It has been reported that Channel 5 is going to bring back Play for Today, over 40 years after it left our screens in 1984. The channel has announced that it will “revive the brand from early next year, with an emphasis on the social realism that was an important feature of the original series”.
The revived Play for Today will be attempt to replicate one of the most successful experiments in the history of British television. It has been noted that, “in an era when producers, directors and writers enjoyed considerable freedom and trust, Play for Today offered some of the country’s finest creative spirits a prime-time Thursday-night slot. The extensive list of famous alumni includes Dennis Potter, Helen Mirren, Stephen Frears, Ken Loach, Alison Steadman and Trevor Griffiths”.
Play for Today
This is very welcome news. For a long time, I have hoped that many of the original series of Play for Today could be shown again, but in many ways this is even better news, as long as the standard set in the 1970s and 1980s can be maintained.
Play for Today grew out of the Wednesday Play on BBC television in the 1960s, which could be a highly influential series. For example after the Ken Loach directed Cathy Come Home was broadcast on 16 November 1966, its thought-provoking portrayal of poor housing conditions and homelessness let directly to the establishment of the housing charity Shelter.
Play for Today continued this tradition of social realism, demonstrating the nitty gritty reality of life in Britain. It was particularly important for us in the north as it often portrayed working class life in northern England in ways that had rarely been shown on television before.
So, in the early 1970s, there was the ‘Fishing Party’, which followed a group of Yorkshire miners, including characters played by the brilliant Brian Glover and Ray Mort, as they hire a fishing boat off the Yorkshire coast. It is clear that their landlady, Audrey, played by the indomitable Jane Freeman who went on to find fame in ‘Last of the Summer Wine’, did not really like having miners in her establishment, but when the play ended, with her finding that the miners had left her a present of some of the fish that they had caught she was forced to re-evaluate her views.
And that was a lot of what Play for Today was about. It was about challenging stereotypes and helping audiences across the country to see people in different ways. To be fair, that wasn’t perhaps always the case; in the otherwise excellent the ‘Blackstuff’ from 1980, which of course developed into the famous series ‘Boys from the Blackstuff’, Alan Bleasdale does use what would now be seen as unfortunate stereotypes of gypsies. However, Play for Today did hold up a very useful mirror to our society 50 years ago and certainly encouraged me as a boy at the time to think more deeply about what was happening around me.
One episode in particular, which I don’t remember seeing at the time, but have seen since, would be particularly useful today to help people understand the lived reality of many people’s lives. I’m talking here of the harrowing but brilliant ‘Spongers’ which was shown in 1977 and very effectively showed what the effect of cuts and the developing neo-liberal policies could be on individual families. While ‘Spongers’ was set in Leeds, it is fair to say that in some respects it was echoed by Ken Loach in his hard-hitting Tyneside based film ‘I, Daniel Blake’, 40 years later.
Play for Today could also be very funny, while demonstrating the nature of our society. Mike Leigh wrote his famous ‘Abigail’s Party’ for Play for Today in 1977 and two years earlier wrote the script for the even better ‘Nuts in May’, both starring the wonderful Alison Steadman. Both these plays were able to combine a deep examination of social mores and divisions at the time, while also being extremely entertaining and amusing.
The demise of Play for Today
As mentioned above the original play for the day series came to an end in 1984. It may have run out of steam and as the saying goes ‘all good things must come to an end’. However, it is hard for me to believe that the rise of Thatcherism and the pressure she put on the BBC and the demise of Play for Today were not connected. Play for Today exposed the raw underbelly of British society and that is not something that Thatcher and her government would want to be seen. It is also notable that more upper class and costume dramas such as ‘Brideshead Revisited’ seemed to take the place of series like Play for Today.
The new series
I think that we should all wish Channel Five well is the new series of play for the day. It is hard to envisage that it will have the same impact as the original series, for the simple reason that we live in a more fragmented society today which is mirrored by a more fragmented media. When Play for Today was at its height, in the 1970s, there were only three television channels and of course there was no Internet either. It was therefore quite possible for even a quite serious play to have a relatively large audience.
However, it is still important that the philosophy behind Play for Today is being revived. What seems to be especially useful is that Channel 5 is proposing that they want to give opportunities to young working-class writers and actors. It has been well documented that working class writers and actors have found it harder in recent decades to make the kind of mark that they could 50 years ago.
In what is a very polarised time and society, a new series of Play for Today could help us to understand each other better And also help us define real solutions to problems instead of what seems to be increasingly vacuous posturing from our politicians.
I certainly hope so.
