The BBC once let radicals run wild on your TV—and accidentally changed everything.
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.
Direction
Wyver lets the archive breathe—no flashy reconstruction needed.
Production
Access to producers who literally fought the BBC suits.
Director
John Wyver
Martina Laird
Narrator (voice)
Ken Loach
Self – Director
Mike Leigh
Self – Filmmaker
Richard Eyre
Self – Director & Producer
David Hare
Self – Writer & Director
Dennis Potter
Self – Writer (archive footage, 1973 & 1977)
David Rose
Self – Producer (archive footage, 1988)
Roy Battersby
Self – Director
Kenith Trodd
Self – Producer
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Play for Today launched with 'The Long Distance Piano Player'—a 35-minute single-take about a man attempting to break a piano-playing record, because why start safe?
The series' 1970s peak coincided with the BBC's most open-minded commissioning era, when a single producer could greenlight Loach's 'The Rank and File' about striking miners without a focus group in sight.
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