The Weekly Play

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

The Wednesday Play: Our Day Out (1977)

12 December 2013 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Willy Russell is one of Britain’s most famous dramatists and playwrights. The writer of Educating Rita, Shirley Valentine and Blood Brothers, probably his most famous work for television was Our Day Out, which went on to become a stage musical. First broadcast as a Play of the Week and then as a Play for Today, it’s a bittersweet comedy about a school trip to Conwy Castle in North Wales.

Although the play was ostensibly a look at the highs and lows for a group of illiterate teenagers of being away from school, Russell, a firm champion of the working class, particularly the working class of Liverpool, gives us a play largely about the poor lives faced by inner city children, in which a day out is about the best they thing they can look forward to in life.

Amazingly, it only took Russell five days to write the piece, although given he was a teacher, he was able to draw a lot on experience. Shot on 16mm film by the first-time director Pedr James (who went on to direct Our Friends in the North and then to become head of drama at BBC Wales), it also took just three weeks to film and features a largely untrained cast, but remains one of the BBC’s most popular plays.

Enjoy!

The Weekly Play

The Wednesday Play: Breaking The Code (1996)

4 December 2013 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Probably one of the biggest British heroes of the Second World War was Alan Turing. Indeed, although he can’t be said to have won the war, without him, it’s very possible we would have lost it, such was his contribution. Because Turing, after whom the famous ‘Turing Test‘ is named, was the mathematician responsible for large parts not only of the Allies’ code-breaking efforts, focusing particularly on Germany’s Enigma machines, but some of the foundations of computing theory that are in use today even now.

So how did we reward him after the war? Well, he was gay so naturally we threatened to put him in prison, which prompted him to commit suicide. Well done us.

The story of Turing’s life was turned into a stage play, Breaking The Code, which the BBC adapted in 1996 in association with PBS in the US, with Derek Jacobi as Turing. As with all stage plays turned into TV plays, differing runtimes meant that cuts and changes had to be made, so arguably the TV version is a slightly inferior piece in comparison to the original. It also didn’t help that PBS asked for a speech on mathematics delivered by Jacobi to be cut because ‘Americans won’t understand it.’ Oh dear.

But despite the shorter runtime, it’s well worth a watch, especially if you’d never heard of Turing until now. Enjoy!

The Weekly Play

The Wednesday Play: Dead of Night – The Exorcism (1972)

28 November 2013 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Many plays, particularly those in the theatre, are written to impart a message from the author. TV plays typically have been no different and especially during the 1970s in the UK, social realism and commentary on injustices in society were grist to the playwright’s mill.

Largely, however, this wasn’t the case for genre series, which were much more interested in ideas about science, technology and the future in the case of science-fiction shows – or just scaring people in the case of horror shows. But the first play in BBC2’s 1972 supernatural anthology series Dead of Night, The Exorcism, married both the supernatural and social conscience to deliver a play about the divide between rich and poor that still was able to scare the crap out of the viewer.

Set in a recently purchased cottage in the countryside, The Exorcism sees various middle-class friends (Clive Swift, Edward Petherbridge, Anna Cropper and Sylvia Kay) get together for a dinner party and to revel in how much money they have. Unfortunately, their behaviour excites some particularly unfriendly proletariat ghosts and the party ends up going in a particularly bad direction for them all.

If you can get over the somewhat agitprop nature of Don Taylor’s play, this is a real blood curdler that’ll make you think while it scares you witless. Best watched at night, with the lights turned down, it’s this week’s Wednesday Play on Thursday. Enjoy – and if you like it, you can buy it and the two surviving episodes (Return Flight and A Woman Sobbing) on DVD.

PS Trivia lovers might like to know that the eighth episode of the series was going to be The Stone Tape, but that was eventually aired as a separate play.

The Weekly Play

The Wednesday Play: Comedians (1979)

20 November 2013 Rob Buckley Post a comment

One of the finest plays broadcast by the BBC was Comedians by Trevor Griffiths. Griffiths had previously written the BBC’s esteemed 13-part look at the collapse of Europe’s ruling dynasties in the run up to and at the end of the First World War, Fall of Eagles. A socialist playwright dedicated to writing for television, nevertheless, in 1975, he wrote Comedians for the stage. It proved popular enough to transfer to Broadway, after which the BBC asked him to adapt it for TV. 

The play is set in a Manchester evening class for aspiring working-class comedians that’s taught by Bill Fraser and includes Jonathan Pryce among its students, each student representing a different style of comedy. The action switches from classroom to stand-up club and back again, as Fraser gives notes on performances, praising the conventional, damning the unconventional. Except everything’s not quite as it seems and the play deals in serious analysis of the choices made by comedians in their acts.

“…A joke that that feeds on ignorance starves it’s audience. We have the choice. We can say something or we can say nothing. Most comics feed prejudice and fear and blinkered vision, but the best ones, the best ones… illuminate them, make them clearer to see, easier to deal with. We’ve got to make people laugh till they cry. Cry. Till they find their pain and their beauty.” 

Enjoy!

The Weekly Play

Charley Says: Beware of plays about nuclear war, particularly Threads (1984)

12 November 2013 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Threads

With the threat of nuclear war hanging over everyone’s heads for several decades, it was no surprise that TV would cover its potential horrors in some depth. We’ve already looked at The War Game, which wasn’t just one of the best ever plays about nuclear war, it was also one of TV’s best ever plays.

Up there with The War Game, however, was Threads, a TV movie written by Barry Hines and directed by the marvellous Mick Jackson (Life Story, The Bodyguard). Commissioned by BBC director general Alasdair Milne after he’d watched The War Game, it is a documentary-style account of a nuclear war and its effects on the city of Sheffield in northern England. Harrowing to say the least, it’s a pretty raw account of all the things that would happen both during a nuclear strike and after, right down to genetic mutation, massive depopulation, a return to a medieval-like economy and all fun of a nuclear winter, which it was the first play to ever depict.

And you can watch all of it below. If you like it, buy it on DVD, of course, to reward the lovely people who made it in the first place.

However, when the movie aired overseas, networks realised it might be somewhat stronger than the local audiences were used to. Canada was particularly frightened about its possible effects on audiences, so two TV stations put out these disclaimers before they aired Threads:

So remember children: Don’t just be afraid of nuclear war, be afraid of realistic depictions of nuclear war.