The series featured writers new to television, and names including Anita Dobson, Nigel Havers, Sue Johnston and Alan Davies. Please join me as we rank the four episodes from worst to best...
Channel 5's never really been on the radar here at The Anorak Zone, with the only prior references being when they did a (decent, to be fair) TV movie of Doomwatch, and a quite charming reality show where Syd Little became a holiday rep. Other than that, there's a lot of US imports, some of which aren't bad, The Good Ship Murder is joyous, "so terrible it's great" TV, and Peppa Pig is obviously all killer, no filler. But generally most of Channel 5's schedules are taken up with skippable shows like "DIY Tips from my Serial Killer Neighbour" and "TV's Thirtiest Biggest Willies".
Play For Today is far from the first TV series from another broadcaster resurrected by Channel 5 - Blind Date, Roobarb, Going for Gold and It's a Knockout were just some of the revived shows. So, is it a worthy heir to the original, groundbreaking BBC series, or is it just a load of ropey old tat called "Play For Today" to drum up a bit of publicity and cash in on a familiar brand? Well, it's complicated, and the answer might be both. Let's get started...
Anita Dobson and Nigel Havers star in this first episode as two old lovers reunited in a retirement village, though the chances of this septuagenarian romance appealing to such an audience is dimmed by unnecessary bad language - and language that comes so late in, it could easily have been skipped. It's not needed, and the ghost of Mary Whitehouse agrees with me.
But what really makes this one so awful is the forced "comedy" throughout. The screenshot above isn't representative of the focal storyline, but is representative of how "comedic" this one is. Anita Dobson devours the scenery whole, while Nina Wadia plays a retirement home manager so broadly and over-the-top it's like she's essaying a comic character from Goodness Gracious Me... and I say that as a fan of Goodness Gracious Me.
It doesn't really matter that such attempts at "comedy" are intentional, because they're tonally inconsistent with scenes elsewhere. Tracy-Ann Oberman, playing Dobson's daughter (they'd both played Dirty Den wives in EastEnders) seems like she's in a different show, with none of the broad mugging in the name of "humour".
Maybe there are some people who find this stuff funny. Maybe. At the heart of it there's a vaguely interesting story, but it's not one that hasn't been told many, many times before.
Yes, that image above is a nice unintentional homage to the original Play For Today. We don't get three walled sets, stagey blocking and slow pacing, but we get one of the leads momentarily glancing into the camera. Result!
This was the second episode of the run, oddly another "elderly couple" episode following on from the opener, Never Too Late. Not that having TV featuring an older generation is a bad thing - far from it - but it seems an odd scheduling decision to have them air directly after each other. This one sees the always reliable Sue Johnston and Paul Copley act out a situation where they've won £14m on the lottery, but resentments make the wife want a divorce when the money gives her the possibility of living a life that's not just going through the motions of existence.
Essentially a two-hander, perhaps the biggest surprise in the episode is a room that's been locked for 50 years and is finally opened, and I was honestly genuinely shocked by what they found in there.... no dust. Half a century and it's spotless. Oh, and the room is also... well, you'll probably guess. It's not exactly a big surprise. Though it might be way too much of a stretch of disbelief that they'd keep it locked for 50 years, even with that reason. (You can read what the "surprise" is under the hidden text of the image, should you wish.)
There are a couple of other minor characters, a new neighbour and her young daughter. Played by Alexa Davies, the neighbour seems to exist just to spout a lot of "written", unrealistic platitudes about running in life, before asking Sue Johnston's elderly "Edith Thistle" what's next for her. Why would anyone ask a woman in her 80s "What's next for you?" The crematorium, obviously.
Then there's the totally meaningless response from the neighbour after Edith thanks her for returning a glass her daughter had accidentally stolen from their house: "All good. Anytime." What, she's prepared to return stolen property whenever they ask her?
Okay, this is a pedantic statement - maybe - but this bit is underscored by incidental music that doesn't so much drive the point home as ram it through your skull. Back in the day, better episodes of Play For Today wouldn't have spoonfed the viewers, but this is symptomatic of so much of modern television, all "tell not show" and underestimating the intelligence of those watching.
Let's end on a bit of trivia. Play For Today actually ended so many years ago that even TV old hands like Anita Dobson and Sue Johnston were relative newcomers when it finished, and only two of the cast members from this new version appeared in the original. Nigel Havers appeared in two episodes in 1979 and 1982, while Paul Copley had roles in six separate episodes from 1973-1981. Copley is, in effect, Play For Today royalty, as he also wrote a play for the series, Pillion, which was shot but never screened.
One of the better plays in the run, and it's nice not to have to put one down too much as these are, after all, new voices in television. You've got to give people a chance.
This one features Alan Davies as an ageing comedian, living with his wife, played by Nikki Amuka-Bird. They hear a disturbance in the night, and a "mugging victim" asks for their help. Naturally, it all goes a bit Funny Games, and, even though you can see the twists coming, it's genuinely quite unnerving.
Sadly, as it goes on, it starts to get a bit too silly and ridiculous. Alan Davies is liked perfectly well here at The Anorak Zone - I've often thought about doing an article on Jonathan Creek - but it has to be acknowledged that whatever sibilance-friendly charisma he brings to the screen, no one is likely to mistake him for Daniel Day-Lewis.
This lack of serious "chops" does make things seem a little sillier than they need to at the end, but the real problem is the casting of Amuka-Bird as his wife, her classically trained acting throwing the gap into stark effect. (Though oddly, Davies has performed with the RSC.)
This new series of Play For Today averaged 669,000 viewers, or 5.4% of the available audience. While the audience increased slightly between the first and second episode, a week's break for football saw A Knock on the Door slip to 527,000 viewers (4%), while this last edition of the run was the lowest, sinking to 346,000 (3.3%).
Yet if these figures seem low, remember that this is Channel 5, a minority channel among minority channels. Big Winners and its 906,000 viewers was actually the third most-watched programme on the station that week, and was considered a success. Channel 5, pleased with the audience response, ordered another six episodes for broadcast in 2026.
It's a shame so few tuned in to this last one, as it's the only one of the four that makes you think there could be merit to this revival. While the other three are, at best, "passable", this one is genuinely good with a naturalistic setting.
Lead Jessica Plummer had acted as a child, and was in a dance music group, "Neon Jungle", when she was twenty. The group was short-lived, but racked up four Top 20 singles (two in the Top 10) and a Top 10 album. As the Anorak Zone wasn't really the target market for girl groups back in 2014, I can't say I'd heard of them, and I also wasn't aware that five years later she'd appeared in over 120 episodes of EastEnders as Chantelle Atkins.
Now 33, Plummer essays a fine performance as a teacher pushed to her limits in a troubled school. The Guardian reviewed the series, generally slating it, and suggesting that it lacked originality. It's a fair point. There's perhaps nothing in these four episodes that hasn't been seen before, sometimes multiple times, and the show perhaps hasn't yet brought us a striking new "voice" in television writing. But while ground-breaking, not every episode of the original Play For Today pushed the limits. And when an episode's as well put together as this one, it suggests that continuing could be worthwhile...