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unusual facts about Play For Today


Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company

Before the Cartsdyke yard closed in the late 1970s it was used to film part of a BBC Television Play for Today called "Just a Boys' Game".


1984 in Northern Ireland

Graham Reid's play Remembrance is first produced at the Lyric Theatre (Belfast), and his television play A Coming to Terms for Billy, last in the trilogy of "Billy plays", is shown in BBC1's Play for Today series, starring Kenneth Branagh.

Anna Cropper

Other television roles included two episodes of the BBC's Play for Today, as Norah Palmer in the James MacTaggart-directed Robin Redbreast (1970), a Christmas supernatural thriller by John Bowen, and Dennis Potter's play Schmoedipus (1974).

Charlotte Bingham

Charlotte Bingham (b. 29 June 1942 in Haywards Heath, Sussex, England) is an English novelist who has written over 30 mainly historical romance novels and has also written for many television programmes including Upstairs, Downstairs, Play for Today and Robin's Nest.

In the 1970s Brady and Bingham wrote episodes for the TV series Play for Today, Three Comedies of Marriage, Yes, Honestly and Robin's Nest.

Jake Burns

In 1981, Burns made his acting debut in an episode of the BBC's Play For Today series entitled Iris in the Traffic, Ruby in the Rain, written by Belfast-born poet and playwright Stewart Parker, which also featured the rest of Stiff Little Fingers effectively playing themselves as 'The Band'.

Robert Holles

As well as published works he was a successful TV writer with credits for Coronation Street and Hine as well as one-offs for the prestigious Play for Today slot on the BBC's main TV channel (Michael Regan and The Vanishing Army), two episodes for The Man Outside (Drama series, BBC 1972) and several plays in Thames TV's Armchair Theatre series.

Susan Littler

A versatile and respected actress, Littler is perhaps best remembered for her BAFTA-nominated role in the 1977 BBC Play for Today production Spend, Spend, Spend (1977), directed by John Goldschmidt.

Between 1974 and 1981, Littler starred in four productions for the BBC's Play for Today anthology series, the best remembered being the Jack Rosenthal adaptation of the memoirs of pools winner Viv Nicholson, Spend, Spend, Spend (1977).

The After-Dinner Joke

The After-Dinner Joke is a television play in the epic form written by the English playwright Caryl Churchill for the BBC1 Play for Today series which was broadcast on 14 February 1978.


see also