The Wednesday Play

Martin has a mid-life crisis.

A young private with a pistol deals with the aftershock of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Years ago, it was Roscoe who kept his friends alive in a Korean prison camp. Now, he's penniless and without papers in London - will his now-prosperous former friends help him?

Lord Fountain hates his illegitimate twin boys as he does not seem to be able to produce legitimate heirs.

White mercenary forces prepare to attack rebel, pro-Lumumbist troops in the Congo

Tom is a working class Scots teenager, but he dreams of much more.

It is general election night in a constituency in Northern Ireland.

An account of the shocking Sacco-Vanzetti case of the 1920s, where two working-class Italian immigrants to the US were executed after seven years on Death Row.

A young couple go on a hitch-hiking tour of Europe.

An interior decorator takes a millionaire's wife on a guided tour of her new home.

A dull witted young labourer from a criminal family is sent to gaol for a minor crime, leaving his pregnant girlfriend unmarried. But while there he is talked into attacking a guard, who later dies, so he's then sentenced to hang for his crime, despite a protest and newspaper campaign for leniency.

A couple move to the country, but the wife feels isolated and finds companionship with her cat.

A soldier faces a court-martial for killing his friend.

A writer is having an affair with a married woman and gets embroiled with the other women in her life.

Peter and Cathy are initially delighted to see their charismatic, subtly domineering friend Robin. But he outstays his welcome, and that's to say the least of it.

Astronaut Osborne is stuck in a malfunctioning capsule. As he goes round and round the Earth, he starts telling jokes and secrets. When the time comes to bring him down to Earth, he can't face it as he feels like a sexual failure.

A trio of swindlers advertise a self-assertiveness seminar, lure a dozen victims to a hotel and attempt to persuade them to enroll in their course. However, a man claiming to be 18th century critic-essayist William Hazlitt attacks the consumerist values outlined by the motivational speaker.

A young couple celebrate their wedding anniversary with a night on the town.

Barbara is an assertive, clever, liberated woman, her own boss. Who'd think she could be swept off her feet by a handsome stranger for whom she'd give up her career, London, everything? Especially as her new husband maybe wants to kill her.

Dan Sankey, the charity knocker, has become a national celebrity but who is the man behind the image?

In a parallel totalitarian Great Britain, those in authority are Black people, and white people are their social underdogs — a reversal of the situation in then-contemporary apartheid South Africa.

A tale of romance between two working class navvies.

A group of politicians and university dons argue over whether a new university should have a chapel or a state-of-the-art lecture hall.

Archibald Cooper is a London gangster who is living the life of a country squire while running a criminal empire. He learns that he's getting a knighthood so invites some old associates to country house unaware they are planning a robbery.

A study of a boy's passion for an older girl as he discovers the difference between infatuation and true love.

Dramatisation of the failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in July 1944 by a conspiracy of high-ranking German Army officers.

Sigismondo Malatesta is a condottiere, a mercenary for hire and patron of the arts.

Coronation Day, 1761: A merchant entertains a guest with an extraordinary secret.

A lodger, recuperating from a heart attack, sets his sights on his landlady.

A young woman's dreams of death but The Pale Rider fills her dreams along with her lover.

Three people find themselves sharing a room with no way out. As they talk, the nature of the room and how they came to be there is gradually revealed.

A soldier named Postnikov rescues a drowning man.

Based on the play "La foire d'empoigne" by Jean Anouilh.

A couple revisit a past love affair when they meet again ten years later.

A police raid on Edna Bossom's discreet hotel would be most ill-advised, in the opinion of Superintendent Willow; but one of his younger officers is determined to go ahead with one.

Arthur Bradshaw is a successful fixer, with plans to start a night club.

Follows the assassination of Leon Trotsky.

Morris, a homunculus, is under suspicion of having stolen the swimming pool fund from a girls' school.

Eighty years after a nuclear war ravaged the British Isles, a team of scientists from New Zealand come to conduct a survey.

