- 4 hours ago
First broadcast 12th October 2020.
Celebrating Play for Today , the acclaimed series of sometimes controversial single dramas broadcast on BBC1.
Celebrating Play for Today , the acclaimed series of sometimes controversial single dramas broadcast on BBC1.
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00:00:00Right, this is Play for Today. Slay one, take one, no less. Interview with some old fart sitting here.
00:00:08A play for today. Just for today. Helps pass the time, something easy, something undemanding.
00:00:18Lasts just a bit longer than a bag of crisps and has the same sort of taste.
00:00:22Play for Today. A series of single dramas broadcast by BBC Television between 1970 and 1984.
00:00:30Years of crisis, when the consensus politics of Britain's post-war world began to unravel.
00:00:36When industrial relations, education and the health service faced fundamental challenges.
00:00:42When the country was struggling with the end of empire and when the personal was increasingly political.
00:00:49Play for Today reflected and responded to all this and more in 300 dramas shown in prime time to audiences
00:00:58numbered in millions.
00:01:05What?
00:01:07I never watch plays on the telly anyway.
00:01:11Not ever.
00:01:13There's such a tiny little picture and tiny little people all boxed up together.
00:01:17I can never get involved in it. Half of them are so gloomy.
00:01:22Oh, my ideal audience!
00:01:23Play for Today was contemporary, often controversial and occasionally censored.
00:01:29But it was also immensely varied, colliding social realism with comedy, costume drama with fantasy,
00:01:36personal visions with state of the nation overviews.
00:01:39It was mischievous, critical and challenging and unafraid to tackle taboos.
00:01:48That is a straightforward incitement to perversion and immorality.
00:01:53The BBC seems to have lost all sense of responsibility in decorum.
00:01:57That was sick.
00:01:58Really sick.
00:01:59I was watching it, Richard.
00:02:02What?
00:02:03If you look at the whole body of Play for Today as a whole, the diversity, the integrity, the range,
00:02:13the freedom of expression,
00:02:16the freedom of ideas, the freedom of dramatic and cinematic and thematic exploration, etc.
00:02:21It's exemplary and must be an inspiration for anybody that's thinking about, you know, the nature of what film or
00:02:30drama is or should be.
00:02:34Fifty years after the series began, this film is a celebration of Play for Today.
00:02:40As recalled by those who made the series, it celebrates many of our best actors, writers and directors.
00:02:46And it celebrates how, through more than a decade of crisis, Play for Today made exciting, exceptional and enduring drama.
00:03:03Before and after the Second World War, BBC Television relied on plays from the theatre for most of its drama.
00:03:09Then in the late 1950s, the new commercial ITV network started to commission original scripts about life in contemporary Britain.
00:03:18Under producer Sidney Newman, Armchair Theatre attracted large audiences and critical praise.
00:03:24And in 1963, Newman was headhunted by the BBC.
00:03:30Producer James McTaggart and story editor Tony Garnett were charged by Sidney Newman with making a series of single dramas
00:03:38about life in the mid-1960s.
00:03:44And the brief was to do contemporary drama that rattled the cages of the establishment.
00:03:52What a brief.
00:03:53Ken was one of the handful of directors.
00:03:57In fact, I think we worked Ken harder than anybody else.
00:04:01And during that work period together, we got closer and realised that both politically and aesthetically, we had the same
00:04:12attitudes and the same agenda.
00:04:13We shared the same sense of what good drama was and the aesthetics of it as well.
00:04:21To do with absolutely reflecting the comedy and tragedy and drama of everyday life.
00:04:27But based on a kind of clear political idea.
00:04:31Here we go.
00:04:32Absolute quiet.
00:04:33Quiet!
00:04:35Quiet!
00:04:36Quiet, you see?
00:04:36There's never quiet in that studio, for God's sake.
00:04:39By 1965, it was clear that the electronic studio was a limitation to revealing the contemporary fiction.
00:04:48We wanted to do stories from the streets.
00:04:51We weren't interested in the end in theatrical sets in a studio like this, where you have three big electronic
00:04:59cameras poking in to a piece of work that's been rehearsed like a play and was performed like a play.
00:05:07The form didn't allow us to make drama that had the smack of contemporary life about it.
00:05:15Oh, oh, little girl
00:05:17Pretty little girl
00:05:20You're such a good little girl
00:05:22Why don't you let me make you a bad girl
00:05:26It was the time of the French New Wave.
00:05:28It was the time of handheld cameras, 16mm film, which was lightweight.
00:05:33So, we were in our late twenties, cheeky, full of brass neck.
00:05:38Up the Junction was a series of short stories and descriptive little events, beautifully written by Nell Dunn, and they
00:05:47took place in South London in Battersea, where she'd lived for a time.
00:05:50And there were a group of working-class girls, and their comedy and their serious situations they got in, and
00:05:59their boyfriends, and it was funny and racy and raucous and full of music.
00:06:04I knew I couldn't get that in the studio.
00:06:07In fact, Up the Junction had to be made partly in the studio with electronic cameras, although much of it
00:06:13was shot on the streets of South London.
00:06:16I want to be loved by you
00:06:19I love, love, love
00:06:23Scoop-a-bee-doo
00:06:25Oh, look at that, Sylvie and that old man in the ghetto. We'd better turn him over in case it's
00:06:33our lad.
00:06:34No, no, no, we'd be late.
00:06:37What are you trying to say?
00:06:38I'm still a fancy husband.
00:06:40Go home, mate.
00:06:41Where do you think you're going all just up like the Queen of Sheba?
00:06:43Well, what's that to you, you fifth-rate ponds?
00:06:46Always was one with the men, weren't you? Anything interests you'd have in.
00:06:50You dirty sod, I hope your guts drop out!
00:06:55And of course they did quite well. That was the first film.
00:06:58So that point was then conceded, we could do films.
00:07:01We thought we were part of the public discourse and we wanted people to use their critical faculties when they
00:07:09watched fiction that was similar to the way they viewed the news.
00:07:16The Wednesday play ran for six years and featured a much wider range of drama than just the social realism
00:07:22of Ken Loach and Tony Garnett.
00:07:25Then, in 1970, the sports department claimed the midweek schedule and the Wednesday play moved to Thursdays under a different
00:07:33name.
00:07:34We were inheriting what they'd created with the Wednesday play.
00:07:39So it was a very fortunate position to be in.
00:07:43That's to say there were high audience expectations.
00:07:46On the whole, people did keep coming back week after week after week, not knowing what they were going to
00:07:51get.
00:07:51And that was part of the point. There was a variety and a range that was as wide as you
00:07:57could make it.
00:08:04The first play for today was broadcast on BBC One on Thursday, October 15, 1970.
00:08:10Between a dozen and 30 dramas would be shown each year under this title for the next 14 years.
00:08:18The brief was to produce 75 or 80 minute plays about contemporary Britain that was challenging, which was code for
00:08:31controversial.
00:08:32And you were very aware of the stars of Wednesday play. You were aware of Tony Garnett and Ken Loach,
00:08:39the tradition of social realism.
00:08:41In fact, one of the virtues of play for today, I think, was that it was far more various than
00:08:46that. There were far more different kinds of play.
00:08:49More than 200 writers scripted plays for today or had their work adapted.
00:08:55The majority of the broadcasts were commissioned specially for television, although there were also versions of theatre plays, novels and
00:09:02short stories.
00:09:04The series was an opportunity for new writers as well as a showcase for the most prominent playwrights of the
00:09:10time.
00:09:10I realised that it was still imagination and people's fantasies, people's wishes, people's pains, people's anguish that really was the
00:09:20stuff and substance of what we could write about.
00:09:22And television has that peculiar power when it is dealing with what people actually dread, think, want, are joyful about.
00:09:38I always feel that it brought out the sincerity in writers.
00:09:48I think that was true of Dennis Potter when Dennis Potter wrote for the wide audience.
