Roy Battersby
Marking Play for Today’s 50th anniversary, Drama Out of a Crisis is a compelling exploration of the series, its origins, achievements, controversies and legacies. Featuring a rich and surprising range of archive extracts and original interviews with many who created the series, including producers Kenith Trodd, Margaret Matheson and Richard Eyre, and directors Mike Leigh, David Hare and Ken Loach.
Three young Muslim men, part of a terror cell, are making a bomb in a London flat, when they get a call to vacate immediately with their gear. The police have been alerted and they are under suspicion.
University lecturer Neil Tannahill is drawn into a sinister conspiracy involving secretly-stored Soviet nuclear waste at a remote British nuclear facility after receiving an enigmatic note from legendary atomic scientist and one-time former head of "Doomwatch" (the infamous Scientific watchdog group of the seventies), Dr Spencer Quist.
"When you marry, have kids...you'll still be in that chair." An ordinary city flat. Evening. A man tries to talk to his daughter. She will not answer. The play moves through the prison of the mind, to that of the outside world in a search that leads to a tragedy.
At the turn of the century, a widow decides to set her dead husbands business back in the black column. Her efforts to get the mill going again, however, are somewhat submarined by problems with an employee who is accused of murder and her sister who has married a spoiled rich boy
The true story of a daring prison break. Wycliffe Kato, Director of Civil Aviation in Idi Amin's Uganda was at the airport to catch a flight to Canada for a conference when he was arrested by Amin's secret police, members of the notorious Sate Research Bureau, and thrown into the Nakasero prison. This should have meant certain death, but, along with his cell mates, army officers who had come under suspicion of organizing a coup, he escaped and made it on foot to Nairobi. This TV movie is based on Wycliffe Kato's own account in his book "Escape From Idi Amin's Slaughterhouse".
Gerald and Susannah, an affluent young couple, inspect a shabby town house for sale. Gerald has plans to renovate it and sell it on for a big profit. But their expedition quickly turns into a nightmare when three criminals arrive, searching for the money they hid in the building years ago.
British drama about a young member of the RAF who finds that his new girlfriend is pregnant.
A 66-minute TV documentary from 1977. It was produced by and starred Vanessa Redgrave, and directed by Roy Battersby.
The true story of a strike in 1970 by female textile-factory workers in Leeds who wanted to be paid the same as their male colleagues, but whose efforts were undermined by the trade union that they belonged to.
David Adler is an operator. He strips assets, other men's wives, and his oldest friend's soul - anything for a cool million.
Young Socialists from Glasgow, Liverpool and Swansea march to London and discuss their economic struggles en route. Supporting them are Ken Loach, Corin Redgrave, Arnold Wesker and other leading cultural figures of the left of British politics. The march is intercut with scenes dramatising parallel injustices in the English Civil War era and earlier - featuring Frances de la Tour in queenly mode as Elizabeth I. The film's unconventional structure also features frequent extracts of the rousing pop concert, with the band Slade, which culminated the epic march.
A man celebrating his birthday comes to appreciate the difference between media fantasy and mundane reality.
Compelling drama from screenwriter Colin Welland set in a city comprehensive school of low expectations and ambitions. Pupil Latimer does not conform to the macho culture and is labeled a homosexual, leading to bullying by both the pupils and some of the teachers.
A psychedelic documentary of the body electric, with music by Pink Floyd. The film was directed and produced by Roy Battersby. The film's narrators, Frank Finlay and Vanessa Redgrave, provide commentary that combines the knowledge of human biologists and anatomical experts. The film's soundtrack, Music from the Body, was composed by Ron Geesin and Roger Waters.
