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.
Documentary series that celebrates the incredible careers of the best of British talent.
Release Date:2014-12-24
Character:Self
Episode Count:1
Vote Count:1
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
Release Date:2011-01-06
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Episode Count:2
Vote Count:31
Boasting an amazing selection of the most watched, most influential and most highly acclaimed programmes ever made, The 50 Greatest Television Dramas presents a long overdue assessment of the rich heritage television drama has to offer. Channel 4 invited over 200 of Britain's top television drama professionals – writers, directors, producers and commissioners – to take part in an exclusive poll to discover what they consider the finest dramas ever produced.
Release Date:2007-02-03
Character:Self
Oliver Twist is a 1999 television mini-series produced by ITV based on the book Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.
Release Date:1999-11-28
Department:Production
Job:Executive Producer
Episode Count:4
Vote Count:23
13 year-old David and nine year-old Danni live in a children's home, where despite the best of adult intentions, there is conflict and sudden tragedy. When the pair escape the home, they embark upon a daring adventure in search of the beach.
Release Date:1998-05-25
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:1
Award-winning war correspondent Guy Foster, distraught after the loss of his first wife, joins a cruise to Cape Town, where he meets beautiful and mysterious Melissa. A sophisticated blonde PR girl, Melissa is travelling with an exuberant group of media friends. Guy falls desperately in love with the exotic Melissa and she suggests they marry. But while they celebrate, dark events begin to take place. An elderly widower is ‘accidentally’ lost overboard. The bodies of a middle-aged couple are discovered in Cape Town. Then one of Melissa’s friends is brutally killed. The finger of suspicion falls on Guy – and when Melissa herself is killed, he is found bending over her bloodied corpse.
Release Date:1997-05-12
Department:Writing
Job:Screenplay
Episode Count:5
Vote Count:1
Jamie looks after his son Jake while his wife works all hours.
Release Date:1995-10-12
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Episode Count:6
Vote Count:2
Alan Bleasdale's modern re-telling of Madame Bovary. A tale of passion, greed, revenge, and of course pleasure, set in France. Starring Line of Duty's Adrian Dunbar, Jennifer Ehle and James Larkin. In the French city of Rouen, the beautiful, young but bored Emma seeks to escape her dull married life. Her dreams are answered, and her comfortable, peaceful existence soon tarnished when she answers a lonely-hearts ad. She meets Gustave, a unsuccessful toy salesman, and potential con man. Together they begin a passionate affair, where they indulge in illicit sex and illegal scams. But parallel to their exhilarating affair, the police are on the hunt for a mysterious masked robber known only as Le Terroriste. As the stakes rise, and a betrayal means Emma finding herself alone, her own talents for deception develop into an overwhelming and obsessive desire for her to get her revenge.
Release Date:1994-10-25
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:1
Alan Bleasdale's touching yet frank drama for Channel 4 about the struggles of a group of young adults leaving school in a deprived area of Liverpool. Starring Stephen Walters, Suzanne Maddock and Amanda Mealing. Based on the acclaimed play by Jim Morris, voted Most Promising Playwright by the Financial Times and Morning Star in 1981. Blood on the Dole shows the lives of four teenagers, two boys and two girls, struggling to cope after being thrust into the real world for the first time after leaving school. Living in deprived Merseyside, the four youths' bright-eyed optimism for their futures and new-found freedom is soon crushed by the realities of unemployment, poverty, and the brutal reality of living and trying to find work in a city in decline. They all soon find themselves in the hopeless situation of facing complete dependence on state handouts, "the dole". The four teenagers instead find themselves turning to each other to find the strength to survive.
Release Date:1994-10-18
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:1
Alan Bleasdale's comic crime caper for Channel 4 about a former getaway driver desperate to leave his life of crime behind. Featuring Alfred Molina, David Ross, Amanda Mealing, Andrew Schofield and Julie Walters. Raymond Murtagh's Requim Apache tells the story of Hamish, who was once one of the criminal underworld's best getaway drivers. Now a new father and retired to the Suffolk countryside, he has to watch the baby at home alone. However, Hamish's peaceful and idyllic new life is shattered when his past rears its ugly head once again, and the old gang comes over for a visit. They make him an offer he dare not refuse to take on one last bank job. However, with no babysitter available, he is forced to take the baby with him.
Release Date:1994-10-11
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:1
Alan Bleasdale's star-studded comedy/drama about the lives of five plane crash survivors stranded together on a deserted island. Starring Jane Horrocks, John Gordon Sinclair, Jennifer Ehle, Noreen Kershaw and Andrew Schofield. When a plane crashes, five very different survivors find themselves trapped together on an apparently deserted, idyllic island. Everyone else has been killed except for the five survivors that emerge from the wreckage, one unconscious. One of these people, a dedicated film-lover, makes light of their perilous situation by comparing it to countless movie plots. This leads the survivors to start their lives afresh, taking on the names and personalities of famous movie stars to cope in their interactions with each other, which leads to many hilarious and erotic encounters.
Release Date:1994-10-04
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Julie Walters stars in new sketches by four accomplished writers who helped make her famous.
Release Date:1991-12-29
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Julie Walters and Friends was a one-off comedy sketch show showcasing the talents of actress Julie Walters. Sketches were written by Walters' frequent collaborators, including Victoria Wood, Alan Bennett, Willy Russell and Alan Bleasdale. Walters portrayed new characters alongside roles she had previously been known for, including a monologue in which she appeared as Mrs Murray, her character from G.B.H, written by Bleasdale. The show was nominated for the Best Light Entertainment award at the 1992 BAFTAs.
Release Date:1991-12-29
Episode Count:1
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.
Release Date:1991-06-06
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Character:
Episode Count:7
Vote Count:14
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.
Release Date:1986-08-31
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Episode Count:4
Vote Count:2
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.
Release Date:1985-09-11
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:10
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.
Release Date:1984-05-14
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Episode Count:7
Vote Count:2
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.
Release Date:1982-10-10
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Episode Count:5
Vote Count:16
Chat show hosted by Terry Wogan, featuring live studio interviews with famous and notable personalities.
Release Date:1982-05-04
Character:Self
Episode Count:1
Vote Count:6
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'.
Release Date:1981-04-28
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
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.
Release Date:1981-01-13
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:2
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.
Release Date:1980-01-02
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:11
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.
Release Date:1978-05-05
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Scully invites his mates to gatecrash his mum's New Year's Eve party.
Release Date:1978-01-03
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:1
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.
Release Date:1975-03-20
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:1
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.
Release Date:1970-10-15
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Episode Count:2
Vote Count:8