A young priest, newly arrived in Dublin, is conducting a retreat for the first time.

A cynical housemaster at a boarding school tries to feather his nest in advance of his forthcoming retirement.

When a bossy do-gooder becomes homeless, she is passed from home to home.

A passionate, ambiguous relationship begins between two people who meet at a masked ball.

Louie, a married factory worker, has just been made redundant when he meets a girl in a park and decides to change his life.

Satirical play in which businessmen want to destroy Westminster Abbey to make way for a bypass.

After an assault a man tries to find justice in court only to find that his incompetent prosecution team and the attractive female defense lawyer who wows the court, conspire against him.

We spend a day with Barlowe, a council car park attendant.

Author James Hanley, Irish by birth and Welsh by adoption, crafted a TV play about a lonely spinster having her cottage in a seaside village requisitioned by the local council for a building scheme, with tragic consequences.

The Headmaster and governors of a boarding school are accidentally locked in the new memorial room with the convicted Great Train Robbers.

A young Irish woman named Eileen comes to Britain with romantic ideas of fame and fortune and meets Toppet, a struggling artist with a spare room.

Two boys hatch a plan to get some money to go to the seaside.

Billy Oates meets a lady in a market and, taken by his kindness, she invites him to lodge with her and her husband. A rivalry soon develops between the young man and his landlord.

Life in a Trappist monastery offers a life of contemplation and hard labour.

A young English exchange student staying with a German family falls for the daughters.

Anything Incorporated, an exclusive club devoted to providing the illegal and unattainable for its clients. Our intrepid hero, Rodney, is a newspaper journalist determined to expose the venture.

John is an aspiring composer and pianist at a club and Mary is a single girl that he meets there. When friendship turns to romance, John has to contend with Colin, a charming ladies' man who turns to Mary in times of trouble.

Mrs. Miller wants to know why her husband has been working nights. PC Miller claims that a statue of Jesus on the cross has spoken to him in the graveyard. When senior officers and the church get involved, is he a prophet or a fraud?

A boy begins a search in Notting Hill shortly before Christmas.

Candidate Nigel Barton goes from idealism to cynicism as he becomes disillusioned and suspicious of hollow campaign promises.

It deals with the experiences of Nigel Barton, a young man from a poor mining community who wins a scholarship to Oxford University. The villagers accuse him of snobbery, while the rich University students treat him like a peasant. Uncertain of which sphere he should be moving in, Nigel tries to reconcile himself with his proud but stubborn father, and also succeed at University, despite its pretentions which appal him.

Newlyweds Chris and Sally are young and attractive, with successful careers and a beautiful home. Their future is rosy. However, trying to make marriage work is not easy.

Jimmy is young, earning good money and going out with a smashing girl. What more could a man wish for?

A simple-minded man on the outs with his wife and her family must take a large amount of his father-in-law's hard-earned money to buy a house, in the belief that home-ownership will make him responsible and respectable. Instead, he throws it away on a mad spending spree with his daughter.

An elderly right-wing politician is kidnapped, seemingly as part of a student prank. But his captors have a more alarming agenda.

Fragments of the life of three working-class women, and the people around them, in South London in the 1960s. Scenes in homes, streets, pubs, prison and their workplace cover family, friendship, romance, sex, and abortion.

Milly has been at it again.

Night club girl Victory Ducann is found murdered, the main suspect is an astronaut, but police are prevented from approaching him as he is due to fly off to the Moon.

In this look at Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), aka Lewis Carroll, Potter mixed biographical drama with a psychological profile to explore the roots of Dodgson's creativity. Dodgson tells stories to ten-year-old Alice Liddell, leading to recreations of scenes adapted from ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (1865), designed to resemble the original Sir John Tenniel illustrations.

