ScreenPlay

ScreenPlay

Screenplay was a drama anthology television series, broadcast on BBC between 1986 and 1993. Numerous episodes were produced including one named "Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Islands" starring Robbie Coltrane as English writer Samuel Johnson who in the autumn of 1773, visits the Hebrides off the north-west coast of Scotland. That episode was directed by John Byrne and co-starred John Sessions and Celia Imrie.

Drama

Seasons

1. All Together Now

Air Date: 1986-07-09

The weekly brass band rehearsal is an enjoyable, light-hearted occasion. Then Mathew, the conductor, introduces James, a newcomer to the village, who is an enthusiastic bandsman from the north, where they do these things properly.

2. Daylight Robbery

Air Date: 1986-07-16

Neglected by her family, kept apart from her grandchildren, desperately short of money, Bea begins to gamble - at first for small stakes, but ultimately for the highest stake of all: revenge for the past.

3. Brick Is Beautiful

Air Date: 1986-07-23

'Bricks have a future, Mr Clark - you can count on that. They're out there waiting to be taken!' 'There is one small problem.' 'What's that?' 'Well - they're still attached to buildings, most of them, aren't they?' Steve thinks there is a fortune in reclaimed bricks. But how will his ambition affect his girlfriend, Maureen, and his mates, Brad, Dez and Snapper?

4. Knowing the Score

Air Date: 1986-07-30

Graeme has musical talent and is struggling to be allowed to express it. Lois is being pushed by her mother into solo parts in the girls' choir. Together they have to perform at a competitive concert while parents and supporters keep score.

5. Drums Along Balmoral Drive

Air Date: 1986-08-06

'I don't think at first I thought at all. I had a nice house, lovely kids. I didn't think about blacks at all. I should've done, but I didn't. They were just there.'

6. Asinamali

Air Date: 1986-08-13

Five blacks in South Africa end up in jail - for crimes which range from shooting a security policeman to sleeping with a white boss's wife. What they all share is the conviction that the 'Day of Reckoning' is at hand.

7. In Traction

Air Date: 1986-08-20

Matters are bad enough when Mr Gentle tries to commit suicide. They are even worse when the attempt fails. Worst of all is being confined to a hospital bed when a bunch of juvenile delinquents are sent to visit you.

8. The Mozart Inquest

Air Date: 1986-08-27

Mozart's death in 1791 is surrounded by mystery. What are the secrets of his burial in an unmarked grave? Was he poisoned or did he die of natural causes? Now, almost 200 years later, an inquest is convened to examine the evidence both original and new. A team of real barristers confronts key witnesses from the period, in this unscripted spontaneous event. You and the invited studio jury will decide the outcome.

9. The Marlowe Inquest

Air Date: 1986-09-03

In an unscripted inquest, three practicing barristers interrogate actors portraying relevant figures of the 16th century in order to determine what really happened to the playwright and poet, Christopher Marlowe.

10. Blood, Sweat and Tears

Air Date: 1986-09-10

'Is this the judo place?' 'Dojo, yeh.' 'Wants a chuffin' coat of paint, if you ask me.' 'What is it you want?' 'Self-defence thingy.' That's all judo is to Louise and hundreds like her. It doesn't take long to change her mind. And then there's the small matter of a black belt..

11. Shift Work

Air Date: 1986-09-24

Julie, a cab driver, collects a fare from the local airport one evening. Unfortunately he dies of a suspected heart attack on his way home in her taxi and Julie has to decide how best to handle the situation.......

12. Paying Guests - Part 1

Air Date: 1986-10-01

Spend some time in the company of the guests at 'Wentworth' - all taking the waters except for the Colonel and Miss Howard, who has some leisure for the beginnings of a late romance. Gossip, bicycle rides, rounds of golf, bridge in the evenings and preparations for the charity concert all make time pass most pleasantly - don't they?

13. Paying Guests - Part 2

Air Date: 1986-10-02

Miss Howard's exhibition of water-colours at the Green Salon falters but then takes off. The season at 'Wentworth' is now drawing to a close, peoples' plans for the winter unfold. Florence, for the first time in her life, refuses to go off with her selfish old father. Miss Howard has some momentous news, and the Colonel must make a very brisk about-turn.

1. The Trial of Klaus Barbie

Air Date: 1987-07-15

Decades after the end of World War II, escaped war criminal Klaus Barbie is brought to justice

2. Land

Air Date: 1987-07-22

The Amazonian jungle, Brazil, 1987. Ruthless landowners are hiring gunslingers to evict peasants from their land. The peasants look to their priest for help. should they resist the Violence passively - or defy the church's teaching and take up arms? When a stranger on the run arrives in town, the answer becomes clear.

3. Lily My Love

Air Date: 1987-07-29

Lily is 13, Colin is 39 and a vagrant. They run away together. 'One and a half to the English Lakes, single, because we're never coming back, we're going on.'