00:09:54He was thinking, as I was thinking, my mother's going to watch this, my dentist's going to watch this, my
00:10:00cousin's going to watch this, the world is going to watch this.
00:10:04It's pointless trying to show off how clever you are.
00:10:07Where does that get you with that audience?
00:10:11The more prestigious plays for today were often shot on film away from television centre.
00:10:16But the organisation and the economics of the BBC meant that most plays for today were recorded in studios with
00:10:23multiple electronic cameras.
00:10:27BBC Television Centre was built round these vast studios which serviced series, serials, plays and entertainment and everything else.
00:10:36So it was a very tight, tightly controlled amount of people and facilities.
00:10:41We were given total freedom on the one hand and an extremely rigid requirement on the other.
00:10:50Studio production was far more cost effective than filming and budgets often dictated that studio plays had to be mounted
00:10:57with limited resources.
00:11:00I don't know that there was anybody, given the choice, who would say they would rather work in the studio.
00:11:06I can't quite think that that would be so, but there were a lot of people who thought, and I
00:11:13thought, that there were very great things you could do in a studio.
00:11:16Sir Atwood, Sir Atwood, two by two, you at the start must turn and follow through.
00:11:25The drums shall play and the rustle shall go.
00:11:30Sir Atwood, Sir Atwood says, you must go.
00:11:34They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent.
00:11:38Adder's poison is under their lips.
00:11:40David.
00:11:42Psalm 140.
00:11:45Psalm 140.
00:11:55Lord, who has led thy servants to this desert of the fallen world, look upon my family with thy kindly
00:12:06grace.
00:12:08May my faith be for them thy pillar of cloud by day, thy pillar of fire by night.
00:12:18I look at some of the studio productions that I did and I think the directors have done incredibly well
00:12:26to create worlds.
00:12:28I mean, in some cases, very small worlds.
00:12:34Someone's nicked the top.
00:12:36It's there.
00:12:37It's very dangerous, eh?
00:12:40Someone's a lot of macho, really.
00:12:42Gotcha!
00:12:43What the hell?
00:12:45What are you doing, you bloody fool?
00:12:52What's your name?
00:12:53I mean, nine.
00:12:54What is nine?
00:12:56What's your name?
00:12:57Can you ask me, you mean nine?
00:12:59I've been in five years.
00:13:03Oddly, I don't feel cramped when I watch them.
00:13:06There's so much going on and they're so well designed and well photographed.
00:13:12For the studio pieces, you're looking for sustained dialogue.
00:13:18But it was writer-centred in a way that filmmaking isn't.
00:13:24The understanding that the writer was central was also a credo held by senior figures in the BBC's management.
00:13:31The creative impulse in most of British broadcasting comes from a producer or a director or both working with a
00:13:41commentator or a reporter, who may themselves be writers, or, very frequently, with a writer as such.
00:13:49Many people contribute, designers, cameramen, all sorts of people, but the main creative thrust is there.
00:13:55Next week's play is The After Dinner Joke, a comedy concerning a young woman's adventures in the world of big
00:14:01business charity, starring Paula Wilcox.
00:14:04That's play for today, next Tuesday evening at 9.25.
00:14:08On occasions, play for today's work with a writer demanded a radical alternative to both conventional studio production and filmmaking.
00:14:17I was desperate to do anything Carol would agree to write.
00:14:23And I do think that I had read an article in the Financial Times about charity.
00:14:32So I said to Carol, well, what about this?
00:14:36So probably I think what happened is it just came in.
00:14:39And obviously it was wonderful, a wonderful satire.
00:14:46But equally, obviously, it was set all over the world and completely undoable, you know, as a sort of naturalistic
00:14:54play for today.
00:14:55But I think we thought, OK, let's think about blue screen as it then was green screen nowadays.
00:15:01What I want to know from you, Mr Mayor, is where in your town are the people with the money
00:15:05so that I can get it off them?
00:15:09You won't find it easy. They're all conservatives. But don't play golf with me, you know.
00:15:13Where do they live?
00:15:14Up here, on this hill, by the park.
00:15:19And down here?
00:15:21Between the high street and the canal is what we call the old town.
00:15:25Ah, the slums.
00:15:26The redevelopment area.
00:15:27It was an era when it was much more fun to be breaking the rules and taking chances than just
00:15:34doing the same old.
00:15:35None of us were in the business of doing the same old.
00:15:38So we just worked out how to do it.
00:15:42And it remains an oddity to this day.
00:15:45Many of the most distinctive plays for today came from BBC Pebble Mill in Birmingham, where David Rose ran English
00:15:53Regents Drama.
00:15:56London drama does tremendous work.
00:15:58But here was another outlet and inlet.
00:16:02Writers could come and talk to us as well as us seeking them out.
00:16:05In fact, Hugh Weldon, who was our managing director at the time, had said,
00:16:09Boy, oh, there's one thing to do. Find new writers and nurture them.
00:16:13He wasn't politically motivated in the way that Tony Garnet always admitted he was.
00:16:20He had a broader palette.
00:16:21But nevertheless, he wanted to challenge the audience.
00:16:26He wanted to come up with something new and different.
00:16:29The basic thing about David was he trusted the artist.
00:16:32And that, you know, it's rare, isn't it?
00:16:36And actually, the first plays for today that Birmingham did were comedies written by Peter Turson.
00:16:43And the second one, which was my favourite Shakespearean, or bust, the three miners were called Art, Abe and Urn.
00:16:51And Art turned out to be a fan of Shakespeare.
00:16:54And the three miners went for a week on a barge to Stratford and Avon.
00:17:07And when they got to Stratford and Avon,
00:17:10they queued up with great excitement for a production of Anthony Cleopatra,
00:17:14but they hadn't booked seats. They couldn't get in.
00:17:18You're what? Not a seat?
00:17:21No, House 4.
00:17:23But we've made a pilgrimage from Leeds.
00:17:25Yes, well, that gentleman has made his from Japan,
00:17:27but that still doesn't make a seat available.
00:17:30It was absolutely joyous.
00:17:32They overcrossed the barge and, of course,
00:17:34the actors playing Anthony and Cleopatra appear on the bridge.
00:17:39Oh, this is great!
00:17:41Have you come far away?
00:17:42Pilgrimage!
00:17:44The birthplace of the Bard.
00:17:46Is he better off than the birthplace of Karl Marx?
00:17:48Well, you've come up in regal style.
00:17:51The pulp was beaten gold,
00:17:53purple the sails,
00:17:55and so perfumed the winds were luffsick with them.
00:17:58The oars were silver,
00:18:00and to the tune of flutes kept stroke
00:18:02and made the water that they beat to follow after
00:18:04as amorous of their soul.
00:18:07That sounded good!
00:18:11Wait on a bit.
00:18:12You're not...
00:18:13You're not in it, are you?
00:18:15You're not actors?
00:18:17Pastoral, historical, tragical, comical.
00:18:19Historical, tragical, comical, pastoral.
00:18:21We are the only men.
00:18:23Hey, lads! They're actors!
00:18:26What's your names, then, kiddos?
00:18:28This is Janet. I'm Richard.
00:18:30Well, l'm Martin.
00:18:32This is Herb.
00:18:33Ab, we come from Leeds.
00:18:35Gentlemen, welcome to Stratford.
00:18:37So there's a wonderful celebration,
00:18:40but it is about Shakespeare and the working class.
00:18:43But it embraced life, it opened to life,
00:18:46in a way that perhaps some of the drama coming out of London in play for today
00:18:52limited life in some ways, not the greatest ones, but did take views.
00:18:57Now, if the business of movies is pleasure,
00:19:01the business of literature and drama in the final analysis is truth.
00:19:06It can provide pleasure, of course, and delight and insight,
00:19:11but its main concern is the exploration of truth.
00:19:17The truth of a news bulletin is the degree
00:19:21to which it accurately describes an event that has taken place.
00:19:27The truth of a play is not so different.
00:19:30It's the degree to which it accurately describes a world conceived inwardly.
