Strapless

The Absence of War

Political drama written by David Hare and starring John Thaw and based on Labour's disastrous 1992 election campaign. Labour leader George Jones battles with his party on the campaign trail of a general election.

National Theatre Live: I'm Not Running

Pauline Gibson has spent her life as a doctor, the inspiring leader of a local health campaign. When she crosses paths with her old boyfriend, a stalwart loyalist in Labour Party politics, she’s faced with an agonising decision. What’s involved in sacrificing your private life and your piece of mind for something more than a single issue? Does she dare?

Brassneck

Through the story of a single family, Brassneck traces a history that parallels the Labour Party's advent to power in 1945 through to the property speculation of the 1960s and the disillusionment with the Labour government in the early 1970s. Like most of the early work of the writers, David Hare and Howard Brenton, committed radical (if not revolutionary) socialists throughout the 1970s, it is a satirical attack on capitalist greed and corruption, full of savage, and often disturbing, humour.

National Theatre Live: Skylight

On a bitterly cold London evening, schoolteacher Kyra Hollis receives an unexpected visit from her former lover, Tom Sergeant, a successful and charismatic restaurateur whose wife has recently died. As the evening progresses, the two attempt to rekindle their once passionate relationship only to find themselves locked in a dangerous battle of opposing ideologies and mutual desires.

Man Above Men

Max Glanville, a judge whose attention wanders throughout a trial for criminal assault, makes an error in the sentence - which he has to correct. The judge sees himself as a protector of democracy, but his daughter, Susan, regards him as the greatest living argument for euthanasia.

The Reader

The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.

The Hours

The story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.

Screen Two

Series of single made-for-television dramas.

Dreams of Leaving

William came to work in Fleet Street in 1971. London meant girls, as many girls as he could find. Then he met Caroline and so it began, that very strange summer ... Caroline said the best of her life.

Denial

Acclaimed writer and historian Deborah E. Lipstadt must battle for historical truth to prove the Holocaust actually occurred when David Irving, a renowned denier, sues her for libel.

Damage

The life of a respected British politician at the height of his career crumbles when he becomes obsessed with his son's lover.

Play for Today

Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.

Page Eight

Johnny is a long-serving MI5 officer. His boss dies suddenly, leaving behind an inexplicable file which threatens the stability of the organisation.

The White Crow

The story of Rudolf Nureyev, whose escape to the West stunned the world at the height of the Cold War. With his magnetic presence, Nureyev emerged as ballet’s most famous star, a wild and beautiful dancer limited by the world of 1950s Leningrad. His flirtation with Western artists and ideas led him into a high-stakes game of cat and mouse with the KGB.

Collateral

When a pizza delivery driver is shot dead in south London, a tenacious detective goes after the people traffickers behind his murder and unravels a conspiracy that goes to the top.

Roadkill

Politician Peter Laurence's private life is falling apart. Shamelessly untroubled by guilt or remorse, he seeks to further his own agenda whilst others plot to bring him down. Can he out-run his own secrets to win the ultimate prize?