4. Carianai and the Courtesans

Air Date: 1987-08-05

A painter falls in love with a woman whom he suspects may be a thief and a prostitute.

5. Our Lady Blue

Air Date: 1987-08-12

In a Liverpool convent a touching and unusual friendship is forged between Rachel, a young volunteer, Paul, doing 100 hours of community service, and Sheila, a dying prostitute. It results in a strange and forbidden journey to Lourdes.

6. White Lady

Air Date: 1987-08-26

In a derelict farmhouse, deep in the English countryside, Gil struggles alone to bring up his little daughters 'to need very little. - strong against all harm'. But unknown to any of them, in the surrounding fields of wheat and barley, and in the nodding branches of the fruit trees, there lurks a deathly power.

7. The Shutter Falls

Air Date: 1987-09-16

A 19th Century photographer travels to the North of Scotland to document the fishing industry, where he falls in love with one of the Gaelic-speaking fish gutting girls

8. Christine

Air Date: 1987-09-23

Depiction of the everyday life of a teenage heroin addict.

9. The Interrogation of John

Air Date: 1987-09-30

A man is brought into a small London police station and charged with gross indecency. A terrible murder has also been committed in the area. Is there a connection? Might the assembled officers have an early result? Not if he refuses to say anything or even give his name.

10. Road

Air Date: 1987-10-07

Your tour guide for the night is one drunken man called Scullery. Prepare yourself for the experience of your lifetime as he shows you an average night along a derelict Lancashire road in the 1980s.

1. No Further Cause for Concern

Air Date: 1988-07-13

'I'm doing 15 years, three years at a time, and when I come out I'm going to be the same man as when I came in. The same man!' But even hard man Danny Monk can't foresee the consequences when he barricades himself in a cell during a prison riot with a prison officer as hostage.

2. A Woman Alone

Air Date: 1988-07-20

A housewife confides to her neighbour about the troubles she has been having with her possessive husband, her romantic lover and her lecherous invalid brother-in-law. In spite of the impressive battery of mod cons in her home, she feels that love and marriage are not all they are cracked up to be.

3. Burning Ambition

Air Date: 1988-07-27

When the luckless Martin and Renato have the bright idea of starting up a guided coach tour of the M25, London's orbital motorway, they think they're on to a winner - but they soon discover they're on course for disaster.

4. Eskimos Do it

Air Date: 1988-08-03

When the widowed Mrs Bing goes into hospital for a routine operation, she little realises she will soon make a dramatic bid for the most essential freedom of all.

5. Out Of Love

Air Date: 1988-08-10

The shy, hard-working farmer Thomas Price, whose life is dominated by his father Emrys, is strongly attracted to the independent Englishwoman Ruth and they become drawn into a passionate love affair.

6. Home Front

Air Date: 1988-08-24

'What about us? We have rights too. This is not just any residential home for kids in care. This is Home. You. tell them - they try and close us down, we're gonna fight....'

7. Between The Cracks

Air Date: 1988-08-31

The performers in this drama are not actors reciting other people's lines. They are who they say they are and they speak from their own real experience. The stories you are about to hear are true.

8. The Black and Blue Lamp

Air Date: 1988-09-07

In 1949, Tom Riley is arrested for the murder of PC George Dixon. As he awaits interrogation at the station, he is mysteriously transported into an episode of "The Filth", a 1988 police series where the hard men rule.

9. The Diary of Rita Patel

Air Date: 1988-09-14

It's a new start for teenager Rita Patel and her family - new home, new school, new diary, new life. But their happiness is short-lived when racist skinheads attack the family and their home.

10. Edvard

Air Date: 1988-09-20

Set in 1902, this is the story of the artist Edvard Munch and his stormy affair with Tulla Larsen , the inspiration behind some of his most famous paintings.

11. Starlings

Air Date: 1988-09-28

Gary Wilson loses his factory job, retrains as a butler and under the patronage of a wealthy young woman finds success in the City.

1. Testimony of a Child

Air Date: 1989-07-05

Being accused of child abuse is a nightmare every family dreads. The Taylors are an ordinary happy family, but Paul and Jill are worried about their 11-year-old son Mark, who is not eating. The family GP has diagnosed 'failure to thrive', and Mark is sent to the hospital for a check-up.

2. A Night on the Tyne

Air Date: 1989-07-12

When four shipbuilders are made redundant they decide that as a protest they will launch the ship they have been working on.

3. Loving Hazel

Air Date: 1989-07-19

Mike and his ex-wife have an 8-year-old daughter, Hazel. She calls her new mother's boyfriend 'daddy', which Mike goes along with until his access to Hazel is limited.

4. The Attractions

Air Date: 1989-07-26

When Danny, 'one of Maggie's wandering minstrels', visits a seaside horror museum, he is rather disappointed. 'It's all about victims. Now people are interested in who done it, not who it got done to ...' So begins a process of disintegration which culminates in a new type of exhibit, 'an attraction' for the modern age.