00:19:39It's the degree to which that world, inwardly conceived,
00:19:43has been accurately embodied forth.
00:19:46The degree to which it is not meretricious.
00:19:49The degree to which it hangs together as a single object,
00:19:53cutting no corners, cheating no one, including the author.
00:20:01It's the degree to which it is.
00:20:02It's the degree to which it is.
00:20:05When Play for Today began in 1970,
00:20:08after a period of relative industrial peace,
00:20:11British politics was again dominated by disputes between workers and employers.
00:20:17The politics of the workplace were central to a number of early dramas,
00:20:21often told from the series' dominant left-liberal perspective.
00:20:26A documentary-style social-realist study of a strike betrayed by union leaders
00:20:31was among the most powerful.
00:20:34There hadn't been a strike here for a hundred years,
00:20:36and the union enjoyed the protection of a closed shop,
00:20:40where contributions were automatically deducted from the workers' pay packets,
00:20:44and meetings were as rare as a sunny day and a wet weekend.
00:20:48And then it's happened.
00:20:52In the first place, it was our lads in the sheetworks.
00:20:55They walked out at half-past eleven over some minor discrepancy in the pay slip,
00:20:59which was something that they'd been complaining about for weeks.
00:21:03But it just seemed to snowball-like.
00:21:05Suddenly it burst like a carbuncle that had been left festering.
00:21:10Confrontational class-based politics featured elsewhere in the early plays for today.
00:21:15A reconstruction of events in Cornwall in 1913 pitched workers in the clay pits
00:21:21against a special police force brought in to help break a strike.
00:21:29The key analysis that society is based on class conflict,
00:21:35and that the ruling class exploits and the working class is exploited,
00:21:39and the struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed,
00:21:42the imperialists and the colonised,
00:21:46that holds.
00:21:50That was the politics that we were welcome to and were drawn into,
00:21:56and pleased to be so.
00:21:58You probably remember, in 1970,
00:22:02the tremendous clothing strike,
00:22:04when 30,000 clothing workers in the area of Leeds
00:22:08and throughout Yorkshire, and to some extent in the North East,
00:22:12came out on an unofficial strike for a shilling an hour.
00:22:17The strike lasted for five weeks.
00:22:20It was something completely new,
00:22:23or at least new in the clothing industry.
00:22:27The most ambitious and arguably the most radical of the workplace plays for today
00:22:32was based on a recent strike in Leeds,
00:22:35where the workers had come close to winning all their demands.
00:22:49CHOIR SINGS
00:22:49You know, we didn't want to substitute propaganda for quality,
00:22:56and we wanted to do drama.
00:22:58When we did drama, we did drama.
00:23:00But I think none of us ever did what we were accused of many times,
00:23:04you know, a propagandist or left-wing, you know, tub-thumping.
00:23:10We really didn't do that.
00:23:12Our characters lived and, you know,
00:23:15and our stories were there to be scrutinised.
00:23:19You know, are these just being manipulated,
00:23:21or do they have internal life?
00:23:23And I really was, I know, inspired by the Eisenstein,
00:23:28and Ponte Corvo, you know, pabst sense of film.
00:23:34And, uh, and film, uh, Eisenstein had been extremely important to me
00:23:39when I was first trying to get my feet on the ground in filmmaking,
00:23:42because, of course, there was no film school or course on filmmaking.
00:23:55CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
00:23:58Well, I must say, I wish it was as easy to deal with all the employers as that.
00:24:03LAUGHTER
00:24:05So, it seemed to me that if the film, if we were going to deliver a film,
00:24:11you've got to sort of, not explicate it, but you've got to illuminate,
00:24:16what happened, you know?
00:24:21What do you think you're doing?
00:24:28I'm drawing up a statement for the press.
00:24:31They stampeded that vote, Joe.
00:24:34Harry Gridley and his mob.
00:24:36You know that and you let them.
00:24:39I could sense the mood in the meeting, Maggie. We didn't stand a chance.
00:24:42Why didn't you get up and say something?
00:24:45Well, why didn't you?
00:25:04You know, as well as I do,
00:25:06politics is the art of the attainable.
00:25:20And I was involved in politics that was absolutely clear that you have to go further.
00:25:28You have to organise, you know, that strength and turn it into a proper instrument and so on.
00:25:39InVision comes tonight from Leeds,
00:25:41the city that provided the backdrop to the highly controversial play for today,
00:25:46Leeds United, shown on BBC One last night.
00:25:49Today, Leeds has been talking about little else.
00:25:52The critics on the whole enjoyed the play.
00:25:54Even the right-wing national press was full of praise this morning.
00:25:57So I got away with Leeds United and then I got just a couple of half-hour studio plays after
00:26:08that.
00:26:09And I reached a point by 1975 where I was, I'd been just out of work, you know, there wasn't
00:26:17anything coming in.
00:26:18And I heard from other people that people had wanted me to do stuff, but they were warned off.
00:26:24By 76, I was one of several people, and Roy Batsby was another, and Tony in a different way was
00:26:31another,
00:26:32were being fingered by the unseen and sinister forces of people from whatever intelligence unit it was
00:26:41who had to lean on the BBC and say,
00:26:43watch these people, they're trying to cause trouble.
00:26:46Routine political vetting by MI5 of applicants to the BBC started in the mid-1930s.
00:26:53As late as 1984, the BBC was being advised by the security services
00:26:57to refuse employment to those found to have been a member of the Communist Party,
00:27:03the Socialist Workers' Party or the Workers' Revolutionary Party.
00:27:07I was told by somebody who worked in personnel that, you know, we all had our personnel files,
00:27:15and that if you were suspicious, you were a troublemaker or whatever it was,
00:27:22you had a, in order not to put anything in writing,
00:27:25they had a Christmas tree in the top right-hand corner of your phone.
00:27:29Apparently I had five.
00:27:32So, you sort of knew, and of course, it worked.
00:27:37I mean, I was blacklisted, and I'm not making, I made my own choices about politics,
00:27:45and I'm not struggling.
00:27:47You know, the class society is the class society, and I'm sorry,
00:27:54because I know I would have continued directing,
00:27:59and I would have, that would have been good, I think, you know.
00:28:02As it was, I had to kind of fight my way back.
00:28:20When Play for Today began, the Second World War had ended only 25 years before.
00:28:26The 1945-51 Labour government, committed to renewal and reform,
00:28:32had been out of power for less than two decades.
00:28:34Certainly the writers who I was working with, and my friends, and the world,
00:28:42the universe that I occupied, was a universe that believed in the promise of the 45 government.
00:28:51That's what informed our work and our work in the theatre.
00:28:59So that extended into television.
00:29:02But, of course, the writers that I commissioned, writers like Trevor Griffiths, like Ian McEwan,
00:29:11were writers who were associated with policies of the left.
00:29:16But they're all too good writers to think that simply putting left polemic on television was either valuable or influential.
00:29:31Under the great act, the administration of 1945-51, they're there, surely, if nowhere else.
00:29:37I make no mention of my own part.
00:29:39But look at the record sometime, objectively.
00:29:43If I may borrow a very overused word from you for a moment.
00:29:46Now, look, we said we must have full employment,
00:29:49and we had it for the first time in history outside of wars.
00:29:53We said we must control the commanding heights of industry.
00:29:56So we took coal, the railways, transport, gas, electricity, iron and steel into public ownership.
00:30:03We said we must have a say in how the country was financed.
00:30:07So we nationalized the Bank of England.
00:30:09And underpinning all this, we created a caring society where a person was entitled to a good education,
00:30:16to health service, national assistance, and pensions as of right.
00:30:22The extended welfare state created by the 1945 Labour government was engaged with and examined in place for today
00:30:30about the health service, about education, and about the effects of urban planning.
00:30:36Important too was a sense of the post-war betrayal of the true tenets of socialism.
00:30:42A real social revolution would have committed itself to the irreversible destruction of capitalism,
00:30:50and the social order formed and maintained by it.
