The Wednesday Play Season 2, Episode 32: Ape and Essence

The War Game

75 min

Alice

In this look at Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), aka Lewis Carroll, Potter mixed biographical drama with a psychological profile to explore the roots of Dodgson's creativity. Dodgson tells stories to ten-year-old Alice Liddell, leading to recreations of scenes adapted from ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (1865), designed to resemble the original Sir John Tenniel illustrations.

75 min

The Girl Who Loved Robots

Night club girl Victory Ducann is found murdered, the main suspect is an astronaut, but police are prevented from approaching him as he is due to fly off to the Moon.

75 min

A Designing Woman

Milly has been at it again.

75 min

Up The Junction

Fragments of the life of three working-class women, and the people around them, in South London in the 1960s. Scenes in homes, streets, pubs, prison and their workplace cover family, friendship, romance, sex, and abortion.

75 min

The Trial and Torture of Sir John Rampayne

An elderly right-wing politician is kidnapped, seemingly as part of a student prank. But his captors have a more alarming agenda.

75 min

The End of Arthur's Marriage

A simple-minded man on the outs with his wife and her family must take a large amount of his father-in-law's hard-earned money to buy a house, in the belief that home-ownership will make him responsible and respectable. Instead, he throws it away on a mad spending spree with his daughter.

75 min

Tomorrow, Just You Wait

Jimmy is young, earning good money and going out with a smashing girl. What more could a man wish for?

75 min

The Bond

Newlyweds Chris and Sally are young and attractive, with successful careers and a beautiful home. Their future is rosy. However, trying to make marriage work is not easy.

75 min

Stand Up, Nigel Barton

It deals with the experiences of Nigel Barton, a young man from a poor mining community who wins a scholarship to Oxford University. The villagers accuse him of snobbery, while the rich University students treat him like a peasant. Uncertain of which sphere he should be moving in, Nigel tries to reconcile himself with his proud but stubborn father, and also succeed at University, despite its pretentions which appal him.

75 min

Vote, Vote, Vote For Nigel Barton

Candidate Nigel Barton goes from idealism to cynicism as he becomes disillusioned and suspicious of hollow campaign promises.

75 min

The Coming Out Party

A boy begins a search in Notting Hill shortly before Christmas.

75 min

The Bone Yard

Mrs. Miller wants to know why her husband has been working nights. PC Miller claims that a statue of Jesus on the cross has spoken to him in the graveyard. When senior officers and the church get involved, is he a prophet or a fraud?

75 min

A Man On Her Back

John is an aspiring composer and pianist at a club and Mary is a single girl that he meets there. When friendship turns to romance, John has to contend with Colin, a charming ladies' man who turns to Mary in times of trouble.

75 min

Rodney, Our Intrepid Hero

Anything Incorporated, an exclusive club devoted to providing the illegal and unattainable for its clients. Our intrepid hero, Rodney, is a newspaper journalist determined to expose the venture.

75 min

Calf Love

A young English exchange student staying with a German family falls for the daughters.

75 min

Silent Song

Life in a Trappist monastery offers a life of contemplation and hard labour.

75 min

Who's A Good Boy Then?

Billy Oates meets a lady in a market and, taken by his kindness, she invites him to lodge with her and her husband. A rivalry soon develops between the young man and his landlord.

75 min

A Game - Like - Only A Game

Two boys hatch a plan to get some money to go to the seaside.

75 min

Why Aren't You Famous?

A young Irish woman named Eileen comes to Britain with romantic ideas of fame and fortune and meets Toppet, a struggling artist with a spare room.

75 min

Macready's Gala

The Headmaster and governors of a boarding school are accidentally locked in the new memorial room with the convicted Great Train Robbers.

75 min

A Walk In The Sea

Author James Hanley, Irish by birth and Welsh by adoption, crafted a TV play about a lonely spinster having her cottage in a seaside village requisitioned by the local council for a building scheme, with tragic consequences.

75 min

Boy In The Smoke

75 min

Barlowe of the Car Park

We spend a day with Barlowe, a council car park attendant.

75 min

The Portsmouth Defence

After an assault a man tries to find justice in court only to find that his incompetent prosecution team and the attractive female defense lawyer who wows the court, conspire against him.

Pity About The Abbey

Satirical play in which businessmen want to destroy Westminster Abbey to make way for a bypass.

The Big Man Coughed and Died

Louie, a married factory worker, has just been made redundant when he meets a girl in a park and decides to change his life.

The Snow Ball

A passionate, ambiguous relationship begins between two people who meet at a masked ball.

A Cheery Soul

When a bossy do-gooder becomes homeless, she is passed from home to home.

The Connoiseur

A cynical housemaster at a boarding school tries to feather his nest in advance of his forthcoming retirement.

The Retreat

A young priest, newly arrived in Dublin, is conducting a retreat for the first time.

Toddler on the Run

Morris, a homunculus, is under suspicion of having stolen the swimming pool fund from a girls' school.

The Executioner

Follows the assassination of Leon Trotsky.

Way Off Beat

Arthur Bradshaw is a successful fixer, with plans to start a night club.

A Soiree at Blossom's Hotel

A police raid on Edna Bossom's discreet hotel would be most ill-advised, in the opinion of Superintendent Willow; but one of his younger officers is determined to go ahead with one.

Cock, Hen and Counting Pit

A couple revisit a past love affair when they meet again ten years later.