Writing
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.
ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.
A series of plays from Birmingham by new writers.
After 12 years away, Mrs Jordan’s son arrives in Birmingham from Jamaica. Writer Barry Reckord returns to the theme of an interracial relationship which causes conflict within a Jamaican family. Reconstructed from the surviving unedited studio footage by Simon Coward (Research Manager, Kaleidoscope). An episode of the BBC drama series Second City Firsts.
A young West Indian has to interrupt his rich international life to sort out some passport trouble at home. His lifestyle is very different from the simple one of his family in North London, leading to considerable tension.
Play set in the Caribbean showing how life is hard and a struggle, with problems of unemployment and lack of money.
Barry Reckord adapted his stage play for TV and his brother Lloyd plays the central character – a Jamaican new to London. When he begins a relationship with a white woman, he finds himself in conflict with his mother, who has great expectations for him. The very early intimate portrayal of this interracial relationship broke new ground, and is believed to feature one of the world's first examples of an interracial kiss on TV.
