Alan Bleasdale

Writer

March 23, 1946 (80 years)

Liverpool, England, UK

Biography

Alan Bleasdale is an English screenwriter, best known for social realist drama serials based on the lives of ordinary people. A former teacher, he has written for radio, stage and screen, and has also written novels. His most notable works include Boys From the Blackstuff, The Monocled Mutineer and GBH.

Filmography

6.6

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.

6.3

Oliver Twist

When 9-year-old orphan Oliver Twist dares to ask his cruel taskmaster, Mr. Bumble, for a second serving of gruel, he's hired out as an apprentice. Escaping that dismal fate, young Oliver falls in with the street urchin known as the Artful Dodger and his criminal mentor, Fagin. When kindly Mr. Brownlow takes Oliver in, Fagin's evil henchman Bill Sikes plots to kidnap the boy.

6.3

G.B.H.

GBH was a seven-part British television drama written by Alan Bleasdale shown in the summer of 1991 on Channel 4. The protagonists were Michael Murray, the Militant tendency-supporting Labour leader of a city council in the North of England and Jim Nelson, the headmaster of a school for disturbed children. The series was controversial partly because Murray appeared to be based on Derek Hatton, former Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council — in an interview in the G.B.H. DVD Bleasdale recounts an accidental meeting with Hatton before the series, who indicates that he has caught wind of Bleasdale's intentions but does not mind as long as the actor playing him is "handsome". In normal parlance, the initials "GBH" refer to the criminal charge of grievous bodily harm - however, the actual intent of the letters is that it is supposed to stand for Great British Holiday.

6.4

The Sinking of the Laconia

The true story of the Allied ship Laconia, sunk in WWII by a German U-Boat, which then surfaced against orders to rescue the civilian crew

6.8

Melissa

Acclaimed war journalist Guy Foster finds himself in the company of odd and sinister people after getting engaged to the mysterious Melissa McKensie. Soon, he'll become a suspect in a series of grisly murders and will have to solve them to clear his name.

7.8

Boys from the Blackstuff

Alan Bleasdale's five-part series relates the further experiences of unemployed Liverpudlian tarmac layers Dixie, Chrissie, Loggo and Yosser, and their revered older friend, retired longshoreman and union leader, George Malone. As they struggle to make ends meet in a depressed economy, and to hold together their financially battered families, they are harrassed by the petty bureaucrats of the DHSS. But the lumbering investigational juggernaut is, both comically and tragically, guided by drivers with only a provisional license.

6.5

Scully

Scully was a British television drama with some comedy elements set in the city of Liverpool, England, that originated from a BBC Play For Today episode "Scully's New Years Eve". Originally broadcast on Channel Four in 1984, the single series was spread over six half-hour episodes plus a one-hour final episode. It was written by playwright Alan Bleasdale. The drama is notable for featuring many of the Liverpool football club first-team squad of that era. Francis Scully is a teenage boy who has his heart set on gaining a trial match for Liverpool to hopefully fulfil his ambition of playing for the club. Francis, in everyday situations during his waking hours, occasionally "sees" famous Liverpool players such as Kenny Dalglish when they are not really there. These dream-like sequences recur throughout the episodes. The main plotline is the efforts of Scully's school teachers to persuade Scully to appear in the school pantomime which they attempt by promising him a trial with his beloved Liverpool if he will cooperate. When Scully and his friends are not in school making trouble for the teachers and the school caretaker, they are seen roaming the local streets upsetting the neighbours and getting into trouble with the police. Scully sometimes has visions of the school caretaker appearing as a vampire due to the caretaker's nickname being Dracula. These frequent waking dream sequences give the show a somewhat surreal atmosphere.

7.7

The Monocled Mutineer

The Monocled Mutineer follows the rebellion that took place at the notorious Etaples Training Camp in northern France on the eve of "The Battle of Passchendaele" in 1917. After the mutiny, the dashing Percy Toplis takes flight, dressed as a British officer, soon to embark on a love affair with beautiful young widow, Dorothy. A solder in the First World War, the real Percy Toplis was a rake, rogue and master of disguise who became the most wanted man in Britain. This controversial BBC dramatisation of high romance, hilarious impudence and savage retribution was adapted by Alan Bleasdale from the book by William Allison and John Fairley.

4.5

Jake's Progress

Jamie looks after his son Jake while his wife works all hours.

6.7

No Surrender

It's New Year's Eve in Thatcher's de-industrialising Britain. The scene is set at a seedy bar in Liverpool where a group of Irish Protestant and Irish Catholic pensioners will gather to clash and bash the new year in.

7.4

The Black Stuff

A Liverpool tarmac gang set off for a contract in Middlesbrough. After a day of work, the group are approached by two gypsies who offer them a lucrative side job.

N/A

A Turn for the Worse

Simon Simpson runs an entertainment agency in Liverpool. At one of his regular auditions in The Bootle Railway Club he sees an aggressive young man fresh from the dole queue who dreams of becoming a professional comedian. Simpson believes the boy has talent and starts to groom him for 'stardom'.

7.0

The Muscle Market

Danny Duggan runs a failing building contractors, and resorts to sub-gangster thuggery to keep the business afloat. However, with the bottom falling out of the building game, Duggan finds that playing at gangster is only fun when you're on the winning side.

N/A

Julie Walters and Friends

Julie Walters stars in new sketches by four accomplished writers who helped make her famous.

9.0

Scully's New Year's Eve

Scully invites his mates to gatecrash his mum's New Year's Eve party.

3.0

Early to Bed

Alan Bleasdale’s television debut, this beautifully observed drama stars Alison Steadman as a woman having a passionate tryst with the boy next door while her husband is at work.

N/A

Dangerous Ambition

Daniel Massey stars as a priest who faces a crisis when the local community turns against him after he is suspected of molesting a young girl who he befriends on a local housing estate.

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