5. Chinese Whispers

Air Date: 1989-08-02

Kenny's work as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital isn't just a job, it's a vocation. His special group of patients are his friends - his only friends. When a strange young man is introduced to the group, he threatens the love, discipline and respect that have been the very basis of Kenny's authority, and all that surrounds the institution is scant protection from the madness of the world beyond.

6. The Act

Air Date: 1989-08-09

Eastern Europe, February 1944: Johann Frink and Otto Hansen, once famous Berlin cabaret artists, are summoned to take part in a special 'entertainment', devised by a mysterious Nazi captain. When they discover where they are to perform, they find themselves with an appalling dilemma.

7. Scout

Air Date: 1989-08-16

Man United's scout for many generations of young footballers, sending across the water the best Irish talent regardless of background. As six more hopefuls gather at his isolated cottage for a weekend trial, their dreams of following George Best's path from Belfast are shattered by the violent return of a past graduate.

8. The Spirit of Man

Air Date: 1989-08-23

In pursuit of faith, God and the Devil, spells are cast, buckets of water thrown and men with black beards dance and sing.

9. Beyond the Pale

Air Date: 1989-08-30

Milly and her friends have been going on holiday together ever since they've known each other. This summer they return to one of their favourite haunts, a beautiful Irish country hotel. It's a place full of fond memories for all of them, but on this occasion their sense of ease and comfort is destroyed when a terrible secret is revealed.

10. The Hen House

Air Date: 1989-09-06

Lily lives on a remote smallholding in County Donegal. She keeps herself to herself. But a game of hide-and-seek exposes a secret.

11. Seeing in the Dark

Air Date: 1989-09-13

Tony has begun to panic that life may be passing him by. As his friends forge ahead, he feels stuck in a dead end job and trapped by his relationship with Judith. One day, he starts to be plagued by a series of mysterious phone calls and letters. Tony becomes haunted by a growing premonition of catastrophe.

12. A Small Mourning

Air Date: 1989-09-20

When Marjorie's husband of 20 years dies of a brain tumour, she's hit financially as well as emotionally. The money she makes packing tights in a factory isn't enough to cover her rent, and her TV is repossessed. Soon after the funeral she meets Arnold, a wealthy pub landlord, who squires her to the local Conservative Club ball in an effort to cheer her up. Life with Arnold promises not only companionship but undreamt-of luxury, but Marjorie's friends and family do not necessarily approve.

1. Amongst Barbarians

Air Date: 1990-07-11

2. Antonia and Jane

Air Date: 1990-07-18

3. Night Voice

Air Date: 1990-07-25

4. The Englishman's Wife

Air Date: 1990-08-01

5. The Land of Dreams

Air Date: 1990-08-08

6. Keeping Tom Nice

Air Date: 1990-08-15

7. A Safe House

Air Date: 1990-08-22

8. Afters

Air Date: 1990-08-29

9. Wedded

Air Date: 1990-08-29

10. Available Light

Air Date: 1990-09-05

11. Needle

Air Date: 1990-09-12

12. Shoot the Revolution

Air Date: 1990-12-16

13. August Saturday

Air Date: 1990-12-29

1. Redemption

Air Date: 1991-07-03

2. Broke

Air Date: 1991-07-10

3. Events at Drimaghleen

Air Date: 1991-07-17

4. The Fallout Guy

Air Date: 1991-07-24

5. Murder in Oakland

Air Date: 1991-07-31

6. The Hour of the Lynx

Air Date: 1991-08-14

7. Clubland

Air Date: 1991-08-28

8. Arise and Go Now

Air Date: 1991-09-04

9. Message to Major

Air Date: 1991-09-11

10. Journey to Knock

Air Date: 1991-09-18

1. The Countess Alice

Air Date: 1992-07-01

2. Force of Duty

Air Date: 1992-07-08

3. Bad Girl

Air Date: 1992-07-15

4. Bitter Harvest

Air Date: 1992-07-22

5. Man to Man

Air Date: 1992-07-29

6. Death and the Compass

Air Date: 1992-08-05

7. Dread Poets Society

Air Date: 1992-08-12

8. Buying a Landslide

Air Date: 1992-09-02

9. Continental Drift

Air Date: 1992-09-09

10. A Little Bit of Lippy

Air Date: 1992-09-16

11. Small Metal Jacket

Air Date: 1992-09-23

12. You, Me and Marley

Air Date: 1992-09-30

1. Love Lies Bleeding/L'Inconnue de Belfast

Air Date: 1993-09-22

2. The Merrihill Millionaires

Air Date: 1993-09-29

3. The Vision Thing

Air Date: 1993-10-06

4. Safe

Air Date: 1993-10-13

5. Not Even God Is Wise Enough

Air Date: 1993-10-20

6. Boswell & Johnson's Tour of the Western Isles

Air Date: 1993-10-27

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Rating

6.0/10

Release Date

1986-07-09

Episodes

87 (8 seasons)

Status

Returning Series

Cast