ScreenPlay

ScreenPlay
Genre	Drama anthology
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	8
No. of episodes	95 (list of episodes)
Production
Production company	BBC
Original release
Network	BBC2
Release	9 July 1986 (1986-07-09) – 27 October 1993 (1993-10-27)

ScreenPlay is a television drama anthology series broadcast on BBC2 between 9 July 1986 and 27 October 1993.

After single-play anthology series went off the air, the BBC introduced several showcases for made-for-television, feature length filmed dramas, including ScreenPlay.^[1] Various writers and directors were utilised on the series. Writer Jimmy McGovern was hired by producer George Faber to pen a series five episode based upon the Merseyside needle exchange programme of the 1980s.^[2][3] The episode, directed by Gillies MacKinnon, was entitled Needle and featured Sean McKee, Emma Bird, and Pete Postlethwaite.^[2][4] The last episode of the series was titled "Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Islands" and featured Robbie Coltrane as English writer Samuel Johnson, who in the autumn of 1773, visits the Hebrides off the north-west coast of Scotland. That episode was directed by John Byrne and co-starred John Sessions and Celia Imrie. Some scenes were shot at Lennoxlove House in East Lothian and others in the Scottish Borders.^[5]

The following episodes of the series were included in separate editions of BBC Video World, a fortnightly subscription-only service – primarily for expatriates – that delivered a three-hour selection of BBC programming on VHS cassettes:

• Starlings - Vol. 1 No. 1 (April 1989)
• The Englishman's Wife - Vol. 2 No. 18 (September 1990)
• Available Light - Vol. 2 No. 22 (October 1990)
• Afters - Vol. 2 No. 23 (November 1990)

• Cariani and the Courtesans (1987)
• You, Me & Marley (1992)

• ScreenPlay at BBC Online
• Screenplay on IMDb
• ScreenPlay at BBC Two BBC Programme Index
• BFI Collections - ScreenPlay