00:30:54A real social revolution would have affected the major redistribution of wealth in favour of the labouring masses.
00:31:01A real social revolution would have smashed the bourgeois state apparatus,
00:31:05and begun the creation of a people's state.
00:31:10Writers set out to understand the defeat of the potential of 1945,
00:31:14and to delve back into the war years to examine the myths that had accrued over three decades.
00:31:22Licking Hitler was an attempt to, as it were, diagnose what had happened in the Second World War,
00:31:29and why we were telling ourselves lies about what had happened in the Second World War.
00:31:34And when I met Sefton Delmer, who had run black propaganda during the Second World War,
00:31:39I had been absolutely astonished to find that there was a filthy, lying, deliberately misleading operation
00:31:48in which the enemy was to be tricked by lies being told by the British.
00:31:56The game is, we're a radio station, broadcasting to Germany.
00:32:00Yes.
00:32:00My job is to script the broadcasts, your job is to interpret them.
00:32:05I see.
00:32:05Propaganda.
00:32:07Yes.
00:32:07It was about the fact that this black propaganda unit belied the myth that the Second World War had been
00:32:18fought in this uniquely clean way,
00:32:21which is what every British film had said more or less from 1945 until licking Hitler.
00:32:29At the heart of the film is the intense, abusive, yet intimate relationship between the upper-class, unworldly Anna Seaton
00:32:38and the brilliant working-class Scot, Archie MacLean.
00:32:44And in the end, Archie tells a lie, and she has to go, she has to leave, tells a lie
00:32:49about her, and she gets sat from the group.
00:32:51And there is this wonderful speech right at the end, and it's kind of voice-over, about the English and
00:33:00lies.
00:33:02A narrator dispassionately recounts what happened to each of the characters in the years after the war,
00:33:08including Archie, who had gone on to make social realist films that sentimentalised memories of his harsh childhood.
00:33:16I thought the British probably, you know, had a gift for lying, and it seemed to me so clear that
00:33:22the establishment,
00:33:23having to justify its continued existence once the Empire had gone, could only justify its extraordinary self-importance through lying.
00:33:35Anna enjoyed a career in advertising and was a researcher for the Labour Party, before largely withdrawing from society.
00:33:45After seeing one of Archie's films, she wrote to him for the first time since 1942.
00:33:51It is only now that I fully understand the events that passed between us so many years ago.
00:33:57You must allow for my ignorance.
00:33:59I was born into a class and at a time that protected me from even a trans-acquaintance with the
00:34:04world.
00:34:06But since that first day at Wendelsrum, I have been trying to learn, trying to keep faith with the shame
00:34:13and anger I saw in you.
00:34:17In retrospect, what you sensed then has become blindingly clear to the rest of us,
00:34:24that whereas we knew exactly what we were fighting against, none of us had the whisper of an idea as
00:34:30to what we were fighting for.
00:34:34Over the years, I have been watching the steady impoverishment of people's ideals,
00:34:40their loss of faith, the lying, the daily inveterate lying,
00:34:46the 30-year-old, deep, corrosive national habit of lying.
00:34:53And I have remembered you.
00:34:57I have remembered the one lie you told to make me go away.
00:35:05And I now, at last, have come to understand why you told it.
00:35:13I loved you then, and I love you now.
00:35:18For 30 years, you have been the beat of my heart.
00:35:27Please, please, tell me it is the same for you.
00:35:34He never replied.
00:35:38And obviously, you know, it has not been very pleasant in the last 10 years
00:35:42to see the habit of lying, with ideas of empire returning again
00:35:47and British independence and lies about the Second World War returning again.
00:35:52We are back with the myth.
00:35:59Television drama has always had close links with both the film industry and the theatre.
00:36:05Nearly 30 plays for today were adaptations of scripts written for the stage,
00:36:10including one of the best remembered of all.
00:36:13Hello, Beverly. Hi.
00:36:15Oh, what a lovely dress.
00:36:17Thanks.
00:36:18Were we meant to wear long?
00:36:21No, no, it's just informal, you know.
00:36:24This is my husband, Tony.
00:36:28How do you do? Pleased to meet you.
00:36:30How do you do?
00:36:31He's got a firm handshake, hasn't he?
00:36:33Yeah.
00:36:33I'd like to come through.
00:36:37Abigail's Party is a story outside the Play for Today story, really,
00:36:42because it was a stage play.
00:36:44Mike Lee made a sequence of brilliant films for Play for Today,
00:36:48including the story of Candice Marie and Keith camping in Dorset.
00:36:52A tale of a bashful mortician's assistant, Trevor,
00:36:56and a chronicle of class divisions among the employees at a brokerage firm.
00:37:02But with his then-wife, Alison Stedman,
00:37:05he also created a hugely successful comedy for Hampstead Theatre.
00:37:10Alison Stedman's pregnancy ruled out a transfer to the West End,
00:37:14so Margaret Matheson suggested taking it into a studio for Play for Today.
00:37:19Absolutely out of the question.
00:37:20It is a play, it's a theatre play, it does not belong on television.
00:37:24I'm a filmmaker, I don't want to do anything in the studio.
00:37:28And I was talked into it, everybody said, you're mad, let's do it.
00:37:33Lawrence, would you put a record on for us, please?
00:37:35Yeah, surely. What would we like to hear?
00:37:39Demis Roussos.
00:37:40No, Beverley.
00:37:42We don't want to listen to that fat Greek cat-a-walling all night.
00:37:46I certainly didn't imagine it was going to become an iconic piece of work.
00:37:51Frankly, successful as it was, and much that everybody loves it,
00:37:56I can't watch it.
00:37:57It's a technical visual mess, but of course nobody's concerned about that.
00:38:02What they're concerned with is the resonance of the performances.
00:38:06And here were actors who were so solid in it
00:38:09that they just gave these amazing performances in front of five cameras.
00:38:15You don't mind me mauling your husband, do you, Ange?
00:38:18No, you go ahead.
00:38:26Go on, dance with Lawrence.
00:38:28No, I can't.
00:38:29Of course you can, get up and dance.
00:38:32Don't worry, Ange.
00:38:33Be quite safe with Lawrence, he won't rape you.
00:38:38Do you want to dance?
00:38:41Abigail's party's precisely pitched satirical portrait
00:38:45of the aspirational materialism of the middle classes
00:38:48has attracted as many brickbats as bouquets.
00:38:53Writing as a critic, Dennis Potter described the play
00:38:57as a prolonged jeer, twitching with genuine hatred.
00:39:01Do you want to dance with us?
00:39:03I don't think it's relevant for me or any other dramatist or filmmaker
00:39:08to be concerned in a conscious, manipulative way
00:39:15about whether you have to make the audience sympathise
00:39:20or find the character abhorrent.
00:39:25I mean, you know, we put the world, put life, put people on the screen
00:39:32without slogans and the audience has to decide
00:39:35what he or she or they want to make of it, really.
00:39:42Play for Today also showcased a radically different approach
00:39:46to adapting a theatre show for the small screen.
00:39:48Shot across the Scottish Highlands,
00:39:51the Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Black Oil
00:39:53brought together 784's touring show in a village hall
00:39:57with costume drama reconstructions
00:40:00and documentary film of recent events.
00:40:30The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Black Oil
00:40:49For the film, director John McKenzie reconstructed as location shot drama
00:40:55key moments in 200 and more years of exploitation of the highlands
00:41:00by the English aristocracy.
00:41:03He wove these together with the play being performed to a highland audience
00:41:07to create a compelling tale of capital, the clearances and the cheviot's sheep.
00:41:13And as the play spoke of continuing exploitation,
00:41:17now by American oil interests and the conservative government down south,
00:41:21McKenzie intercut contemporary news footage.
00:41:30British Petroleum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.
00:41:49There's jobs and there's prospects,
00:41:52so please have no fears.
00:41:55There's a building of oil rigs and houses and piers.
