The Best Episodes of Play for Today Season 8

The story of a single mother of four living on welfare

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Teenager Jimmy's life begins to unravel after the death of his father. With his mother promiscuous and his new stepfather and stepbrother difficult to get along with, he begins to fall into a cycle of petty crime and self harm.

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A story dealing with racial tensions and fascism during a by-election in a West Midlands town

Director: Mike Newell

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When a teacher takes a group of troubled school children on a school trip to Conwy in Wales, the children understand life outside of Liverpool.

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Comedy of manners focusing on the bourgeois affectation and sexual frustration of a young married couple. Abigail's mother Sue is invited to take refuge from her teenage daughter's party with a neighbouring couple, Beverly and Laurence. They have also invited Angela and Tony, new arrivals in the street. Beverly plies her guests with alcohol as Sue becomes increasingly withdrawn and embarrassed by the pretentious goings-on. Slowly, marital tensions emerge and the evening is breaking up in disarray.

Director: Mike Leigh

Writer: Mike Leigh

"People coming to their first AA meeting, prosperous people, sometimes, accustomed to the best. They look round the places where we meet, and you can see them thinking: what am I doing here? I owe my life to these rooms!"

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The story of the romance between a Jewish boy and an Irish Catholic girl

Director: Richard Loncraine

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During World War II, a young woman joins the propaganda department and makes radio broadcasts to Germany from a British country house.

Director: David Hare

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A worker discovers a radioactive leak at the nuclear power plant where she works and tries to make it public knowledge.

Director: Michael Apted

Writer: Stephen Poliakoff

A Liverpool teenager has a hectic night out on New Year's Eve.

Director: Michael Simpson

Writer: Alan Bleasdale

A stone axehead links three couples living at different times in the same place in Wales.

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The story of the trial of Willie Gallagher, convicted of bombing the Strabane British Legion Hall in 1976.

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Olive Major is determined that her year of office as Mayor will be a happy and successful one. But her appointment of Ex-Warrant Officer Higham as Attendant and Mace-bearer causes the storm-clouds to gather over Medburgh Town Hall.

Director: Mike Newell

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Mike and his commune have a performance of their musical theatre "Diver" at the local pub, and ITV's Beth Bailey is coming along to see it. But will Beth's visions for the play as an incitement to revolution please everyone?

Director: Michael Darlow

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"We've just got to get it right. It'll be our little secret. When all the other servants have gone out, we'll play this little game to amuse ourselves. A sort of private charade."

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The story of a well-meaning charity worker

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Three schoolteachers in Belfast give up teaching to become singers/songwriters.

Director: Robert Knights

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"Five days of darkness then. Unless you get it together we will have five days of darkness. And on the sixth day you will say, let there be light, and no doubt it'll be such an effort that on the seventh day you'll have to rest!"

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