Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.

Marking Play for Today’s 50th anniversary, Drama Out of a Crisis is a compelling exploration of the series, its origins, achievements, controversies and legacies. Featuring a rich and surprising range of archive extracts and original interviews with many who created the series, including producers Kenith Trodd, Margaret Matheson and Richard Eyre, and directors Mike Leigh, David Hare and Ken Loach.

Film extras take possession of a bogus film production company and acting as ideal world of film to persuade one associates mother-in-law of marriage.

Belfast 1978: the Martin family, a year on. Norman is away in England, and his eldest son, Billy, and daughter, Lorna, are in charge of their younger sisters, Ann and Maureen. Second in the trilogy.

The Bates care for their severely disabled daughter Pattie. Martin arrives at their door claiming to be her college friend. He charms them into accepting him as a lodger and carer for Pattie, but Martin is not all he seems.

Western journalists visit Moscow to interview Adrian Harris, a former controller in British intelligence who was also a double agent for the USSR. Harris believes in both Communism and Englishness, believing himself to have betrayed his class, but not his country. The press find these beliefs incompatible, and want to find out why he became a ‘traitor’. Harris is plagued by anxieties over both his actions and his upper-class childhood, and drinks to a state of collapse

Speech Day is a bit of a laugh if you are not one of nature's prize-winners. But now that they've finished with school and school with them, what comes next for Ronnie, Wally and Rob?

Through a series of real and imagined encounters with angels, demons, and England's pagan past, a pastor's son begins to question his religion and politics, and comes to terms with his sexuality.

Nell tries hard to cope with her husband, family and friends - but her asthma creates problems. Everyone seems to be helpful - but are they? Is there something sinister about Mrs Pritchett , the new housekeeper, or is it Nell's imagination? Who knows where reality ends and fantasy begins?

Belfast, 1980: July, the marching season ... Norman Martin, away for two years, returns with his 'English woman', Mavis. How will the family - particularly Billy - react? And has she achieved the impossible in mellowing the man? Third in the trilogy.

TV play by Mike Stott. Comedy about a couple expecting their first baby.

Jan and Meg Citron are on holiday in Germany. Their car is stopped by the police. A simple traffic offence? But their seemingly innocent past is ripped open and life will never be the same again.

Trevor is an extremely shy undertaker's assistant. He always tags along with his good friend Ronnie, when he goes to the pub with his girlfriend Sandra. Sandra introduces Trevor to her more forward friend Linda. Linda has a difficult time getting Trevor to go out with her, but she finally gets him to go to a disco; he won't dance, so Linda dances with Ronnie.

Glen, a complete stranger, appears at the door of Elizabeth Carter, a middle-aged woman, and claims to be the illegitimate son she gave away at birth.

Relationships are strained in a Belfast family, particularly between a father and his son. First in a multi-year trilogy.

Ellis Cripper has lost his money and his memory; in different ways he tries to make sense of his situation.

Henry sets out to join a church and passionately help the parish. Slowly but surely his habits of exaggeration and lying begin to catch up with him.

Beverly wears low-cut dresses, too much make-up, and has a reputation as a man-eating monster. She turns a social get-together between married couples into a virtual time-bomb of emotional tension.

Three postal workers and their dysfunctional families interact over cups of tea and Sunday dinner.

"When you get to a man in the case, they're like as a row of pins - For the colonel's lady an' Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins." - Kipling. Polly writes for a magazine producing glamorous makeovers for young women. Befriending a member of the women's movement prompts her to re-examine her own feminist values.