Memorable TV Plays

My favourite is 'Another time Another Place' starring Phillys Logan as a crofter's wife who has to take in Italian Prisoners of War. The contrast between these handsome, emotional Italian men and her dour Scots husband, the way they bring a different outlook to life and of course she falls for one of them between working the turnip fields and the grime and the cold of war time.

Then of course Brideshead Revisited, the 11 hour version......

Both DH and I still love and re-watch "Porterhouse Blue" ( in fact he knows a lot of the dialogue). John Sessions played the student and wonderful acting by David Jason as Scullion the College Porter still makes us laugh out loud.

We also remember and re-watch "Boys from the Black Stuff" with Yosser Hughes and his "gizza job".

"A Sunset Touch" with Thora Hird! It has stayed in my mind; a husband retires, she insists on moving from a cosy working class home, where they have lived forever, to a rented flat in Morecambe. It was so sad....

My four_year old grandson loves the Red Balloon, available with Crin Blanc on one dvd.

I doubt that much of the drama of today will be remembered in 30 or 40 years to come because so much of it is unoriginal. Do other people find that one-off dramas often start well but sort of fizzle out and are ultimately disappointing? I've been watching "Utopia" which wouldn't normally be my sort of thing as it was quite violent but it intrigued me. The end was a bit of a let-down though.

Having said that, I do think that anything by Jimmy McGovern is usually pretty good.

'Cathy Come Home' made a deep impression on me too. It was one of the Wednesday Plays series on ITV .
Marelli 'Up the Junction' was a novel by Nell Dunn, later made into a film. It contained the memorable line 'no use waitin' till yer an old bag' which mantra I frequently repeat to myself.

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.

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.

Entertaining!

Abigails Party was very entertaing.

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

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 ...

My favourite was the bar mitzvah boy?

Yes, that's the one, Marelli.

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

'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.

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.