Memorable TV Plays

'Goodbye Mister Tom' with the late much missed John Thaw.

'Abigail's Party is one of my favourites. It rased my awareness of Mike Leigh and Alison Steadman, and I always expected something worth watching if they had their names on it.

The year that 'Cathy Come Home' was shown there were several really good plays in the series.
There was a play or series in the early 70's I think called 'the White Rabbit' about a British spy during the war. Kenneth Moore played the lead and did the film on condition it was only shown once I believe. It was very disturbing but also very good drama.
I STILL watch 'Goodbye Mr Tom' if I come across it! The original 'Carrie's War' was good too although I think a series.
One of the loveliest films I remember is a French film with no speaking called 'The Red Balloon' -

Alan Bennet's Talking Heads series of plays. I particularly remember Maggie Smith as the alcoholic vicar's wife in A Bed among the Lentils. I still remember her comment about the virulent competitiveness of flower arranging and that, after drinking all the communion wine, she replaced it with Benylin cough mixture. Thora Hird also starred in one of these splendid one-handers – would it have been A Cream Cracker Under the Sofa?

'Cathy Come Home' was the first TV play that i remember and really emotive. I think Ray Brookes was in it and he always made my teenage heart beat a lot faster. I remember him in a play about a polio victim (I think) set in a hospital.

We have 'Abigail's Party' and 'Nuts in May' on DVD and have indoctrinated all three DDs but DSs are unmoved.

Currently, anything by Jimmy McGovern is well worth watching. It seems a shame that good drama seems to be televised more in the afternoons now as I keep forgetting to record it.

As well as Play for Today, there used to be the Wednesday Play which also featured shorter works of some of the leading playwrights of the 1960s.

'Cathy Come Home' sticks in my mind. My own life went along those lines rather, in the 60's.
'Up the Junction' - was that a play or a film? Really emotive issues in that.

Goodnight Mr Tom is my most memorable. Saw it recently at the theatre as well and was delighted to find the Mr Tom part was played just as well as by John Thaw.

Edna, the Inebriate Women with Patricia Hayes playing an alcoholic vagrant.

Snoozy - that was a brilliant play. She was such a good actress.

Snoozy I'd forgotten that (it's my age, y'know!) and the Alan Bennets!

Just looked and a lot of these plays are on YouTube- even Edna!

When The Bough Breaks with Hannah Gordon. She played a social worker investigating a baby battering case. It would have been in the early 70's when I didn't have a TV, I remember watching it at a friend's house.

I remember liking that one too (When the Bough Breaks ) though I can't recall anything about it now. Was it really that long ago? Was there a nanny or two involved in it as well?

Perhaps not a play - I think it was a TV film - but The Naked Civil Servant has always been one of my favourites.

I do remember that one, Ana. Did John Hurt play the part of Quentin Crisp?

Yes, that's the one, Marelli.

My favourite was the bar mitzvah boy?

The Theatre of Comedy TV productions of What The Butler Saw (Jo Orton) and When We Are Married (JB Priestley) were excellent.

Various Ayckbourn plays - Absurd Person Singular was particularly good. Then there was the famous 1950s TV 1984 that scared us all rigid, with Peter Cushing as Winston Smith...

I can't remember when I last saw a televised play - a 'proper' play, in three acts ...

Judi Dench in Talking to a Stranger. 1966- I thought she was brilliant then and still is

Abigails Party was very entertaing.

Entertaining!

I remember A Play For Today, I think, which made a big impression on me when I was quite young about 8 or 9, in the Sixties, unfortunately I don't know the name of it. The story was set in the last days of the 2nd World War, a woman running away from German soldiers in rural France thrusts a baby in a peasant farmer's arms. He is left to bring up the girl who he calls Rogation, (I always remembered her name) think she was named after a religious feast in France. The farmer spends the rest of his life trying to reunite her with her family, he knows she is Jewish so he follows a trail across Europe in the post war years. The girl, who was played by a number of actresses, turns out to be a handful as she gets older, and if I remember rightly there wasn't a good outcome.

Bez I saw "The Red Balloon" at the cinema with my parents and it really scared me. I remembered it for years!

I saw most of the above plays, they were really good and well worth watching again.