The dramas, made by and starring working-class talent in many cases \u2013 much of which was sourced from the BBC\u2019s former regional outpost at Pebble Mill in Birmingham \u2013 gave a platform to underrepresented voices, establishing the likes of Dennis Potter and Alan Bleasdale along the way. \u201cPlay for Today was a space to be experimental, at the heart of the mainstream,\u201d says Phil Harrison, a journalist and author of The Age of Static: How TV Explains Modern Britain. \u201cAnd lots of it was really ahead of its time \u2013 something like Penda\u2019s Fen, for example, both in terms of format and subject matter. I love the idea of people just chancing upon these quite dark, quite hard-hitting things and not knowing what to make of them. It feels like properly adventurous public service broadcasting.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cProperly adventurous public service broadcasting\u201d is certainly what Channel 5<\/a> is hoping to replicate with its new revival, with four original dramas airing over the coming weeks and more in the pipeline. The aim is also to diversify the often cliquey, middle-class TV industry, where who you know is arguably more important than how good you are. \u201cThere is a crisis at the moment in UK drama\u201d, says Sebastian Cardwell, Channel 5\u2019s head of drama and deputy head of content for its parent company, Paramount. \u201cYou need a credit on your CV, and if you come from a low-income or disadvantaged background, it\u2019s incredibly difficult to break into [the industry]. We thought we would use the returning strand of Play For Today to let people hone their talent.\u201d The idea was conceived following a conversation with Vertigo Films\u2019 Allan Niblo, with the first four films made by Vertigo in London and Liverpool-based LA Productions (each company has made two respectively). <\/p>\n Born in 1993 \u2013 nine years after Play for Today last aired \u2013 screenwriter Martha Watson Allpress wasn\u2019t around to see the first incarnation of the TV juggernaut. \u201cI was like, oh I\u2019ve just got this email \u2013 this is interesting,\u201d she says, recalling the moment she was asked to participate in its revival. \u201cMy mum was like, oh my God! I knew it was a big thing when she went slightly haywire with excitement.\u201d Watson Allpress quickly got to work on Big Winners, one of the first dramas in the new series, about an elderly couple whose \u00a314m lottery win kickstarts conversations between them about deep-seated traumas and buried ambitions.<\/p>\n Watson Allpress cut her teeth in theatre, with plays such as the acclaimed Patricia Gets Ready (for a Date With the Man That Used to Hit Her), so Big Winners marks her transition to television. As a playwright, snagging her first TV project this way \u201cjust felt really serendipitous\u201d, she says. However, she resisted the urge to head straight for the vast archive and start taking notes. \u201cIf I did that, I would just regurgitate people I admire. But I think the whole point is to write a play for today.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThe more diverse your stories are, the more diverse your viewership is \u2013 everybody wins. I just felt like, everyone\u2019s doing this for the right reasons.\u201d <\/p>\n Martha Watson Allpress<\/p>\n Big Winners tells the story of Arthur and Edith Thistle (Paul Copley and Sue Johnston<\/a>), who should be enjoying their colossal lottery windfall \u2013 indeed, Arthur quickly declares that he wants to move \u201csomewhere classy, somewhere sunny \u2013 with a Waitrose\u201d. Instead, they find themselves raking over their unfulfilled dreams, Edith\u2019s in particular. Her life has been \u201ca domino run of dissatisfaction\u201d, as Watson Allpress rather poetically puts it, and the film juxtaposes her stilted existence with the vital presence of a younger neighbour, Jade (Alexa Davies). What does Watson Allpress think her piece says about the present moment? \u201cI\u2019m of the opinion that the world is a really scary place [right now], and it can feel so messy and overwhelming\u201d, she says. \u201c[You can feel like] I, as one person, couldn\u2019t possibly do anything about it \u2013 so I\u2019ll do nothing. Big Winners is about not making decisions and letting someone else guide your life, and how that\u2019s probably worse than being wrong and strong.\u201d <\/p>\n Originally from Sleaford in Lincolnshire, the writer was keen to set her film in a similar milieu. \u201cThere\u2019s this fallacy that if you\u2019re from a small town, you\u2019ve got small dreams. And that\u2019s just not true.\u201d<\/p>\n Watson Allpress was also keen to write older protagonists in a way that gave them agency and intrigue; Johnston (best known as Royle Family matriarch Barbara) and Copley (who starred in Downton Abbey, and was in seven previous Play for Today films) are 81 and 80 respectively. She had just finished facilitating a programme with older writers, ranging from their seventies to their mid-nineties, when she began work on the script. \u201cI was really struck watching older writers write older characters. No one wrote grandparents,\u201d she says. \u201cI really wanted to centre an older woman here, because I think that\u2019s a forgotten demographic on screen. And then we got Sue Johnston, and I lost my mind!\u201d If the women writers and directors of Play For Today 1.0 could often be overlooked<\/a>, here Watson Allpress is decidedly centre stage, along with her octogenarian lead and a woman director, Emma Turner, to boot.<\/p>\n
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