Play for Today, back on our screens this week after four decades, was a veritable national institution when it first aired in Britain between 1970 and 1984. The strand of one-off films alternately charmed the country and made powerful, impassioned critiques on the biggest issues of the day, taking in a mix of major state-of-the-nation, socialist-realist dramas. Take Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home, about a young couple whose lives are blighted by poverty, or the highly controversial prison drama Scum. There were also colourful, sometimes satirical portraits of British life (Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party being the most notable). The films weren’t scared of highlighting offbeat fare, either, like in Penda’s Fen – a magical-realist coming-of-age tale laced with folk horror.
The dramas, made by and starring working-class talent in many cases – much of which was sourced from the BBC’s former regional outpost at Pebble Mill in Birmingham – gave a platform to underrepresented voices, establishing the likes of Dennis Potter and Alan Bleasdale along the way. “Play for Today was a space to be experimental, at the heart of the mainstream,” says Phil Harrison, a journalist and author of The Age of Static: How TV Explains Modern Britain. “And lots of it was really ahead of its time – something like Penda’s Fen, for example, both in terms of format and subject matter. I love the idea of people just chancing upon these quite dark, quite hard-hitting things and not knowing what to make of them. It feels like properly adventurous public service broadcasting.”