00:42:01There's a good time and having moments and a great cheer.
00:42:08For the highlands, we'll be my lands in just four or five years.
00:42:14The 1970s were years of crisis, not just for the country,
00:42:18but for the mainstream British cinema industry,
00:42:21with dwindling audiences, competition from television and cuts to state funding.
00:42:27The truth is, was at that time, that you couldn't,
00:42:31there was no indigenous, serious British cinema.
00:42:35I mean, there was an industry, mostly used by the Americans,
00:42:39or to make very, very commercial product,
00:42:41but serious indigenous cinema was impossible.
00:42:45And the aphorism that came out of that moment was,
00:42:48the British film industry is alive and well,
00:42:51and living in television.
00:42:56Drama films were being made elsewhere in television.
00:43:00But Play for Today was an especially congenial context for leading talents,
00:43:05including Alan Clarke,
00:43:07who consistently pushed the boundaries of the possible.
00:43:11For Pender's Fenn, he brilliantly realized a deeply disturbing dream.
00:43:33And the impactoration тем,
00:43:33that he did not forget his
00:43:33that he looked at it
00:43:36in music and is not far from everywhere.
00:43:36He felt pretty much
00:43:37but suffering,
00:43:37It never believed and then persevered in the same way.
00:43:46So that's the same future.
00:44:05The cliché they play for today would be every week about some depressing aspect of everything
00:44:10that was worst about British society was just completely untrue and you'd have a poet like
00:44:16David Rudkin doing a play like Pendus Fenn which was just wild, crazy and not in any known
00:44:24genre and formally very experimental, far more experimental than anything that was going
00:44:31on in the British cinema.
00:44:32It was about a sixth form, which sounds like, you know, death for a drama and his problems
00:44:40with his sexuality but also with his love of music and also his intellectual growth and
00:44:46it was set again because we were regional drama.
00:44:49It was set against the Malvern Hills and Elgar's music.
00:44:53You have to be born in us, then you become pure light.
00:44:58No, no!
00:45:03I am nothing pure, nothing pure.
00:45:10My race is mixed, my sex is mixed, I am woman and man, light with darkness, mixed, mixed.
00:45:28I am nothing special, nothing pure.
00:45:33I am mud and flame.
00:45:35If we can't have him, darkness must not.
00:45:37If we can't have him, darkness must not.
00:45:52Concerned with history and myth, Christianity and Romantic literature, politics and gender
00:45:58and landscape, Panda's Fen is perhaps the most extraordinary and fantastical of all plays
00:46:05for today.
00:46:07There you have seen your true dark enemies of England, sick father and mother who would
00:46:14have us children forever, King Panda.
00:46:26With play for today expected to be contemporary and controversial, censorship skirmishes were
00:46:33inevitable and a number of dramas overstepped the BBC's boundaries of good taste and the
00:46:39politically permissible.
00:46:42two completed dramas were banned outright, although both have subsequently been screened
00:46:48by the BBC.
00:46:52If you are a nervous type out there, switch over or off for some calmer air, but you have
00:46:59to be smug or very frail to believe that no man has a horn or tail.
00:47:04People would say, and people still say, well why did they ban it?
00:47:08And I would say, and say the same thing now, well it's about a young man who incidentally
00:47:13is the devil, who cons his way into a rather sad suburban front room where they're looking
00:47:19after their daughter who's been in a motor accident and he fucks her back to life.
00:47:24Do you still want to know why it was banned?
00:47:31Checkbook in bureau, eh patty?
00:47:36Jewelry in bedroom?
00:47:38Shh, keep still now.
00:47:41Big old Krugerrands in the chest of drawers?
00:47:45Cash point card, check card, credit card, oh it all mounts up baby.
00:47:51Now why don't people accept evil when they're offered it?
00:47:54What?
00:47:55Still, you do.
00:47:58No joys, eh?
00:48:00No noise now, no noise.
00:48:11Evil, I wish to demonstrate, often speaks in sentimental, religios, sanctimonious terms.
00:48:18I think that is the characteristic religious approach of shallow minded people of our time,
00:48:24so that religion is a yucky, unctuous thing, which you don't actually want to know about.
00:48:29And I simply wanted to demonstrate that that was the way, quote, the devil, unquote,
00:48:34the sense of evil, would actually be addressing us.
00:48:37I mean, it broke taboos in a most extraordinary way and in a most defiant and loving and self-destructive
00:48:46way.
00:48:46But like so much of what Dennis did, in self-destruction was his salvation.
00:48:52And the message was always, you know, that the pennies may come from heaven.
00:49:00Today, the BBC itself has been in the news.
00:49:03As you've probably read in the papers, Alistair Milne, BBC Television's managing director,
00:49:08and Bill Cotton, the controller of BBC One, have banned a play, already filmed, at a cost of £120,000.
00:49:16It was originally to have been transmitted last November.
00:49:19The play's author, Roy Minton, disagrees with the band.
00:49:22So does Margaret Matheson, its producer, who took the unusual step of defying the BBC
00:49:26and showing a copy to Fleet Street's television critics last Friday.
00:49:30On my first day, on the fifth floor of the BBC as the producer of play for today,
00:49:37I was sitting in the office thinking, gosh, OK, here are the slots, what now?
00:49:42Along comes Alan Clarke and gives me the script of Scum and asks me to read it.
00:49:48The play itself, and we obviously can't show you an extract, is called Scum.
00:49:53Set in a borstal, it's described by its author as hard, violent and disturbing.
00:49:59Carlin, the main character, is allowed to dominate the other inmates by the borstal officers.
00:50:04It's their way of ruling, and they reward him with special privileges.
00:50:08It was a fantastic piece of writing, and certainly a story that should be told,
00:50:17in the sense of if Borstal was really like that, then the more people that know, the better.
00:50:23You know, can we live with ourselves if we treat children like that?
00:50:27You know, it was tough to make. It was filmed in Red Hill in a former old folks home,
00:50:37but which was a pretty grim building, and, I mean, obviously adapted by us to be more like a prison.
00:50:46The exact order of events, I don't remember, but we soon found ourselves talking to Alistair Milne,
00:50:53and we were asked to make cuts, which, with a view to ensuring that the film was transmitted,
00:51:04we agreed to make certain cuts.
00:51:07There's a scene in which Carlin swings billiard balls in a sock,
00:51:16and we were to remove the moment of impact.
00:51:20Carry on.
00:51:22Which you can debate forever, whether it's...
00:51:26OK, that was an easy enough cut to make.
00:51:29There is a rape in the greenhouse, and we shortened its duration.
00:51:37Say what we want.
00:51:40And there were two suicides, and in a sense this was probably the biggest edit.
00:51:47We took out one of the suicides. This was to satisfy their, you know, Alistair and the rest,
00:51:58their view that there were too many incidents crammed in too short a space of time for it to be
00:52:04credible.
00:52:06You know, in other words, the nature of dramatic fiction.
00:52:10Wakey, wakey, Davies.
00:52:14Right, Davies. Governor's report.
00:52:18Right, back in your rooms. Come on, back in your rooms.
00:52:20Anyone put in there?
00:52:21Back in there, Mr. Greaves.
00:52:22Murray Larcher!
00:52:33Eight.
00:52:35Eight, or it goes in the bins.
00:52:37Eight.
00:52:38So we made those cuts, but the meetings with Alistair continued, and eventually the decision was made that it would
00:52:48not be shown.
00:52:50Eight!
00:52:56Carlin?
00:52:59Carlin, eight!
00:53:01Eight!
00:53:03Eight!
00:53:04Eight!
00:53:05Eight!
00:53:06Eight!
00:53:10Eight!
00:53:11East, eight!
00:53:13Six, eight!
00:53:15Eight!
00:53:17Five, eight, nine, nine, nine, nine, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten.
