Glasgow’s favoured son, Gregor Fisher.

As always, if you like it, support the makers by buying it on DVD.