Alan Plater (Writer)
Little is known about Alan Plater, a figure with a modest footprint in Writer. Stay tuned for updates as more details become available.
Works
Jake on the Box
An appreciation and retrospective look at the songs and humour of Leeds folk singer/songwriter Jake Thackray, including performances of some of his songs.
Release Date2006-10-06
Charactersd Himself
On the Road with J.B. Priestley and The Good Companions
Alan Plater looks at the various adaptations of J.B. Priestley's 'The Good Companions', in the company of the author himself.
Release Date1980-11-09
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Charactersd
Legends
The story of the big names that have shaped the musical genres, plus an occasional stopgap for the new rock 'n' roll - comedy.
Release Date2006-11-17
Charactersd Self
Episode Count1
Vote Count1
Midsomer Murders
The peacefulness of the Midsomer community is shattered by violent crimes, suspects are placed under suspicion, and it is up to a veteran DCI and his young sergeant to calmly and diligently eliminate the innocent and ruthlessly pursue the guilty.
Release Date1997-03-23
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count1
Vote Count323
Z-Cars
Z-Cars or Z Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.
Release Date1962-01-02
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count18
Vote Count6
Playhouse
A one-hour anthology television series of one-off contemporary and classic dramas produced by the BBC.
Release Date1974-03-13
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count1
Vote Count1
Softly, Softly
Softly, Softly is a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It centred around the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID officers based in the fictional region of Wyvern, supposedly in the Bristol area of England.
Release Date1966-01-05
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count24
Vote Count1
Lewis
Inspector Robert Lewis and Sergeant James Hathaway solve the tough cases that the learned inhabitants of Oxford throw at them.
Release Date2007-02-18
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count1
Vote Count107
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes uses his abilities to take on cases by private clients and those that the Scotland Yard are unable to solve, along with his friend Dr. Watson.
Release Date1984-04-24
DepartmentCrew
JobDramaturgy
Episode Count1
Vote Count229
BBC2 Play of the Week
An anthology of plays and novels adapted into feature length TV movies, broadcast on BBC2 from September 1977 to April 1979.
Release Date1977-09-21
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count1
Vote Count1
The Ruth Rendell Mysteries
The Ruth Rendell mysteries is a British television series made by TVS and Meridian Television for ITV between 2 August 1987 and 11 October 2000.
Release Date1987-08-02
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count3
Vote Count10
The Edwardians
It was a time when England was a nation on the cusp of change, an evolving landscape tht lay between Victorian England and the First World War. 'The Edwardians' explores the lives of and events in the lives of many who helped define the era, the "Belle Epoque".
Release Date1972-11-21
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count8
Vote Count3
Maigret
Based on the novels by Georges Simenon, Michael Gambon plays the eponymous detective from the Sûreté in this 1992 revival of the 1960s BBC drama series. Maigret is an intuitutive detective, who investigates his cases by watching and listening, getting to know everyone on his list of suspects until someone makes a slip or breaks down and confesses.
Release Date1992-02-09
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count2
Vote Count13
The Barchester Chronicles
Against the sumptuous background of Peterborough Cathedral and its environs, one is carried into Trollope's world of the intriguing machinations of the clerical establishment of Barchester. Backed by the authenticity of the period detail, the portrayal of all the characters accurately conveys the whole range of human emotions within the stories.
Release Date1982-11-10
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count7
Vote Count5
Dalziel & Pascoe
British crime drama based on the "Dalziel and Pascoe" series of books by Reginald Hill, set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Wetherton. The unlikely duo of politically incorrect elephant-in-a-china-shop-copper Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel (pronounced Dee-ell) and his more sensitive and university educated sidekick Detective Sargent, later Detective Inspector, Peter Pascoe is always on hand to solve the classic murder mystery, while maintaining a down to earth wit and humour.
Release Date1996-03-16
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count4
Vote Count25
Flambards
In the early 1900s in England, young Christina is orphaned and goes to live with her Uncle Russell, who owns the country estate of Flambards, and has two sons. Mark, the elder, is a wastrel, a roue and, like his father, loves to hunt. The younger son, William, lives to fly aeroplanes. Christina finds herself struggling with the ideas of classism as she falls in love with country life, the hunt, and one of her cousins. But after their impulsive marriage, when her husband is called away by the First World War, Christina must keep Flambards afloat by herself.
Release Date1979-02-02
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count4
Vote Count4
Tales of Sherwood Forest
Eric, the owner of a night-club in Nottingham, is obsessed by the film Casablanca (1942) and dreams of being Rick Blaine.
