Alan Igbon
Doting parents (Maureen Lipman, David Ross, Tom Wilkinson) must adjust to life without their children as their offspring leave for college and form relationships. Sequel to Eskimo Day.
Alan Bleasdale's touching yet frank drama for Channel 4 about the struggles of a group of young adults leaving school in a deprived area of Liverpool. Starring Stephen Walters, Suzanne Maddock and Amanda Mealing. Based on the acclaimed play by Jim Morris, voted Most Promising Playwright by the Financial Times and Morning Star in 1981. Blood on the Dole shows the lives of four teenagers, two boys and two girls, struggling to cope after being thrust into the real world for the first time after leaving school. Living in deprived Merseyside, the four youths' bright-eyed optimism for their futures and new-found freedom is soon crushed by the realities of unemployment, poverty, and the brutal reality of living and trying to find work in a city in decline. They all soon find themselves in the hopeless situation of facing complete dependence on state handouts, "the dole". The four teenagers instead find themselves turning to each other to find the strength to survive.
GBH was a seven-part British television drama written by Alan Bleasdale shown in the summer of 1991 on Channel 4. The protagonists were Michael Murray, the Militant tendency-supporting Labour leader of a city council in the North of England and Jim Nelson, the headmaster of a school for disturbed children. The series was controversial partly because Murray appeared to be based on Derek Hatton, former Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council — in an interview in the G.B.H. DVD Bleasdale recounts an accidental meeting with Hatton before the series, who indicates that he has caught wind of Bleasdale's intentions but does not mind as long as the actor playing him is "handsome". In normal parlance, the initials "GBH" refer to the criminal charge of grievous bodily harm - however, the actual intent of the letters is that it is supposed to stand for Great British Holiday.
Michael Caine stars as Baxter Thwaites, the laid-back Governor of the sleepy British colony of Cascara. But when American oil drillers accidentally strike a gusher of ultra-delicious mineral water, the forgotten Caribbean out-post becomes a global hotbed of political and economic chaos.
The Front Line was a 1984/1985 BBC sitcom about two half-brothers of West Indian descent who shared a house, one brother a policeman and one a dreadlocked Rastafarian. The series starred Paul Barber as the elder, policeman brother Malcolm, and Alan Igbon as the younger brother Sheldon. It was written by Alex Shearer, filmed in Bristol and Cardiff, and transmitted between 6 December 1984 and 17 January 1985. A pilot for the series, On The Frontline, was broadcast in the 1970s. The theme tune to the series was written and performed by Black Roots, and the opening credits of the show featured the band performing the song.
Alan Bleasdale's five-part series relates the further experiences of unemployed Liverpudlian tarmac layers Dixie, Chrissie, Loggo and Yosser, and their revered older friend, retired longshoreman and union leader, George Malone. As they struggle to make ends meet in a depressed economy, and to hold together their financially battered families, they are harrassed by the petty bureaucrats of the DHSS. But the lumbering investigational juggernaut is, both comically and tragically, guided by drivers with only a provisional license.
Drama about a Merseyside tarmac gang away on a contract on Teesside. Without the boss around, there's a chance for some local diversion with the natives while keeping up the spirit of free enterprise, preferably on the firm's time.
This is the hard and shocking story of life in a British Borstal for young offenders. The brutal regime made no attempt to reform or improve the inmates and actively encouraged a power struggle between the 'tough' new inmate and the 'old hands'. This film is a re-make, by the same director and writer, of a 1977 BBC teleplay banned before broadcast [see Scum (1991)].
A day in the life of a timid English literature professor.