00:53:29But that wasn't made public, and at that point I arranged for
00:53:38invited press critics to see it in the Coronet Theatre in Wardle Street and
00:53:48then you know kind of the shit hit the fan really Alastair Milne why did you
00:53:54ban the play on two counts really first that it is an extraordinarily violent
00:54:01piece and probably one of the most violent we've ever made and violence can
00:54:06be dealt with in many ways and can be handled in terms of dramatic expression
00:54:12in many ways also I that troubled me a great deal when I first saw it but more
00:54:17importantly I think is the point that Peter made in his article this morning
00:54:20actually and the question I asked in the start of of what truth is this the
00:54:25dramatic expression Alan Clark has been said that the reason that scum was banned
00:54:30was because it was an inaccurate picture of a borstal a distortion of what a
00:54:34borstal is like what would you say to that well I'd deny that completely
00:54:38because it was that's just well known I was based on about 80 interviews put
00:54:44together written as a play it is a play it is not a documentary it's been such a
00:54:49lot of I think rubbish talked about what's a drama what's a drama drama
00:54:53documentaries and things like that the thing is that a documentary is people is
00:54:58is one in which people portray themselves the drama is one in which actors are
00:55:04paid to portray other people scum was the letter by rights I should have been
00:55:13fired but that didn't happen in fact I think my kind of street cred went up a lot
00:55:22and the BBC didn't didn't take me on because there were other productions
00:55:31still in the works
00:55:46a reckoning with the end of the British Empire was central to the politics of the
00:55:511970s debates about immigration and race informed a number of key plays for
00:55:57today including David Edgar's destiny a wide-ranging study of the dangers of
00:56:03racism it was a very strong piece of work which went right to the heart of a
00:56:09debate that was raging at the time about immigration and so to have a play that
00:56:17so articulately examined the origins and the the state if you like of the nation on that subject
00:56:28seemed that's what play for today was for at the stroke of the midnight hour when the world sleeps
00:56:37India will awake to life and freedom destiny begins in India on the eve of
00:56:45independence before chronicling the events of a Birmingham by-election in
00:56:491977 in which the candidate for the fascist nation forward party makes a strong
00:56:56showing the campaign is shaped in part by an industrial dispute at a factory where
00:57:02immigrant workers are a majority one of the Union organizers has a chilling warning for
00:57:08those who are not prepared to express their solidarity with their Asian colleagues
00:57:12because first will be the blacks and Asians then the Jews and Irish and this
00:57:19isn't easy speeches this is true and then will be the unions oh I make no mistake the
00:57:27labor party that'll go the others too all in the interests of the nation and to save the nation
00:57:36they'll destroy the nation all of it except themselves and if we let them we've got ourselves to blame
00:57:48our fault we turned our back when they said you've got to look at life outside London
00:57:56and you've got to look at contemporary Britain stuff you could not turn a blind eye to the fact
00:58:05that our cities had changed particularly Birmingham but lots of them and television drama was not
00:58:11reflecting that despite the vibrancy of black and Asian theatre in the 1970s play for today offered
00:58:18relatively few major roles for non-white actors just as was also the case in television drama more broadly
00:58:25nor were there many black or Asian writers or creatives of the 300 dramas in 14 years of the series
00:58:34only three or just one percent were even part scripted by non-white writers
00:58:40Barry Records in the Beautiful Caribbean was one of the early plays for today that was wiped after
00:58:47transmission both of the other two were directed by Horace Ove who also co-wrote the Garland and a
00:58:55Hole in Babylon it seems that the only opportunities a black director have to make a film is always to
00:59:01deal
00:59:01with racism you know when the white director has a wider canvas you can go make a film about anything
00:59:09and
00:59:09I think black directors would like that same opportunity a hole in Babylon is based on the events of what
00:59:15became known as the spaghetti house siege in 1975 when three black men attempted to rob the managers of a
00:59:23group of restaurants
00:59:24the film links the crime with a profound racial discrimination faced by black communities and shows
00:59:32how the men understood their actions as in part a form of black protest
00:59:39come on bra let's be realistic you got a better plan well it's a lot of money all right but
00:59:50no guns
00:59:52are you mad why are you so worried about guns they kill people when the white man took your great
01:00:01grandfather from Africa to make him asleep what did he use the gun when he came to our land what
01:00:07did
01:00:08he use the gun how do Smith and Vasta keep control over southern Africa with a gun when the white
01:00:14man used
01:00:14the gun against us they call it law and order when we pick up a gun to take back what
01:00:20he stole from us
01:00:21they call it terrorism we don't have to behave like them then stay asleep when we did these things we
01:00:28wanted them to be good drama we didn't want them just to be positive images in it because drama is
01:00:34not
01:00:34about positive images most dramas about extremely complex and difficult people
01:00:43there's a whole story really about the Asian community first-generation in Birmingham and why
01:00:51Horace was the right person to do this script because he'd go out in the street and he'd have the
01:00:58actors he'd have the cast and if he saw something strange happening up in yeah he'd involve them in
01:01:05that a divorced Muslim man marries a second wife who has joined him from India and in the end she
01:01:13gets
01:01:13deported because of being she didn't have all the papers which is very moving I wish I wish you'd
01:01:21realize what a hell you're putting that poor woman through she's her marriage in doubt and and pregnant
01:01:27she'll be isolated by most of the people in her village it's going to affect her state of mind
01:01:33not to mention her her unborn child oh I'm sorry the decision doesn't lie in my hands
01:01:39well why can't we see the person who make the decisions we have done everything possible in
01:01:44the past one month our MP has written to the home secretary we have picketed outside the home
01:01:50office we have done everything possible we have sent petitions after petitions our lawyer has tried
01:01:55to explain how the whole misunderstanding took place look stop wasting your time and mine
01:02:23while he was working on play for today Peter and George also produced Empire Road the first British
01:02:31television series to be scripted acted and directed predominantly by black artists
01:02:41I got this call from a decent producer of of of plays for today quite good and he said I've
01:02:50read about
01:02:51this Empire Road thing yep and you're absolutely going to regret this for the whole of your life
01:02:56he said we talked about doing this once and we realized it was not possible first of all you don't
01:03:03have the actors any act black actor in this country is terrible they won't turn up on time for rehearsals
01:03:10and the audience will hate it you will regret this now he phoned me up
01:03:19just to say that and it's puzzled me throughout my life why that was more symptomatic and it's to do
01:03:27with the fact that they'd never work with someone like Horace
01:03:43the endgame of Empire was also played out across the Irish Sea with British troops deployed in Northern
01:03:50Ireland after August 1969 the conflict was important in some 20 plays for today I got extremely fascinated
01:04:01with Northern Ireland by being involved with it was that there was a minor pieces that was one of the
01:04:07early plays for today but I just happened to go to County Cork for a couple of weeks on location
01:04:12and
01:04:13got a feeling of Ireland and there was Colin Welland whose relatives lived in County Mayo three or four
01:04:21miles from the border and there was a perfect story which was a little bit dependent on the story of
01:04:27Kez which Colin had been a cast member of about a boy whose parents are killed in in Belfast and
01:04:34who
01:04:34is relocated to an even more dangerous part of of Southern Ireland and that gave me an appetite for
01:04:42borders for the imaginative resources of that and also for sheer political fascination with the
01:04:49current political turmoil so it was something that just preoccupied me intensely for several years
01:04:56the dominant theme of the place for today set in Ireland is the human toll of the troubles and
01:05:03this takes precedence over attempts to reach a political understanding in shadows on our skin Joe a boy
01:05:12from a Catholic family befriends an English school teacher Kathleen Joe's world is shaped by his
01:05:19alcoholic father's past with the IRA and by a city in which violent conflict is an everyday occurrence
01:05:30eventually Joe betrays a secret entrusted to him by Kathleen which leads to her being attacked by Joe's jealous
01:05:38Republican brother you're going away money bringing my clothes and books don't want anything else
01:05:52run out all the clothes I was wearing last night by the money I thought everything I owned yesterday
01:06:05you shouldn't have come I wanted to go away from here hating everybody very much
01:06:14please don't go
01:06:21here
01:06:23always meant to give you that
01:06:33here's my taxi
01:06:35is it all my fault
01:06:40don't suppose it was
01:06:44one day
01:06:52one day we'll all be different
01:06:58the British army is also a constant presence in one of the first dramas to be shot on the streets
01:07:04of
01:07:04Belfast a tale of two young women navigating the challenges of the city during one wintry day and night
01:07:24is this the kind of place you want to live is this the only life we're gonna have what we
01:07:33need
01:07:45one of the strengths of Stuart Parker and John Bruce's film is its vivid sense of everyday living and loving
01:07:52in the midst of the conflict
01:08:12the troubles in Belfast also framed the acclaimed Billy trilogy by Graham
01:08:18read made for BBC Northern Ireland in the final years of play for today the dramas explore tensions and violence
01:08:26in a protestant working-class family
01:08:58you go on up to bed and I bring you up some tea
01:08:59I wish the whole bloody lot of you had cancer
01:09:01I wish you were all bloody dying
01:09:03I go out to work every day
01:09:05your man never knew what it was like to have a broken peg
01:09:07no but she knew what it was like to have a broken jaw and a broken nose
01:09:10I'm warning you I'm bloody warning you
01:09:13now wouldn't you let her run off with her insurance man
01:09:15oh for goodness sake Billy
01:09:17he was a better bloody man than you
01:09:19at least he appreciated her but you couldn't take that
01:09:21well she loved him
01:09:23she despised you but she loved him
01:09:26Billy's father's attack on him is intercut with a fight from years before
01:09:30when he discovered his wife's infidelity with a travelling salesman
01:09:36oh
01:09:36oh
01:09:53you haven't looked your heart at me again and I'll beat your F.E.H.O.D.Y.