Release Date1989-06-11
DepartmentCreator
JobCreator
Cribb
Adapted from Peter Lovesey's Sergeant Cribb novels and set in Victorian London around the time of the Jack the Ripper murders in 1888, Alan Dobie starred as the tough Detective Sergeant who worked for the newly formed Criminal Investigation Department, determined to remove crime from the streets of London using the latest detection methods.
Release Date1980-04-13
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count1
Vote Count3
Crane
Release Date1963-04-02
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count1
Vote Count1
The Good Companions
Jess Oakroyd, discontented with his home, his work and his football team, tears up his Insurance Card and disappears into the night. He intends to go to Nuneaton, but instead finds himself on the ragged edges of show business. We share with him the trials and tribulations of the Good Companions as they tour seaside towns, industrial cities and rural backwaters in their search for success and stardom.
Release Date1980-11-14
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count9
Crane
The adventures of Richard Crane, cafe owner & part-time smuggler, around the coast of Morocco, aided (and sometimes abetted) by his ex-Foreign Legion sidekick Orlando, waitress Halina, and local cop Colonel Mahmoud.
Release Date1963-04-02
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count1
The Beiderbecke Connection
The Beiderbecke Connection is a four-part British television serial written by Alan Plater and broadcast in 1988. It is the third and final part of The Beiderbecke Trilogy and stars James Bolam and Barbara Flynn as schoolteachers Trevor Chaplin and Jill Swinburne. Now with a baby in tow, Jill and Trevor are asked by Big Al to look after a refugee called "Ivan".
Release Date1988-11-27
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count4
Vote Count5
Oliver's Travels
Oliver's Travels is a five-part television serial written by Alan Plater and starring Alan Bates, Sinéad Cusack, Bill Paterson, and Miles Anderson. It first aired in the UK in 1995. Bates plays the titular Oliver, a keen word-game enthusiast and lecturer in comparative religion. After his teaching post is made redundant, he resolves to make use of his new wealth of free time by going to visit his favourite crossword compiler, 'Aristotle', with whom he has corresponded but whom he has never met. When he arrives, however, he finds Aristotle's house has been ransacked and its occupant has departed for parts unknown, and he sets out to discover why.
Release Date1995-06-11
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count5
Vote Count2
The Loner
Release Date1975-05-07
DepartmentCreator
JobCreator
Campion
Campion is a television show made by the BBC, adapting the Albert Campion mystery novels written by Margery Allingham. Two series were made, in 1989 and 1990, starring Peter Davison as Campion, Brian Glover as his manservant Magersfontein Lugg and Andrew Burt as his policeman friend Stanislaus Oates. A total of eight novels were adapted, four in each series, each of which was originally broadcast as two separate hour-long episodes. Peter Davison sang the title music for the first series himself; in the second series, it was replaced with an instrumental version.
Release Date1989-01-22
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count2
Vote Count8
Frank Stubbs Promotes
Frank Stubbs (Timothy Spall) is a down-at-heel ticket tout with grand ideas. He has an ambition to become a 'high class' promoter of famous and talented performers. In reality, his ambitions tend to outstrip his capabilities.
Release Date1993-07-12
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count1
Vote Count1
The Beiderbecke Affair
The Beiderbecke Affair is a television series produced in the United Kingdom by ITV during 1985, written by the prolific Alan Plater, whose lengthy credits to British Television since the 1960s included the preceding 4 part mini series Get Lost! for ITV in 1981. The Beiderbecke Affair has a similar style to Get Lost!, where Neville Keaton and Judy Threadgold played in an ensemble cast. Although The Beiderbecke Affair was intended as a sequel to Get Lost!, Alun Armstrong proved to be unavailable and the premise was reworked. It is the first part of The Beiderbecke Trilogy with the two sequel series being The Beiderbecke Tapes and The Beiderbecke Connection.
Release Date1985-01-06
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count6
Vote Count8
Bedtime Stories
Modern-day interpretation of fairy tales, with a contemporary, darker twist.
Release Date1974-03-03
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count1
A Very British Coup
A Very British Coup is a British political thriller series based on the novel by Chris Mullin. It stars Ray McAnally as the newly elected left-wing prime minister Harry Perkins, who soon finds himself up to his neck in conspiracy.
Release Date1988-06-19
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count3
Vote Count16
The Play on One
A series of plays specially written for television.
