Kenith Trodd

Marking Play for Today’s 50th anniversary, Drama Out of a Crisis is a compelling exploration of the series, its origins, achievements, controversies and legacies. Featuring a rich and surprising range of archive extracts and original interviews with many who created the series, including producers Kenith Trodd, Margaret Matheson and Richard Eyre, and directors Mike Leigh, David Hare and Ken Loach.

A woman's fight to adopt a war baby from the Third World after becoming unable to conceive.

Maria is a dancer who becomes pregnant, unexpectedly, and has to decide whether or not to keep the baby. When her live-in boyfriend, who is not the father, admits to cheating on her, she kicks him out. Still unable to decide what to do, she imagines a dialogue with the fetus.

Daniel is an obeying and high-flying barrister with the good life on his side. Nathaniel Quass is a rich and bizarre recluse, generous, obsessed and sad. This reluctant pair are caught up in an alliance againstu an ingenious conspiracy which threatens both of their lives.

Freelance journalist David Dunhill stumbles onto the biggest story of his career - but his personal eccentricities seem likely to thwart him.

The quiet life of Oxford professor James Westgate is shattered when he is introduced to Penny, the wife of his crass new colleague.

Exploring the somewhat darker and more mysterious side of the Lewis Carroll's classic book, the movie follows Alice Liddell (the book's inspiration) as an old woman who is haunted by the characters she was once so amused by. As she thinks back on it, she starts to see her relationship with the shy author/professor in a new way and realizes the vast change between the young Alice and the old.

Two couples, one Catholic, one Protestant, exist on two sides of the chasm that is everyday life in Northern Ireland.

A Russian in London finds himself targeted by British Intelligence.

A strange young man has a sinister effect on the family of a middle-aged writer.

Incendiary 1981 Play for Today, written by Jim Allen and directed by Roland Joffé that tells the story of a group of housing estate residents who attempt to organise against persistent rent rises.

British playwright Stephen Poliakoff's comical teleplay investigates Europe's changing social landscape via three strangers who meet on a train. Peter (Michael Kitchen), an English businessman on an overnight trip through Europe, shares a compartment with a beautiful American woman, Lorraine (Wendy Raebeck). But Peter's hope for romance is soon dampened by Lorraine's xenophobia and the arrival of a haughty Viennese aristocrat (Peggy Ashcroft).

MIRIAM: "Here we are; celebrating a marriage, eating a cake, drinking, standing in a uniform, standing in a canteen ... with a Teasmade and a red red garter ... and I want an explanation." VALERIE: "I want to know why you all resent me." BRENDA: "Because you're not one of us."

A film from the novel by Jennifer Johnston introducing Joe is an 11-year-old boy growing up on the Bogside of Derry, Northern Ireland. A chance meeting with a girl on his way home from school promises to open up his life in an unexpected and exciting way.

Billy is a rather withdrawn little boy, untalkative for even a four-year-old. Who cares what happens to Billy when his father hits him?

Lewis, a gay writer of romantic novels, writes an article on gay issues under the pseudonym of "Zippy Grimes." The reason for this is that he hasn't come out yet and he doesn't want to alienate his mainly female fan-base. The article is a great success and leads to a huge amount of reactions, mainly from other gay men who are leading a double life. He decides to meet a number of these letter writers and eventually is forced to come out.

When DC Denis Deacey finds himself surprisingly transferred to Belfast he gets digs in a most unusual boarding house called The Crumlin View where no one is what they seem and everyone has been living with 'the troubles' for far too long...

On an idyllic summer afternoon in the summer of 1943, a group of children play in the West Country hills, fields and forests. With no adults around, they indulge in spontaneous games and horseplay - sometimes echoing the distant war, at other times revealing their own insecurities and petty vindictiveness.

When his father becomes a bomb victim, Jimmy leaves Belfast for his uncle’s farm in remote west Ireland. But even here there are links to the past.

Marcia is looking for someone to look after her baby and Joyce seems ideal, looking like a perfect, kindly, respectable lady.

Martin Ellis (Alan Dobie) is a blocked screenwriter who invites Helen, an actress (Kika Markham), to a hotel in central London to discuss an idea for a play he is writing with her in mind. As they discuss the play, Martin discovers that a businessman and an escort named Carol are sat at a nearby table and appear to be speaking lines from the as yet unwritten piece. Martin becomes anxious at what will eventually become of the girl, already knowing that the play will not have a happy resolution

TV play by Beryl Bainbridge. Friends arrange a dinner party to introduce two single friends, Rita and Piers, neither of whom are particularly keen.

