The Wednesday Play

- Season 8

(1968)

When an elderly woman is hospitalised, the truth behind her illegal adoption of 14 children is revealed.

A schoolmaster invites a nineteen-year-old student to stay with him and his wife to cram for imminent exams.

A teenage boy reluctantly accompanies his ghastly family on a coarse bank-holiday day out to local beauty spot and tourist trap, the Cheddar Gorge.

A lonely bachelor, seeking his long-lost sweetheart at a boarding house, meets a serial divorcée.

James has come in search of his feckless older brother, Charlie, to ask him to come home and settle down.

Garry committed suicide to escape disgrace and imprisonment. Does he now have the chance to change the circumstances leading to his downfall?

A couple move to a caravan park, where the owner is a petty dictator.

A man seeks his inner island.

A talk-show host is required to examine his conscience and also the ethics of "good television".

A doctor advises a woman not to proceed with her latest pregnancy, contrary to her strict Catholic upbringing.

A family becomes increasingly suspicious of the relationship between the mother and a mysterious stranger who starts to follow her around.

Part of the BBC's celebrated 'Wednesday Play' series of the 1960s, this early work by Dennis Potter is set in an isolated New Forest community in 19th Century Britain. A young local girl is murdered by a mentally disturbed youth, but the villagers blame a stranger, an Italian traveling showman and his bear, rather than see the rot in their own camp.

An author hosts a dinner party to celebrate the publication of his new novel.

A fashion editor competes for the affections of a designer with their new male model.

A successful advertising executive who promotes a brand of cigarettes is reproached by his family when his mother contracts terminal lung cancer.

After a year as a Volunteer Service Overseas worker, a young woman returns home in search of love and understanding.

A portrait of the life of some Northern apprentices.

A woman unwittingly springs a surprise at her sister's 27th birthday party.

Dock workers under the threat of redundancy, work day and night in an attempt to keep employed by running the workforce themselves.

An off-beat romance in bed-sitter land.

A young man bitterly regrets his part in an attack on a bank cashier.

A group of coal miners from Nottingham go on their annual trip to Blackpool.

A man enters into a correspondence with his colleague's eight-year-old daughter.

Dennis Potter's controversial reading of the life of Christ, with Jesus portrayed as a hearty, fiery, well-meaning carpenter who believes that people should try to love their enemies rather than fight all the time, but who is racked by self doubt as to whether or not he is the popularly anticipated Messiah.

Three Trinidadians consider what it means to be exiles in an essentially white society.

The daughter of a religious Welsh family becomes the centrepiece of a bizarre student festival.