DVDS
Play For Today Volume 3 (BFI)
Few series evoke the golden age of television quite like Play For Today, an often hard-hitting, uncompromising drama strand that would struggle to get past today’s BBC box-tickers.
As the title suggests, the series, which ran from 1970 to 1984, owed a strong debt to theatre, as did much television at the time, with programmes still often studio-based and static, using actors who had often learnt their trade in repertory theatre, and were more used to projecting to the 15th row rather than someone watching from the intimacy of their front room.
But while sophisticated modern viewers may be surprised at the comparatively primitive production values, and occasionally overblown performances, the quality of the drama itself is rarely in doubt, and that goes for the six plays