Release Date1988-01-19
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count1
Vote Count3
Fortunes of War
Fortunes of War is a 1987 BBC television adaptation of Olivia Manning's cycle of novels Fortunes of War. It stars Kenneth Branagh as Guy Pringle, lecturer in English Literature in Bucharest during the early part of the Second World War, and Emma Thompson as his wife Harriet. Other cast members included Ronald Pickup, Robert Stephens, Alan Bennett, Philip Madoc and Rupert Graves. The series stays relatively faithful to the original novels, with no notable departures from their plot.
Release Date1987-10-11
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count7
Vote Count11
Shoulder to Shoulder
The lives of the Pankhurst women and their role in the Suffragette Movement.
Release Date1974-04-03
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count1
Vote Count1
Juggernaut
A terrorist demands a huge ransom in exchange for information on how to disarm the seven bombs he has planted aboard a trans-Atlantic cruise ship.
Release Date1974-09-25
DepartmentCrew
JobAdditional Dialogue
Vote Count124
The Stars Look Down
Mini series about a Northumberland mining village - the daily lives of the inhabitants and the tragedies and disasters that befell them.
Release Date1975-09-04
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count13
Get Lost!
Leeds schoolteacher Judy Threadgold investigates the disappearance of her husband with the aid of her colleague, woodwork teacher Neville Keaton.
Release Date1981-06-12
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count4
Vote Count1
The Beiderbecke Tapes
The Beiderbecke Tapes is a two-part British television drama serial written by Alan Plater and broadcast in 1987. It is the second serial in The Beiderbecke Trilogy and stars James Bolam and Barbara Flynn as schoolteachers Trevor Chaplin and Jill Swinburne. When a tape recording of a conversation about nuclear waste inadvertently falls into Trevor's hands, Trevor and Jill find themselves being pursued by national security agents.
Release Date1987-12-13
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count2
Vote Count8
On Your Way, Riley!
Biopic of Arthur Lucan, who portrayed Old Mother Riley for over twenty years on stage and screen.
Release Date1985-01-02
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count2
Priest of Love
Following the banning and burning of his novel, "The Rainbow," D.H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, move to the United States, and then to Mexico. When Lawrence contracts tuberculosis, they return to England for a short time, then to Italy, where Lawrence writes "Lady Chatterley's Lover."
Release Date1981-10-11
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count12
The Inside Man
In 1981, after the successful test of a submarine tracker device developed by the Swedish scientist Paul Mandell and sponsored by the US government through his representative Miller, his industry is totally burned and the laser device is stolen. Stig Larsson from the Swedish Secret Agency suspects of an inside job and brings the Swedish Marine Thomas Kallin to investigate Paul undercover as his driver. The naive Kallin is double-crossed but continues his investigation while Larsson finds the truth about the heist.
Release Date1984-08-31
DepartmentWriting
JobScreenplay
Vote Count11
The Virgin and the Gypsy
Film adaptation from the novel by D.H. Lawrence, discovered after the celebrated author's death in 1930, a romantic love story tells of a prim young English girl who is sexually attracted to a seductively virile gypsy. The climatic dam burst is linked with the consummation of her desire.
Release Date1970-06-01
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count6
Belonging
Jess (Brenda Blethyn) and town handyman Jacob (Kevin Whately) have been happily married 20 years, recently taking in a trio of Jacob's elderly relatives, including his mother (Rosemary Harris). Though the relations are demanding, kindhearted Jess -- who selflessly quit her job -- enjoys looking after them. But when Jacob disappears one day, Jess' life falls apart, and she must learn to cope with things on her own in this touching drama.
Release Date2004-09-12
DepartmentWriting
JobScreenplay
Vote Count6
Coming Through
While researching the work of author D.H. Lawrence (Kenneth Branagh), Kate (Alison Steadman) begins a romance with a fellow academic, and learns about Lawrence's love affair with the married aristocrat Frieda Von Richthofen (Helen Mirren) in this made-for-television drama. As Lawrence and Von Richthofen fall deeper into their forbidden relationship, Kate grows more familiar with Lawrence's work, such as the sensuous Lady Chatterly's Lover.
Release Date1985-12-27
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count4
It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet
Based on James Herriot's books about life as a 1930s veterinarian in Yorkshire, John Alderson plays the kindly doctor who ministers to animals in this enjoyable family film. Sequel to the 1975 film All Creatures Great and Small.
Release Date1976-11-18
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count1
The Last of the Blonde Bombshells
After Elizabeth's husband dies, she begins to play her tenor saxophone again, and remembers when she was 15 and a member of the Blonde Bombshells, an all-girl (with one exception) swing band. Accompanied by the exception and urged on by her grand-daughter, Elizabeth hunts up all the old members of the band and urges them to perform, and in doing so, learns more than she knew about the band, its members, the roses on the drum set, and herself--the last of the Blonde Bombshells.
