Tag: Play for Tomorrow

Easter 2016 – Play for Tomorrow – Very British Futures

This week’s episode of Very British Futures features something brand new – a short history lesson. Because this week we look at a fairly unique meeting of Northern Ireland politics and science fiction in the Play for Tomorrow – Easter 2016 and I felt I needed to give listeners a bit of context for the significance of that date, since it was the centenary of the Irish Easter Uprising of 1916. The history of Northern Ireland is far too big a subject for a personal blog about science fiction. There is plenty I still do not know about it that I should, which is why I was adamant that I needed a guest from Northern Ireland to talk about this television play. So big thanks to Carolyn Arnold, who’s comes from the country and is also a cult TV fan.

The story takes place in Northern Ireland’s one and only integrated teacher training college. As Easter approaches, a struggle develops between Cyril Brown (Principal of the college) and Lennie North (Security Director), whose belief is that firm security as a means of prevention is more effective than liberal ideas about education and integration. The focus of their conflict is Catholic lecturer Connor Mullan and his plans to turn an exhibition about the uprising into a protest against the current Northern Ireland assembly. As all three men take extreme positions and compromise becomes impossible, a tragedy unfolds.

Easter 2016 was written by Graham Reid and broadcast on BBC1 on 18th May 1982. It starred Derrick O’Connor, Bill Nighy and Denys Hawthorne.

You can listen to the episode on your favourite podcast app or from this Spotify link.

As it turned out, in 2016 the biggest talking point in Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK was Brexit. As far as I can tell from my brief research, what centenary ceremonies took place were wholly peaceful affairs. This is the final part of the Play for Tomorrow season and I hope you’ve enjoyed this deep dive into an obscure bit of British science fiction. Next week by extreme contrast we are discussing one of the most famous BBC SF shows – Blake’s 7!

To find out more about Carolyn Arnold and her “time travel” business, visit her Facebook page.

The Nuclear Family – Very British Futures

This week on the Very British Futures podcast, we’re turning back the clock to the shadow of the Cold War, as we examine the fourth Play for Tomorrow –The Nuclear Family – a blackly comic TV play that aired in 1982. A blend of domestic drama and speculation about the future of work in a seemingly post-industrial Scotland, it imagines a society not just living with the threat of nuclear war, but adjusting to life without manual labour and all the community which goes with it.

You can listen to the episode here or on your favourite podcast platform. For this installment I was lucky enough to be joined by Mark Donaldson, writer and podcaster, including Doctor Who podcast On the Timelash.

The Brown Family consists of Joe (father), Agnes (mother) and two teenage children, Gary and Ann. Joe was made redundant in the mid-80s, like so many other men, and in 1999 – the year in which the play is set – it is the children who are the breadwinners, working in the spare room on their computers. Joe decides that the family needs a break, the first since Gary was a baby so makes plans to visit ‘Sea Bed 6’ military base to spend two weeks on a working holiday. However, the Browns discover a lot more than just honest labour.

It’s an engaging play with a welcome sense of humour and two excellent turns from Jimmy Hanley as Joe Brown and Russell Hunter as Sgt Smellie (pronounced Smiley).

Also out this week is the latest episode of the Doctor Who – Too Hot for TV podcast. This time Dylan Rees and guest Paul Griggs are taking a look at two Sontaran stories, including my own audio adventure Conduct Unbecoming. You can find out what they thought of it by listening on your podcast app or following this link.

Bright Eyes – Play for Tomorrow – Very British Futures

Out now on your favourite podcast platform, the latest episode of Very British Futures, covering Bright Eyes, the second Play for Tomorrow from the makers of Play for Today. Broadcast in 1982. Written by Peter Prince and directed by Peter Duffell.


New Year’s Eve 1999. Great Britain is part of the European State. The Euro army is in the midst of a controversial war in the Middle East. Wealthy businessman Sam Howard has come to a French prison to see his daughter Cathy, who has been arrested for being part of a conspiracy to assassinate a pro-war politician, and is now facing execution. The authorities hope he can persuade her to issue an apology regretting her actions, allowing them to commute her sentence to prison time. Waiting outside her cell, Sam’s memory flashes back to earlier New Year’s Eves. 1979 when she was six years old and left with him overnight by his ex-wife. 1989, when she was sixteen and he criticised her 60’s themed party as disrespectful to the genuine struggles of that decade. When she said didn’t care about politics, he told her to start taking an interest and challenge to official line about the coming war. Now a crowd of journalists wait outside the prison, his ex and her legal team are helpless and he must decide whether to ask her to betray her principles to save her life.

One of the good things about making this series is when a guest helps me see a programme in a new, usually better light. This was the case with Bright Eyes and my friend Jon Arnold. An experienced writer and commentator, Jon’s enthusiasm for this play about the generation gap, activism and pragmatic politics was infectious. Hope you find this an interesting episode.

You can find the episode on all major podcast platforms, including Spotify.

Crimes – Play for Tomorrow – Very British Futures

To coin a phrase “Good news everybody!” There’s been a hiatus with the Very British Futures podcast for a few months, although I have been recording several conversations. The reason was that I am presenting a mini-series about 1982 BBC anthology Play for Tomorrow and I wanted it to be hitting your ears on a weekly basis. So I couldn’t release the first one until they were all ready to go.

But today is the day and you can hear what Rod Brown (host of Nostalgia Tours podcast) and myself made of the first entry – Crimes by Caryl Churchill.

Play for Tomorrow was a short-lived experiment by television producer Neil Zeiger, who was already in charge of the well-regarded Play for Today strand of one-off plays which ultimately ran for 15 seasons between 1970 and 1984. Amongst its wide variety of original stories were modern classics like Blue Remembered Hills, Abigail’s Party and Edna the Inebriate Woman. Whilst most of its plays were realist, it occasionally ventured into science fiction, most notably in The Flipside of Dominic Hyde. It was the success of that time travel comedy that encouraged Zeiger to propose a mini-season of plays set in the near future UK, based on realistic scientific and social science predictions.

Crimes is not so much as story as a think piece, a collection of linked monologues. building a picture of a more regimented Britain in the shadow of a continued Cold War. A group of prisoners are attending a mandatory therapy session under the chairmanship of Melvyn, a successful criminal psychologist. But is Melvyn himself really in a good place to be deciding on other’s sanity?

I deliberately wanted to have some fresh voices in this mini-season, as well as some old friends. Rod Brown is a fairly recent podcaster on the seen but his Doctor Who podcast Nostalgia Tours is already building a rep for itself. He’s an excellent guest as you’ll find out in this episode. Hope you enjoy this special set of Very British Futures episodes, available on your favourite podcast app.