Realist production designs of class and gender in flux in Play for Today’s house party quartet (BBC1, 1975–78)

Abstract

Play for Today (PfT) (1970–84) was regarded as the BBC’s flagship strand of single television plays, largely set in contemporary Britain in geographically diverse settings. This article analyses four PfTs from 1975 to 1978 centred on house parties for their representations of class, taste and gender: The Saturday Party (1975), Tiptoe through the Tulips (1976), Abigail’s Party (1977) and Scully’s New Year’s Eve (1978). The article examines the creative input of writers, actors and the overlooked labour of production designers who created these plays’ human spaces within the BBC’s studios. Aspects of set dressing that are analysed include wallpaper, curtains, furniture, reproductions of artworks and props. Analysis is informed by an interview with Moira Tait, a BBC production designer. BBC designers created vividly realistic impressions of contemporary life, which represented structures of feeling in the changing Britain of 1975–78, where increasing home ownership, pleasure and women’s desire for autonomy were pivotal trends.