01:09:57I'll beat your bloody neck
01:09:59Get up
01:10:01you never clipped in this house
01:10:03again, I'll bloody kill you!
01:10:08Shut up,
01:10:09I'm barely here, man!
01:10:11Shut the bloody hell!
01:10:26Sometimes
01:10:27I feel I've
01:10:29got to run
01:10:31away, I've got
01:10:33Throughout the 1970s,
01:10:35questions of sexuality and gender,
01:10:37once seen as essentially
01:10:39personal matters, were increasingly
01:10:41understood as political concerns.
01:10:44Play for Today
01:10:45responded with a handful
01:10:47of dramas about gay lives
01:10:50and a portrait of a young
01:10:51adult recognizing they are
01:10:53transgender, in the language
01:10:55of the time, transsexual.
01:10:57I have known
01:10:59transsexuals reach 50
01:11:01without understanding
01:11:03I've seen them die without
01:11:04understanding.
01:11:06Stephen is young!
01:11:10If you care
01:11:12let him be happy
01:11:14Let him do it
01:11:17operations
01:11:21After the
01:11:22Hormone treatment
01:11:24he'll get
01:11:26He will be so changed
01:11:28physically that
01:11:30I'm sure the operation will be a mere detail
01:11:32Mother
01:11:34It means I can start
01:11:37I've got something
01:11:39to look forward to
01:11:44And as feminism
01:11:45And as feminism
01:11:45became increasingly central to the lives
01:11:48of British women
01:11:48and of some men
01:11:50Play for Today presented more stories
01:11:53about women's lives that were written
01:11:55and directed by women
01:11:56And by men
01:11:57And by men too
01:11:59I had read Ian McEwan's
01:12:03First Love Last Rites
01:12:05And I asked him if he would write a drama
01:12:09He said I want to write a piece about the position of women
01:12:14And it's going to be set in the war
01:12:16And it's going to be about a woman who wants to fight
01:12:20and is prevented from playing her part in the fight against fascism
01:12:26Merely by the fact she's a woman
01:12:30You know
01:12:31On the anti-aircraft units
01:12:33The ATS girls are never allowed to fire the guns
01:12:37Their job is to operate the range finder
01:12:42If
01:12:43If the girls fired the guns as well as the boys
01:12:48If
01:12:48If girls fired guns
01:12:52And women generals
01:12:54Planned the battles
01:12:57Then the men would find there was no
01:13:01Morality to war
01:13:02There'd been
01:13:03There'd been no one to fight for
01:13:06Nowhere to leave their
01:13:10Consciences
01:13:13The war would appear to them as savage and as pointless as it really is
01:13:19The men want the women to stay out of the fighting
01:13:22So they can give it meaning
01:13:26As long as we remain on the outside
01:13:29And give our support
01:13:32And don't kill
01:13:34The women make the war just possible
01:13:39Something the men can feel tough about
01:13:45But I'm withdrawing my support
01:13:50Well it hardly matters
01:13:51Because we're going to keep you locked up
01:13:55Such was the world of television
01:13:57Four decades ago
01:13:58That out of 300 plays for today
01:14:01Only a dozen were actually directed
01:14:03By a woman
01:14:05Five were entrusted to the experienced
01:14:07Moira Armstrong
01:14:08Who had also directed productions for the Wednesday play
01:14:13The series did moderately better in commissioning women writers
01:14:17Especially in its later years
01:14:21I slipped one day
01:14:23In my house
01:14:24And gave myself black eyes
01:14:26In fact I think two black eyes
01:14:27And I happened to be going to a party the same evening
01:14:30And they came up very quickly
01:14:32Big, you know, real shiners
01:14:34And I found a very odd thing happening
01:14:36That women looked at me sympathetically
01:14:40But then I gradually realised
01:14:42It was because they thought I'd been bashed
01:14:45And the sort of slightly worse thing
01:14:47Was that some men, only a few
01:14:48I'm not saying everyone
01:14:50But there was a sort of edge of ho-ho
01:14:52That's what's going on
01:14:56Go on, tell me what colour his eyes were
01:14:58I bet you can remember that
01:15:00Tell me
01:15:00I've no idea
01:15:02Tell me what colour his eyes were
01:15:03Tell me
01:15:05I didn't notice
01:15:06I think he was wearing glasses
01:15:07You think he was wearing glasses, do you?
01:15:09You don't remember what colour his eyes were
01:15:10But you think he was wearing glasses
01:15:12Yes, I think he was
01:15:13Michael, you're hurting
01:15:14Do you think I feel so good
01:15:15About seeing you spend the whole evening with somebody else?
01:15:18Obviously enjoying their company a lot more than mine
01:15:20Even looking quite happy
01:15:22Which you never look with me anymore
01:15:23Do you think that doesn't hurt me?
01:15:25It's not the same thing
01:15:26You're hurting me physically
01:15:27Oh, so your body is more important than my mind
01:15:29I didn't say that
01:15:30I just said that you were hurting
01:15:36Look and see if the children look right
01:15:38Those children are more important than me
01:15:41I want to talk to my wife
01:15:44You think more about those bloody little children than anything
01:15:47I can't think why you'd rather marry me
01:15:49You should have had artificial insemination
01:15:52Would have been just as good
01:15:53And you've probably enjoyed it a lot more too
01:15:55You dried up old stick you've become
01:15:58No interest, nothing
01:16:00You don't even exist
01:16:10I'll make my own bloody children if I want to
01:16:13I'll make my own bloody children if I want to
01:16:14I'll make children more important than me
01:16:15What about my work?
01:16:16No!
01:16:17What do you want?
01:16:19You're not cruel about my books
01:16:20Are you?
01:16:21You're not cruel about my books
01:16:27Don't
01:16:28What's going on?
01:16:28But actually it leads to a huge tragedy
01:16:31Although it's so tiny the steps are small
01:16:34And the thing about it, the worst thing about it for me
01:16:37Is as the husband starts gradually escalating his violence towards his wife
01:16:42She is the one who feels guilty
01:16:44She is the one who at the end is blaming herself for it
01:16:48While he is in denial
01:16:55Okay, can you give me a few minutes of oxygen?
01:16:57It's actually a photo now
01:17:00Some oxygen?
