BBC4’s Drama out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today was a terrible missed opportunity which did a massive disservice to a great body of work.
The PFT strand was celebrating its 50th anniversary but this programme chose to focus primarily on its largely left-leaning political productions and in the process ignored some of the best things it did in its 14 years
There was much focus on gritty realism and plenty of talk from Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and far too much poe-faced waffle from David Hare (who seems to have been created by tossing Tony Benn and John Mortimer into a blender and pouring the result into a baggy tweed suit and ill-fitting cardie).
Where were the laughs? Where was the variety of subject matter and styles? Watching Drama Out of Crisis one could easily be misled into thinking the only person not writing about class politics in the 1970s was Dennis Potter, who, instead, was just concentrating on sex.
Alright there was Abigail’s Party - we all know about that sneery cringe-fest. But you would think it was the only comedy produced in 14 years’ output.
The whole thing begged the question? Was PFT’s political agenda a direct factor in Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election victory?
Perhaps it was but there was so much good work ignored by this cock-eyed retrospective with seemed intent on reinforcing the Daily Mail reader view of the Beeb as a bunch of lecturing lefties.
I was four when PFT started but did watch most of the last four seasons and can remember seeing some earlier productions, probably as repeats, notably Bar Mitzvah Boy - a classic bitter sweet comedy about a Jewish family by Jack Rosenthal. I also remember Rosenthal’s Spend Spend Spend showing how Viv Nicholson blew her pools fortune. I don’t think Rosenthal got a mention in BBC4’s 90-minute gloom-laden offering. I hope his widow Maureen Lipman has written in to complain.
Also largely overlooked were Liverpudlian writers Alan Bleasdale and Willy Russell - who both made telling contributions to PFT. Russell’s Our Day Out about a chaotic school trip has since become a full-blown stage musical.
Drama Out of A Crisis did close with a clip from Bleasdale’s Muscle Market about a dodgy builder (Pete Postlethwaite) on the run from gangsters but there was no mention of probably the most famous PFT of all- The Blackstuff, - which spawned the award-winning Boys from the Blackstuff.
These Scousers could really do gritty realism with a political message but they made it funny. Perhaps that’s why people remember their stuff. Tar very much!
The gentler works of the far from gritty Alan Bennett were also barely touched upon.
However, that’s too much politics. Here’s what I really came to say you BBC buffoons: You did a programme about Play for Today without including The Flipside of Dominick Hide.
Just to prove PFT was not all about workers being oppressed by the right-wing establishment, here was a sci-fi romcom, which was literally years ahead of its time. The title character, played by a still-cherubic Peter Firth (fresh from some funny business with horse in Equus and long before he ran Spooks) is a reporter sent back from the year 2130 to London 1980 to find an ancestor and falls in love with a boutique owner (Caroline Langrishe) who he makes pregnant.
The Flipside was funny, touching and not at all like anything else on TV at the time. People were actually talking about it school the next day. Unusually for a PFT it had a sequel - Another Flip for Dominick, almost as good, in which our time traveler returns to the present day to find his child.
So PFT was not all about strikes and strife, there was some fun too.
There were also some very memorable plays which were completely ignored by Drama Out of a Crisis.
I never saw Edna the Inebriate Woman (1971), but its star Patricia Hayes could not appear on TV without one of my parents remarking ‘Oh, look it’s Edna The Inebriate Woman…’ A quick visit to my friend Wikepedia reveals that the production also featured Vivian Mackerrell, the real-life inspiration for Withnail of Withnail and I, in a small role as a tramp.
We all know Rumpole of the Bailey - where did it start? Yes, Play for Today.
Billy Connolly’s first two high-profile serious acting roles were in PFTs - Just Another Saturday (1975) about Orange marches, and the The Elephant’s Graveyard (1976). Neither were mentioned despite the fact that the first won a Prix Italia.
Also missing in action was John Le Mesurier’s Bafta-winning turn as a Kim Philby-style defector in Traitor even though it was penned by that sainted old perv Potter.
Drama Out of a Crisis was a programme which, despite choosing quite a narrow approach to its subject still couldn’t see the wood for the trees and spent too much time blundering about in the undergrowth, most of which was made up of Mike Leigh’s beard.
It would have been better to have done three one-hour programmes. One on the all the political guff, another on the more off-beat stuff and a third on all the actors, writers, directors and producers who worked for PFT and went onto greater things.
But maybe the best idea the BBC could have had was to have brought in Channel 4 or Sky Arts to have made the programme for them….
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