Written, directed, and produced by Peter Watkins. Depicting the aftermath of a nuclear war, it was withdrawn from the broadcast schedule due to fear by the BBC and the British Government that it was too horrifying for TV. It premiered at a London cinema six months later and was shown at film festivals, winning a special prize at the Venice Film Festival. It then won the 1967 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

A liberal white man becomes a Muslim to promote racial harmony.

Walter has three children, by his estranged wife and his current partner, so he is far too busy to get a job, preferring to spend his time in the playground.

Josh and Maisie come to Italy after the passing of the old lady who had been living in their sapre room but are soon drawn to another old lady, and try to convince her daughter that she would be better off in their tender care.

An elderly painter, once radical and confrontational, is given a final commission - to paint the portrait of the former Conservative Prime Minister who represented a totally opposing set of values when they were both young. Both men are now old and of little consequence to the modern generation, but the painter sees his opportunity to make an artistic statement by means of the portrait.

A minor driving offence is being tried in court, but the case involves a rich young heiress, a dope peddler, and a Shadow Cabinet member.

A young man, newly dismissed from his job, returns home to a party where the other partygoers seem determined that he and a female flatmate should go on holiday together.

The life and passions of a speaker at Hyde Park Corner.

A parish church is undergoing restoration, when a coffin bearing the seal of Thomas à Becket, the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury, is discovered. Will the discovery help unite the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches?

John Joe Moran is pulled between the compulsion to leave his small town in Ireland and the desire to stay.

A tired signalman waits to be relieved. However, there are four trains to be guided through and some of the equipment doesn't seem to be working properly.

A new steward on a large passenger liner finds himself subject to "charges" levied by the senior bar steward.

In a series of small vignettes, we follow the course of a manic-depressive girl through high and low instances, slowly following her disintegration as she deals with her doctors and family, especially her hot headed, unimaginative father. Eventually she is brought back to a mental asylum where she'd been committed before.

A frail old woman meets a middle-aged man - her estranged son, whom she hasn't seen for five years.

Inspired by a real-life case, a woman encourages her lover to murder her older husband.

The adventures of a knicker factory worker aspiring to be a sales representative.

Yorky is considered a troublemaker by the building site manager. When they sack him a strike is called but lost after the police intervene. He wants nationalise the building industry but forced to go the lump - tax free and off the books.

Eddie Marble admires the lifestyles of the rich and wants a piece for himself.

An inspector in Austria investigates the death, over twenty years earlier, of a teenage girl who fell into a canal and drowned trying to evade capture by a policeman searching for members of the resistance.

A twenty-two-year-old architecture student appears at the door of a divorced thirty-something journalist and asks to use her telephone. They talk, and slowly begin to understand one another: their lives, values, and very different sets of relationships.

Following an accident, the rider of a rusting old scooter pursues the driver of a Rolls Royce to a Mayfair mansion and forces entry in an attempt to confront the owner.

The Barking brothers dote on their parents and do a lot of good work for charity but the police are determined to bring them to account.

A tale of two wives: one a blonde living in a chic Parisian apartment and the other a brunette with a smart mews flat in London. Both are young, attractive, and separated from their husbands, and their paths are about to cross in an unexpected way.

A major faces a court martial, accused of the wilful murder of Private James.

A mother, anxious to secure her daughter's admission to Oxford, invites a young male graduate to lodge with them.

A play about a British woman's descent into poverty and homelessness because of her country's rigid and problem-ridden welfare system.

It is end of the season and the head waiter at the seaside hotel has some marvellous tales to tell a young boy.

A mentally disturbed Welsh teenager is obsessed with Westerns. His volatile temperament loses him the few people who might have been sympathetic, and helped him. Instead, he spirals down to inevitable destruction.

A retired colonel is enduring the invasion of the Channel Islands when his household is disrupted by the arrival of a German officer who is surprisingly civilised and susceptible to the daughter's charms.

A young Russian embarks on an affair as a relief from boredom but so brings about his doom.

Eighty years old, Sam, a famous writer, looks back on his life and tempestuous marriage, and meets himself at the ages of sixty, forty and twenty.

