
Alan Ayckbourn
Writing
Known For

A BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983.
BBC Play of the Month

A series of dramas featuring staged theatre plays.
Theatre Night
Anthology of self-contained dramas that aired from 1977 to 1978.
The Sunday Drama

When people are asked to think about the 1960s, they automatically think love, peace and...The Beatles. Over the decade, the Fab Four changed from cheeky pop mop-heads to blissed-out experimentalists, and this transformation mirrored the country as a whole. This five-part documentary series looks at how the world's most famous pop group personified one of the most explosive and volatile decades of the 20th century. Although the 60s generation had it all, a changing political landscape and changing attitudes to sex and relationships were dragging Britain into a new age. By the end of the decade, The Beatles had split up, proving that the band's personalities and their music had become true symbols of an iconic decade.
The 60s: The Beatles Decade

Guy Jones (Irons) moves to a small British town and joins the local amateur dramatics society as a way to meet people. However he soon finds the drama offstage far outweighs those onstage.
A Chorus of Disapproval

The trilogy presents a comically fraught weekend from three different perspectives, as family and in laws gather at the decaying country home of their bedridden mother; the drink flows, and hidden enmities, intimate secrets and uncomfortable truths emerge through the veneer of jollity and civility.
The Norman Conquests

After saving each other from jumping off a bridge, Henry Bell and Karen Knightly plot to avenge the people who drove them to suicide. Henry will ruin the life of the woman who married Karen's boyfriend, while Karen will work as a secretary for the man who took Henry's job. Whether revenge will be sweet – or bittersweet – is anyone's guess.
The Revengers' Comedies

Seven lonely lives in Paris: a middle-aged estate agent who believes a colleague is sending messages in video tapes she loans him; his co-worker whose Bible is close at hand in times of stress; her late-night charge, an angry, nasty bedridden old man; his son, a patient bartender; the bartender's best patron, an ex-soldier who's lost his moorings while his fiancée looks for a large flat for them; and, the estate agent's much younger sister, who answers personals and waits in cafés with a red flower pinned on her jacket. Will any connect? Can open hearts trump fears?
Private Fears in Public Places

Adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn's black comedy about eight adults trying to have a happy family Christmas and failing dismally.
Season's Greetings

Alan Ayckbourn's riotous exposure of entrepreneurial greed returns to the National Theatre, where it premiered in 1987, winning the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play.
National Theatre Live : A Small Family Business

Two actors portray eighteen Yorkshire villagers, who offer several iterations of their lives depending on whether or not they lit a cigarette at a certain point in time.
Smoking / No Smoking
Trevor and Susannah, whose marraige is on the rocks, inflict their miseries on their nearest and dearest: three couples whose own relationships are tenuous at best. Taking place sequentially in the three beleaguered couples' bedrooms during one endless Saturday night of co-dependence and dysfunction, beds, tempers, and domestic order are ruffled, leading all the players to a hilariously touching epiphany.
Bedroom Farce

In the midst of rehearsals for a new play, amateur dramatics proponents Colin and Kathryn receive the shattering news that their friend George is fatally ill and only has a few months to live.
Life of Riley

A movie in three acts following three couples who, over three years, each host a Christmas party. The camera stays in the kitchen and we are treated to Ayckbourn's beautifully detailed look at middle class life.
Absurd Person Singular

An adventure of the hapless Bertie Wooster, a young gentleman about town with a penchant for getting himself into personal difficulties, particularly with women. It is inevitable left to his unflappable manservant Jeeves to provide tidy and elegant rescues.
By Jeeves

Two actors play eighteen different roles in a story that asks the question: would my life have been different if I had lit a cigarette?
Smoking

It's the sixties. Gregory loves Ginny, and Ginny loves Gregory. But unfortunately Ginny also loves Philip, or at least she used to, and Philip loves her. Does Philip love his wife too? Ginny tells Gregory she's going to see her parents, when she's actually going to see Philip to break things off. Gregory, thinking to surprise her, gets there first, and the chaos begins.
Relatively Speaking
No description available.
Treppauf Treppab

Two couples go on a boating holiday together, and run into some strange people and events.
Way Upstream

Adaptation of the play by Alan Ayckbourn.