Play for Today

📊 Series Specifications

Network BBC One
Episode Runtime ~75 min
Total Seasons 14
Total Episodes 314
Original Language EN

Play for Today (1970)

⭐ 3.3 / 5 (10 votes) 🎬 14 Seasons 📼 314 Episodes 🏷️ Drama 📡 Ended
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Series Status:

This series has concluded and all seasons are available for tracking.

Ended

Synopsis

Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.

Seasons & Episodes

Episodes for this season are available via edge tracking. View Episode 1 →
E1 The Long Distance Piano Player

A man tries to break the world's record for nonstop piano playing

E2 The Right Prospectus

A couple look for the proper school, not for their children but for themselves.

E3 The Lie

""The Lie"" refers to the 8-year marriage of a couple who are constantly hurting each other.

E4 Angels Are So Few

A man claiming to be an angel enters the household of a bored housewife and teaches the family a few lessons.

E5 The Write-Off

A man is made redundant but can't bring himself to let anyone know, plunging into a web of deceit as he keeps up the charade he is still in work.

E6 I Can't See My Little Willie

A man has a mid-life crisis in his brother's pub where sees life as a game show

E7 A Distant Thunder

A newly-appointed knight finds his celebrations cut short by someone who was witness to his treachery during the war.

E8 Hearts and Flowers

A TV host and his architect brother attend their father's funeral

E9 Robin Redbreast

A woman living in a country cottage thinks that someone is trying to get her.

E10 The Hallelujah Handshake

A petty thief and social misfit finagles his way into a church congregation

E11 Alma Mater

A civil servant working abroad revisits his old school

E12 Circle Line

A cynical student has a radically different view of life from his landlady, leading to conflict. Matters come to a head when he sleeps with her fourteen-year-old brother.

E13 Hell's Angel

A couple are distressed by the changes in their adopted teenage son when he joins a biker gang.

E14 The Piano

An old couple refuse to move when they find out that they can't take their piano with them

E15 Billy's Last Stand

Billy, a self-employed coal-shoveller, gains a seedy business partner and competition in the form of a rival coal-shoveller.

E16 The Rainbirds

A man who attempted suicide by jumping out a window is saved only to live in a coma, in which he has fantasies about his relatives and nightmare creatures.

E17 Reddick

Charges that the Rev 'Red' Reddick is exploiting his youth club members leads to an explosive confrontation.

E18 The Foxtrot

An odd menage a trois results when a woman and her lover are visited by her long-lost husband

E19 When the Bough Breaks

When an injured baby arrives at the hospital, a social worker looks for the parents

E20 Orkney

A trilogy of plays--A Time to Keep, The Whaler's Return, and Celia--exploring the life of the islanders in the past and present

E21 The Rank and File

The story of the Pilkington glass workers strike of 1970

E22 The Man in the Sidecar

A succesful novelist Edith lives with her husband and his friend, but she decides to ask the friend to leave.

E23 Everybody Say Cheese

The story of a disintegrating marriage told through family photos

E24 The Cellar and the Almond Tree
Episodes for this season are available via edge tracking. View Episode 1 →
Episodes for this season are available via edge tracking. View Episode 1 →
Episodes for this season are available via edge tracking. View Episode 1 →
Episodes for this season are available via edge tracking. View Episode 1 →
Episodes for this season are available via edge tracking. View Episode 1 →
Episodes for this season are available via edge tracking. View Episode 1 →
Episodes for this season are available via edge tracking. View Episode 1 →
Episodes for this season are available via edge tracking. View Episode 1 →
Episodes for this season are available via edge tracking. View Episode 1 →
Episodes for this season are available via edge tracking. View Episode 1 →
Episodes for this season are available via edge tracking. View Episode 1 →
Episodes for this season are available via edge tracking. View Episode 1 →
Episodes for this season are available via edge tracking. View Episode 1 →