Show Notes
Our second look at the work of prolific television playwright Jack Rosenthal. This time a celebrated Granada production from January 1976 starring Jack Shepherd, Mark Wing-Davey and Joe Black: ’Ready When You Are, Mr McGill’ directed by Mike Newell. The play formed the first of 7 episodes of the 1976 anthology series Red Letter Day and concerns the all-important day in the life of TV extra Mr McGill as he finally gets lines to say in a production. However, all does not go to plan and Mr McGill ends up adding to the frustrations of the fraught film crew, and especially its director, Phil, who is dangerously close to a nervous breakdown.
Andy and Martin compare the production to its 2003 remake with Bill Nighy, Tom Courtenay and Amanda Holden, consider the lot of the TV extra, now referred to as supporting artists, and the meta nature of a TV drama about making TV drama.
Next Time: Secret Army (and especially recorded new interviews with three of its principal cast members)
More from An A to Z of UK Television Drama
[Spoiler alert! This series is almost 50 years old but we will be revealing - around 90 minutes - in who spectacularly dies in the literal cliffhanger to episode 7. You have been warned!]
After a brief hiatus, Andy and Martin resume the second season of A to Z with the letter V. Admittedly cheating a little, their choice was 'Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton', the second of two autobiographical Dennis Potter plays from 1965 in The Wednesday Play strand. They also cover the first play, 'Stand Up, Nigel Barton'. Both feature Keith Barron as the title character who we follow from childhood, to university, to a reluctant attempt to stand as a Labour candidate in the General Election.
Andy and Martin travel back in time to the summer of 1965 and the adventures of HR consultant Drew Heriot and his sister-in-law Anne as they face up to the machinations of 'Undermind’: aliens who have brainwashed British citizens in order to cause national unrest ahead of their imminent invasion. Their various schemes include: spreading pirate radio misinformation; inciting youth violence in a seaside resort; influencing the works of a popular children’s author; the distribution of suicide-inducing birthday records; interference with the printing of exam papers, and most abominably of all, the assassination of Eamonn Andrews! Yes, really.
This month Andy and Martin review the highly regarded 1987 BAFTA-winning Scottish drama Tutti Frutti, written by John Byrne and starring Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson.
Twenty-one years after their first recorded interview on the first Survivors DVDs back in 2003, Andy catches up with Carolyn Seymour who played Abby Grant in Survivors.