Anand, his pretty cousin and their sick uncle are stranded in Amsterdam where they receive an offer to take them to England.

An author writes to his old schoolmate, telling him he is going to reveal a secret they have shared since the 1950s.

A barrister's complex life unravels as he juggles a court case and highly-strung mistress.

"All I said was the gramophone's too loud." Tony and Zoe Lyle 's silly row starts like any other, but Tony finds that Zoe means it this time. She's walking out and he's got a week to save a marriage that he hasn't looked at in 18 years, and with it all the trappings of a good life in Maida Vale.

After 18 years as a friar, Peter is no longer sure of his vocation. It is a happy life, maybe too much so, and now he has met Clare. Will his doubts run away with him? Runaway friars are officially "fugitives" who must be persuaded back to their order. Author Sean Walsh fled the Franciscan order to become first a journalist, then a playwright and is now a radio drama producer in Ireland.

Mike comes home on leave from Ulster. After six years in the Army he has to decide whether to sign up again or not. His parents want him to leave the army and come home, but the family flare-ups and bickerings are not conducive to helping him choose.

Play about Eileen who steals a baby, and the reactions of those around her, including the priest, police, and authorities and the consequences of what she does.

The true story of a strike in 1970 by female textile-factory workers in Leeds who wanted to be paid the same as their male colleagues, but whose efforts were undermined by the trade union that they belonged to.

Glen, a complete stranger, appears at the door of Elizabeth Carter, a middle-aged woman, and claims to be the illegitimate son she gave away at birth.

Lavinia has been yearning and trying for ten years to conceive, and finally gives birth to a live baby. However, she finds that things are not as she dreamed and envisaged, and she suffers from depression after the birth,beginning to have dangerous feelings of love towards her child.

During Wakes Week in the Potteries, the factory is deserted except for three electricians on an emergency maintenance job.

Arthur takes early retirement, and with his wife Marion, moves into a bungalow by the sea, bought by their son. However, disillusionment sets in after a year when the plans he had do not work out and life is not what they expected or hoped.

Rivalry at a local Gilbert and Sullivan Society over who will play Jack Point in the Silver Jubilee production. Rowland Matthews has always been the main star, but he is getting on, and the young Clive Bates is a strong rival.

They are all 'in' for life so the pleasures are sparse, and strictly of their own making.Their really big event is the Christmas pantomime, only this year they have lost their star. Mother Bear has escaped. Still, there is some consolation. The new arrival looks a likely Goldilocks. "There's one or two who'll be after him", says Woodbine - and he knows all their weaknesses.

They no longer live together because, after 11 years, the marriage is over. They're both agreed on that. So why is she always turning up to see him at the most embarrassing times? And why doesn't he feel inclined to send her away?

David Adler is an operator. He strips assets, other men's wives, and his oldest friend's soul - anything for a cool million.

Was this the finest hour? Sifting the truth and fiction about the Battle of Britain, Burrows and Harding give their own account of how the nation sees its heroes - and itself.

Facing retirement, elderly journalist Clarence Hubbard reflects on the pointlessness of a life wasted writing banal tabloid human interest, animal, and crime stories. Rather than go quietly to tend roses in a garden, Hubbard begins a series of violent actions not unlike those described in tabloids, and this is heightened by inter cutting tabloid headlines between scenes. Throughout, there are occasional shots of a television critic who watches this very play as it unfolds, and he writes a negative review filled with cleverly phrased but bitter invective.

Compelling drama from screenwriter Colin Welland set in a city comprehensive school of low expectations and ambitions. Pupil Latimer does not conform to the macho culture and is labeled a homosexual, leading to bullying by both the pupils and some of the teachers.

Jean-Luc Godard brings his firebrand political cinema to the UK, exploring the revolutionary signals in late '60s British society. Constructed as a montage of various disconnected political acts (in line with Godard's then appropriation of Soviet director Dziga Vertov's agitprop techniques), it combines a diverse range of footage, from students discussing The Beatles to the production line at the MG factory in Oxfordshire, burnished with onscreen political sloganeering.

The story of a comedian with a talent close to genius but with an insecurity problem.

A film by Alan Clarke for the 'Sunday Night Theatre' anthology series.