01:17:06Just a bit of a chew
01:17:10I'd like to just remember my last meeting with my HR
01:17:16When I was leaving after through the night
01:17:20Eight months pregnant with twins saying
01:17:24Off to have children now
01:17:25And the
01:17:27I can still remember his little giggle as he said
01:17:30I then worked consistently for the BBC for about nine years
01:17:33And he said
01:17:35The legislation to commit to having your job held for you
01:17:43Has gone through parliament but hasn't yet received the royal assent
01:17:47She said
01:17:48So, I hope you understand
01:17:52I was very taken aback
01:17:54And I didn't want to come instantly back
01:17:56But I've never forgotten it
01:17:57I've thought of it when
01:17:58There are sort of furrowed brows
01:18:00And why aren't there any women in the top echelons of the BBC
01:18:03Whatever happens
01:18:04I've remembered that moment
01:18:07This one's called
01:18:08Baggy Baggy Baggy
01:18:10Out, out, out
01:18:16On the 3rd of May 1979
01:18:19British politics changed fundamentally
01:18:22With the election of a Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher
01:18:26Deregulation and an enthusiastic embrace of the market
01:18:29Would be the new order of the day
01:18:34Play for today was also changing
01:18:36Many more producers contributed dramas
01:18:39Diluting the left-liberal consensus that had shaped the series
01:18:43And The Strand's response to the new political reality
01:18:46Was cautious and tentative
01:18:51In 1981, one major film did set out to diagnose the state of the nation
01:18:56United Kingdom
01:18:57From the perspective that had been so important to play for today
01:19:01United Kingdom came about because I was friendly with Roland Joffe
01:19:05And I suppose we were trying very immodestly to tell a story about this nation
01:19:12And I thought there was one area of the Kingdom that nobody made a self-conscious political film about
01:19:19And that was Tyneside
01:19:21United Kingdom is an expansive tale of a clash between the state and residents of a housing association
01:19:28Attempting to resist rent rises and cuts in services
01:19:32In one scene, the region's chief constable addresses a conference about the future of policing
01:19:40And recent events, and I'm sad to say this
01:19:43Lead me to suppose that this popular support we've always taken for granted
01:19:48As it is quietly and insidiously being eroded
01:19:54I'm going to surprise you here
01:19:56I'm going to illustrate, which is what I mean
01:20:01We're at the crossroads
01:20:05This is the police image that you and I grew up with
01:20:12You know the lad who saw us across the road, outside school?
01:20:16We all knew him, didn't we, as kids
01:20:20But this is the police image of some parts of today's troubled society
01:20:34Is this to become the norm of our era?
01:20:38And what of the future?
01:20:40What is the image of the police that will be most familiar to our children's children?
01:20:46Will it be this?
01:20:53The community must realise that if we can't police this nation with their support and consent
01:20:58We will, like our colleagues across the channel here
01:21:03Be forced onto the offensive
01:21:08Right, thank you lads
01:21:10Eventually, the police move into the housing estate at night
01:21:13Breaking down the barricades erected by the residents
01:21:20The next morning
01:21:21The thing is, I mean, what do you get?
01:21:23You get mums and dads and grannies and granddads
01:21:26They always did what they were told
01:21:28We've been taught to do as our grandparents and our parents did
01:21:32If we did that, what would our kids do?
01:21:34They'd just do exactly what we did
01:21:36So we've made a stand so that our kids can ask why
01:21:39They can ask questions when they're older
01:21:42And they're the community
01:21:43They can ask questions, that's what it's all about
01:21:46Chief Constable, would you care to comment on last night?
01:21:49Well, as usual, we find ourselves as the men in the middle
01:21:52And I think under very trying circumstances, we acquitted ourselves well
01:21:55There's been some criticism that your methods were a little heavy handed under the circumstances
01:21:59Yes, well, this was an area where the rule of law and peace had to be re-established
01:22:03And I think it was done, and I think any firm-minded person would be happy with that
01:22:07Do you see this as being recorded?
01:22:09The only way that we are going to solve the deterioration of our situation
01:22:12Is through social change
01:22:14Not by the imposition of the button and the riot shield
01:22:18Not that
01:22:19So what happens next?
01:22:21Well, we take the struggle on
01:22:23We've just let it begin here
01:22:24This is the beginning, not the end
01:22:27And what you have in the United Kingdom is that attempt
01:22:29Both to play with the form and to defy philistinism in critics
01:22:35And at the same time to say something new
01:22:37Whether we said anything new, I don't know
01:22:40Because it was the very dawn of Thatcherism
01:22:43And probably from our point of view
01:22:46She hadn't been able to get underway long enough for us to better identify
01:22:50What it was that was so appalling
01:22:52But it's a film I feel a great deal of affection for
01:22:56When United Kingdom was first screened
01:22:58British television, for decades just the BBC and ITV, was about to fragment
01:23:04As first Channel 4 and then cable and satellite channels came on air
01:23:09Funds for single plays would be harder to find
01:23:13Mainstream ratings would be ever more important
01:23:16I think they did depend on the idea that you only had three choices or two choices
01:23:21As to what you could be watching that night
01:23:23But now, of course, we look back and go
01:23:25My God, eight million watched a one-off play
01:23:29On a subject about which they knew absolutely nothing
01:23:31And to which they were introduced for the very first time
01:23:34And of course that's revolutionary and exciting
01:23:37And we knew it was, nobody was in any doubt
01:23:40Everybody knew how lucky we were
01:23:42To have this wonderful institution called Play for Today
01:23:46So what has Play for Today left behind?
01:23:5037 of the early dramas no longer exist
01:23:53Their recordings wiped to save on shelf space and the costs of tape stock
01:24:00A videotape
01:24:02On it, a recording of a play, sound and vision
01:24:06Costing thousands to produce and now
01:24:11Wiped
01:24:12Gone forever
01:24:14Lost
01:24:15But there are 260 or so dramas
01:24:19For the most part original, truthful and idiosyncratic
01:24:24That form a collective portrait of the world and the politics and the ideas of post-war Britain
01:24:31And of what it was like to be alive four decades ago
01:24:36Come on, Pauline
01:24:38Close your eyes
01:24:38Close your eyes, promptly
01:24:41Surprise, surprise
01:24:46I'm going to go
01:24:47Got it
01:24:48Put it
01:24:48OK
01:24:50Turn off
01:24:56Britain
01:24:5790
01:24:5798
01:24:59Bang
01:25:02Bang
01:25:03Bang
01:25:04Bang
01:25:04Bang
01:25:04Bang
01:25:05Bang
01:25:05Bang
01:25:06Bang
01:25:06Bang
01:25:16We are right to rejoice tonight at this great victory of the people, and it's right that
01:25:27for a short time we should relax.
01:25:30But I want to remind you all that when we've had this short holiday, we have to turn to work
01:25:40to win the peace as we've won the war.
01:25:47The qualities of unity, self-sacrifice, putting the common will before private interests has
01:25:58to continue into peace after the war.
01:26:03And I want to tell you all that we in this country have done a great work in the war
01:26:10and
01:26:12we are going to face the problems of the peace with the same courage we showed in the war.
01:26:52I went.
01:26:53Yeah.
01:26:55It's very ingenious.
01:26:57They've got it in above where they generally put the luggage.
01:27:02You want to go?
01:27:03I don't want to go.
01:27:04That's your trouble.
01:27:07More spirit of adventure.
01:27:17I wonder where it goes.
01:27:21What?
01:27:22You know.
01:27:23No.
01:27:25I expect it's scattered on the central reservation.
01:27:31If anybody is in any doubt in 2020 as to whether the BBC should be scrapped or preserved, they
01:27:40should look back to this period we're talking about, where there was complete and proper,
01:27:48respectable, creative and thematic and therefore political freedom for people to express ideas
01:27:55and explore and reflect society.
01:27:59It's like leaving a bloody battlefield.
01:28:01It's like having to be a freehold.
01:28:14We are going to be a freehold.
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