First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on November 6th 2022

Over the past couple of years, the BBC has been taking several of its landmark television plays off the shelf, blowing the dust off them, and treating viewers to BBC4 who are so inclined to a chance to see some of the highlights of its often influential and sometimes controversial flagship drama series from the 1970s and early 1980s PLAY FOR TODAY, which was the successor to the WEDNESDAY PLAY strand which had brought one-off dramas and often original works for television into the living rooms of the nation in the latter half of the 1960s.

At the same time, recently the BFI have released several sets of these plays on home media, all of which are well worth seeking out, if the one-off television play, a section of television’s output that is all but gone from our screens nowadays is something you are interested in.

The BFI have also just released a collection featuring many of the works of one of the key contributors to both THE WEDNESDAY PLAY and PLAY FOR TODAY, the Wallasey-born director and film-maker ALAN CLARKE, who brought a whole range of often hard-hitting productions to the screen including THE LAST TRAIN THROUGH HARECASTLE TUNNEL, ROAD, SCUM, and THE FIRM across an eclectic career which was sadly curtailed far too early by his death, at the age of fifty-four, in July 1990.

Sadly this new collection is not quite as comprehensive as some previous releases, which is a point mentioned by one of our regular contributors to VISION ON SOUND, SANDY McGREGOR who, as he has been known to before, also invited along a new voice for the show, MATT DODSON, to add to our ever-widening pool of television knowledgeables.

They are both huge fans of live theatre, and also big fans of watching the sort of television that includes this more serious kind of dramatic output, so it was an absolute joy to discuss their mutual appreciation of the work of ALAN CLARKE in this episode.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.