A happily married couple divorce for tax purposes, but their lawyer, not knowing the real reason for their divorce, falls in love with the wife.

The quiet head of a film company's dispatch department reacts violently to a practical joke.

Story of a group of manual workers who live and breath watching Everton FC. The gang travel to London, to watch the team play Arsenal, at Highbury. Vince discovers his wife has gone into labour and has to consider returning home early.

Two couples, one fights all the time and the others let tensions in their relationship build until one stabs the other, the ones that fight end up saying oh well let's murder Vivaldi they pick up their violins and play together.

An African-American trumpet player spends a few hours in an English provincial town, with a girl who happens to be white. As a result, each learns to care for the other, not as a "cipher of a divided society" but as a vulnerable human being.

Three men who have avoided one another since violent events five years before meet unexpectedly one evening.

A country squire and his late friend's nephew argue over the dead man's artistic legacy.

An industrial dispute takes place in an isolated quarry while the Drummer and the Bloke look on.

An ageing millionaire reflects on his life while being pampered at a Parisian hairdressing salon.

Jamie's flying visit is a somewhat sentimental one. Because Jamie is calling to see Lois, an old and dear flame he hasn't met since they left Oxford ten years ago. He is still the same old Jamie, but Lois has changed quite a bit.

Bisthorpe moves into a flat where a host of bizarre events occur: hands come through walls, light bulbs explode, furniture talks, he turns into a table-top model in an advertising agency, etc. Finally, it's revealed that the new flat is, in fact, a room in a psychiatric asylum.

An adopted child's world falls apart when his mother decides to walk out on her marriage.

Five distinguished guests spend Christmas at a health farm.

Incompetent and corrupt defence barrister Plantagenet King dreams of a grand venture into commercial law.

An army private is driven to murder when his wife falls in love with another man.

The Honourable Audrey is the latest arrival at a boarding-house in a working-class area of London.

It is the morning of a notorious bachelor's wedding in this tale of marriage, friendship and non-communication between parents and children.

A gentleman thief puts together a gang to commit a perfectly executed robbery.

A husband decides to impose a novel and outrageous arrangement on his wife.

A community of monks decides to solve its financial predicament through the sale of a potent cure for rheumatism made from rare herbs and one hundred per cent proof alcohol.

Mrs. Gogarty agrees to pay off a stranger's debt to a loan-shark, on condition that he marry her.

The world of two simple-minded men living with a woman is disrupted by a new lodger.

A black barman upsets a colonial Governor who has just retired and returned to England. He locks the barman in the cellar and treats him like an animal.

The daughter of a religious Welsh family becomes the centrepiece of a bizarre student festival.

Three Trinidadians consider what it means to be exiles in an essentially white society.

Dennis Potter's controversial reading of the life of Christ, with Jesus portrayed as a hearty, fiery, well-meaning carpenter who believes that people should try to love their enemies rather than fight all the time, but who is racked by self doubt as to whether or not he is the popularly anticipated Messiah.

A man enters into a correspondence with his colleague's eight-year-old daughter.

A group of coal miners from Nottingham go on their annual trip to Blackpool.

A play about a British woman's descent into poverty and homelessness because of her country's rigid and problem-ridden welfare system.

A young man bitterly regrets his part in an attack on a bank cashier.

An off-beat romance in bed-sitter land.

Dock workers under the threat of redundancy, work day and night in an attempt to keep employed by running the workforce themselves.

A woman unwittingly springs a surprise at her sister's 27th birthday party.

A portrait of the life of some Northern apprentices.

After a year as a Volunteer Service Overseas worker, a young woman returns home in search of love and understanding.

A successful advertising executive who promotes a brand of cigarettes is reproached by his family when his mother contracts terminal lung cancer.

A fashion editor competes for the affections of a designer with their new male model.

An author hosts a dinner party to celebrate the publication of his new novel.

