Play for Today

Alison Steadman celebrates 50 years since Play for Today was launched on BBC TV.

The series ran from 1970 until 1984 and offered the audience hundreds of plays, many of which tackled the thorny issues of the day - industrial relations, the rise of the far right, poverty and consumerism.

Play for Today also included classics such as Abigail's Party and Nuts in May - which starred Alison Steadman and shone a perceptive light on suburban pretensions and preoccupations.

This archive-rich programme includes contributions from Mike Leigh and Ken Loach.

Margaret Matheson talks about producing Scum, the play about life in a borstal which was banned by the BBC;

We also hear from Paula Milne, one of the few women writers on the series; and Maureen Lipman, who was given an early acting role in Play for Today and whose late husband Jack Rosenthal was responsible for Bar Mitzvah Boy and Spend, Spend, Spend, the tragic story of pools winner Vivien Nicholson.

The landscape of drama on the small screen has now expanded enormously with vast choice and an imperative to run any drama over several episodes.

So is there still a place for the single-episode 'play'? Was there a beauty and a discipline in that which we have lost? We talk to today's very successful television dramatist Jack Thorne.

Presented by Alison Steadman

Producers: Michael Umney & Susan Marling

A Just Radio production in collaboration with the BFI for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in October 2020.