Release Date2000-08-26
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count16
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Gordon Comstock is a copywriter at an ad agency, and his girlfriend Rosemary is a designer. Gordon believes he is a genius, a marvelous poet and quits the ad agency, trying to live on his poems, but poverty soon comes to him.
Release Date1997-11-20
DepartmentWriting
JobScreenplay
Vote Count14
Joe Maddison's War
Newcastle, 1939. Shipyard worker Joe feels emasculated and past his prime; too old to serve in the war, and he’s shocked when his wife leaves him for a younger naval officer. Needing a new challenge, Joe and his friend Harry reluctantly volunteer to join the Home Guard.
Release Date2010-09-19
DepartmentWriting
JobScreenplay
Vote Count3
Doggin' Around
The past catches up with an ageing American jazz pianist when he returns to the clubs of Lancashire and Yorkshire that he last visited 10 years previously.
Release Date1994-10-16
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count1
Bewitched
The story is set in a small English coastal town, around the turn of the century. A young woman, thought by many in the village to be a witch, dies suddenly one day. Not long after she's buried, the villagers begin to see her walking around the area and especially along the shoreline. The village minister begins to look into her life and her death, hoping to lay the spirit to rest.
Release Date1983-07-08
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Death Is Part of the Process
Release Date1986-01-01
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Land of Green Ginger
Faced with the prospect of being sent to work abroad, Sally Brown returns home from London to Hull, to see if she still feels the same attachment for her home town - and for her old boyfriend Mike Thurlow. Will she decide to take the job abroad or return to live with Mike in Hull?
Release Date1973-01-15
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Rest in Peace, Uncle Fred
Two incidents in a young actress's life have their effect on each other - a dinner date with a film producer, and attendance at the funeral of a favourite uncle.
Release Date1970-01-28
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
The Crystal Spirit: Orwell on Jura
A remote farmhouse on an isolated island. Strangers with English accents. Quarrels and a lonely child. The year is 1946. The man is George Orwell. The book he has come to write is Nineteen Eighty-four.
Release Date1983-12-12
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Misterioso
On the death of her mother, a young woman in northern England learns that her father is actually her step-father. She embarks on a search for her birth father, finds him running a jazz club in London, and learns a lot of happy and sad things about her family that she didn't know before. The title of the film is the classic jazz piece, "Misterioso," by Thelonious Monk, which features prominently in it.
Release Date1991-07-25
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Night People
A classical string quartet stop at a motorway cafe in early hours. Among the people they meet are a football supporter, a commercial traveller and an elderly couple on their way to Gretna Green to get married.
Release Date1978-12-06
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Give Us a Kiss, Christabel
Casual labour appeals to Wilfred, and the street market is a friendly home until he meets the beautiful Christabel. Her haughty dismissal drives him to amazing feats. He'll do anything for a kiss.
Release Date1977-10-27
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
The Blacktoft Diaries: True or False?
Spoof story, set in the 1950s, about espionage in a humberside village.
Release Date1979-04-10
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Let There Be Light
What was it like to go to school 100 years ago?
Release Date1970-01-23
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Short Back and Sides
A city planner puts his breinchild into operation without considering the heartbreak it causes to the people affected.
Release Date1977-05-03
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Sam's Song
Sam and Ingrid start out with dreams of marrying someone rich who will make life easy. When they find they do not match up to each other's dreams however, they decide to set about making another dream come true. Buying their own home.
Release Date1979-01-01
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
The Intercessor
A writer seeking seclusion takes rooms in a remote farmhouse. Soon his quiet is broken by sounds and then sightings of a small child...
Release Date1983-06-03
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Feet Foremost
The new owners of a Manor House discover a legend that whoever is carried across the threshold shall unleash unknown forces...
Release Date1983-06-10
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Practical Experience
'I'm unusual. I really want to be an architect. Always have done. Always wanted to build fine buildings and fine cities where people can work and eat and sleep and be happy. But the rules of the game say before you can do that you've got to start a firm. Employ people. Turn it into a career. I like architecture. I hate careers. The minute you make it a career you build a ladder and people want to climb it. Sometimes they stand on your fingers. It's hard to draw with flattened fingers. Spoils your draughtsmanship.'
Release Date1976-04-16
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Open Air
Open Air was BBC1's flagship programme for their new daytime service which began on 27 October 1986. It discussed all aspects of television and also tried to answer any questions which viewers had.
Release Date1986-10-27
Episode Count1
Vote Count2