An isolated New Forest community in 19th Century Britain. A young local girl is murdered by a mentally disturbed youth, but the villagers blame a stranger, an Italian traveling showman and his bear, rather than see the rot in their own camp.

A family becomes increasingly suspicious of the relationship between the mother and a mysterious stranger who starts to follow her around.

A doctor advises a woman not to proceed with her latest pregnancy, contrary to her strict Catholic upbringing.

A talk-show host is required to examine his conscience and also the ethics of "good television".

A man seeks his inner island.

A couple move to a caravan park, where the owner is a petty dictator.

Garry committed suicide to escape disgrace and imprisonment. Does he now have the chance to change the circumstances leading to his downfall?

James has come in search of his feckless older brother, Charlie, to ask him to come home and settle down.

A lonely bachelor, seeking his long-lost sweetheart at a boarding house, meets a serial divorcée.

A teenage boy reluctantly accompanies his ghastly family on a coarse bank-holiday day out to local beauty spot and tourist trap, the Cheddar Gorge.

A schoolmaster invites a nineteen-year-old student to stay with him and his wife to cram for imminent exams.

When an elderly woman is hospitalised, the truth behind her illegal adoption of 14 children is revealed.

A prison visitor becomes involved with a convicted sex offender.

Emma, who lived with an author for the last two years of his life, is involved in a television film about him.

A young man from an army family with a long tradition of honour and distinction goes to a military academy as an officer cadet and finds himself temperamentally unsuited to the life.

In the year 2050, advances in medicine have resulted in a need for population control. People reaching the age of 100 must submit to a government controlled euthanasia program. The story centres around a 100-year old couple who must now make plans for their funeral.

Three young merchant seamen from Liverpool take shore leave in their home city after three years away.

A former poet, now a Communist Party official in the German Democratic Republic, becomes entangled in the political machinery of a state about to plunge into a succession of Stalinist purges.

Two Glaswegian youngsters are caught up in sectarian gang warfare.

A junk dealer is caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between a woman, her husband and his mistress when they sell a piece of their furniture.

A young man befriends an elderly couple, claiming to be their grandson.

Second Lieutenant Siegfried Sassoon of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers protests the appalling and unnecessary sacrifice of men's lives in the First World War

A tragi-comic study of a Northern funeral.

An army deserter hides out on a country estate but falls foul of the gamekeeper.

A young woman quits her dull job in the typing pool, and goes off on a search for personal freedom.

A couple seek a desperate remedy to the problem of a burdensome parent.

Young Nicky Lancaster must cope with the discovery that his socialite mother is a drug addict.

A student architect and his black girlfriend set out from South Africa to Britain. On the voyage, the student shares a cabin with an enigmatic Austrian.

In the first part, an insane man boards a quiet railway coach and starts to annoy a patient man trying to read a paper with incessant small talk in an increasingly menacing manner until he finally pulls out a gun and screaming class hatred bile, humiliates the man until his stop is reached. In part two he breaks into a lonely house and proceeds to terrorise a spinster woman who lives ther

The commanding officer of a regiment handling nuclear missiles is shocked to see his daughter Sally on television taking part in a student demonstration.

The story of an up-and-coming businessman.

Two young Australians on holiday in London find that the "old country" has its problems.

A schoolmaster takes to drink.

The history of the mining industry in the northeast of England is told through family drama, comedy sketches and song.

A woman who suspects her husband of having an affair reveals her suspicions at a party.

A story about growing up, falling in love and settling old scores in the unfriendly environment of a big city.

A shy clerk suffers from his colleagues petty office politics and contemptuous treatment of him, but this weekend, as a deeply involved train spotter, the closing of an old tunnel is his big adventure. On the way up, he encounters a well off couple with a daughter that hates them, and an Army Sergeant whose men hate him. The hotel he stays at is run by a fellow railway enthusiast, with a gay son that hates him, and he meets a famous signal designer with a daughter that hates him.

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