The Weekly Play

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

The Weekly Play

The Wednesday Play: Z for Zachariah (1984)

22 August 2012 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Z for Zachariah

Apocalyptic tales were all the rage in the 80s, thanks to the ever-present fear of nuclear war. 1984, with its obvious connections to Orwell, spawned more than its fair share of these terror tales on TV alone. Most famous was Barry Hines/Mick James’s ‘documentary’ Threads about a nuclear war and its effects on Sheffield, but the BBC’s Play for Today slot also featured an adaptation of the novel Z For Zachariah.

Radio Times coverOriginally set in the mid-West but relocated to Wales for the play – drama budgets being what they were back then – Z for Zachariah sees a young woman, Ann Burden (Pippa Hinchley), survive a nuclear war by virtue of living in a small valley with a self-contained weather system. At first believing she’s the only survivor, her lonely existence is eventually ended when a scientist, John Loomis (Anthony Andrews), arrives. The rest of the play details the changing, deteriorating relationship between the two (no, no spoilers).

As you might imagine, it’s not a cheery affair and with only a TV drama budget to work on and with its relocation from the US, it’s not entirely convincing. But as was common with many of the tales of misery from the 80s, it’s powerful stuff. Unfortunately, it’s not available on DVD, but you can watch it below on YouTube, you lucky people. Enjoy!

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The Wednesday Play: The Secret of Croftmore (1988)

25 July 2012 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

David Tennant in The Secret of Croftmore

Grown-ups weren’t the only people allowed to watch plays on British TV – or even to have plays especially written for them. ITV’s Dramarama, which ran for seven series during the 80s. As well as provided seasoned writers and actors a chance to work with a new audience, it also provided an opportunity for new, young writers and young performers from around the UK to work in plays. It saw two spin-off series launched – Dodger, Bonzo and the Rest and Children’s Ward – as well as one play, Mr Stabs, which was a sequel to the early 70s children’s fantasy series Ace of Wands (about which, I will one day write, don’t you be a worrying).

Since this is the last Wednesday Play before my summer holidays, it seems appropriate to schedule The Secret of Croftmore, which gave a certain young ‘David Tennant’ in one of his first roles before drama school. I won’t spoil it for you beyond saying that appropriately enough, there’s a supernatural element to it. Anyway, it’s only 25 minutes long so enjoy!

If you want to watch more of these lovely plays, including Mr Stabs and Dodger, Bonzo and the Rest, they’re available on DVD from Amazon.

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The Wednesday Play: Artemis 81 (1981)

18 July 2012 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

Well, in our Wednesday Play slot, we’ve featured plays that have changed attitudes, plays that have entertained, adaptations of classic works of fiction, the gritty, the funny, the meta and more. But plays can also be experimental.

Generally, television dramas tend to aim for ‘mimesis’, to be as close to reality as they can. There’s a lot that goes into that: characters that seem like real people, dialogue that sounds like something you’d hear in conversation, logical plotting with effect following cause, and so on.

But art doesn’t have to have mimesis, as many a surrealist or Brechtian will tell you. Theatre and to a lesser extent film can try not to mimic reality, but instead to challenge conventions and impose its own.

Television finds this much harder to do, thanks to audience expectations. But sometimes it tries.

All of which is a very pretentious, convoluted and somewhat sophistic build-up to my trying to defend the almost indefensible: Artemis 81.

Originally intended as a mini-series, co-funded by Danish TV, this 1981 TV production by noted scriptwriter David Rudkin (as well as several individual plays for television, he also adapted MR James’ The Ash Tree for the BBC’s Ghost Stories for Christmas, and contributed to the screenplay for François Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451) saw paranormal novelist Gideon Harlax (Shelley‘s Hywel Bennett) involved in an epic battle to save the earth from the Angel of Death (Eldorado‘s Roland Curram) and Danish organist Dr Albrecht Von Drachenfels (Dan O’Herlihy), aided and abetted by his wife, Gwen (Dinah Stabb), an Oxford student (Daniel Day-Lewis, but unrecognisable) and the Angel of Love and Light Helith (Sting, in his first proper acting role).

Now if you’ve made it through that paragraph without inadvertently sniggering once, you’re a stronger and more serious person than I. And if you can make it through the first four minutes of Artemis 81, let alone the whole thing, without doing the same, your Herculian strength of will will become a thing of legend. Follow me after the jump where you can find out more about it and even watch it. All three hours of it. Is that a challenge or what?

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The Wednesday Play: Abigail’s Party (1977)

11 July 2012 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Abigail's Party

So far, most of the plays in this strand have been worthy, important and serious. But there used to be a strong tradition of comedy plays within most of British TV’s anthology series – there was even a Comedy Playhouse anthology series that gave birth to the likes of Steptoe and Son, Till Death Us Do Part, All Gas and Gaiters, The Liver Birds, Are You Being Served? and Last of the Summer Wine.

But Play For Today, the BBC’s main play series, aired a number of important comedy plays from no less a director than Mike Leigh, the man behind the award-winning Naked, Secret & Lies, Vera Drake, Career Girls and Life is Sweet. But despite having that kind of a CV in the film industry, arguably he is still best known for two of his six Plays For Today: Nuts in May and this week’s Wednesday Play, Abigail’s Party.

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The Wednesday Play: The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968)

4 July 2012 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

The Year of the Sex Olympics

When BBC2 launched in 1964, it was the first British TV station to broadcast 625 lines of picture, rather than the standard 405 lines of BBC1 and ITV. Yes, BBC2 was the BBC HD of its day – take that, US TV, with your 525 lines of NTSC (Never Twice the Same Colour) goodness.

To show off its technological superiority, one of the first regular programmes on the station was Theatre 625, a 90-minute play slot that ran from 1964 to 1968, giving us 114 separate plays (the last year’s worth in colour, since BBC2 was also the first European channel to broadcast in colour), most of which, in typical BBC fashion, have been wiped.

Of the plays that were made, perhaps the most famous are John Hopkins’ four-part Rashomon-esque Talking To A Stranger, which starred Judi Dench and told the same story from four different viewpoints – it was voted the 78th Greatest British Television Programme by industry experts and was reviewed at the time as “the first authentic masterpiece written directly for television”.

Also of note was a remake of blog god Nigel Kneale’s 1954 adaptation of 1984 and the strand’s penultimate play, also by Kneale (who now has his own category on the blog, incidentally): the highly prophetic and highly appropriate for this month of all months, The Year of The Sex Olympics, which is today’s Wednesday Play. Follow me after the jump to find out more.

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