[TOMT] A series of short BBC2 plays from the 80s?

r/

Not Play for Today, not long enough. In one a man is sent to a psychiatrist because he believes he is a chicken in human form. The psychiatrist informs him that he too is secretly a chicken but from now on they must both pretend to be normal so as to keep an eye on humanity on behalf of the animal kingdom. At the end you’re not sure if they’re both crazy, if this could possibly be true or if the psychiatrist is actually tricking the patient in order to “cure” him?

The second verges on farce, a blind man and blind woman are having an affair only for her blind husband to come home and inform them he’s undergone a revolutionary treatment that is gradually restoring his sight and she now has to get her lover out of the house before her husband can see what’s been going on.

The third is the story of a tax lawyer who cheats on his much younger girlfriend (Roxie?) who has prepared an elaborate diner for him with an old female friend and feels so guilty he swaps places with a prisoner he is representing (I think they were old Army buddies and he’s been arrested for possessing a war souvenir pistol) allowing him to escape police custody.

The fourth has a pair of miners stumble across a magic door in their pit and emerge into a studio where a bunch of pretty girls are having a dance audition. One enthusiastically joins in but at the end the other reveals they were actually buried by a rockslide and whilst he was rescued his friend was never found.

The fifth definitely IS farce. A doctor tries to seduce a medical student in his examination room but is constantly interrupted by a colleague, his wife, a bellboy(?) and a uniformed policeman who is looking for some lost property of Winston Churchill. All descends into chaos but in the end the policeman recovers Churchill’s lost property and to the doctor and his wife’s delight the medical student and the bellboy are revealed to be their long lost children.

Comments

  1. Sighoward Avatar

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  2. TipOfTheirTongue Avatar

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  3. AdSilent7769 Avatar

    fourth one sounds exactly like this music video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpqm-05R2Jk

  4. AdSilent7769 Avatar

    chicken one is probably this https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29580995/?ref_=ttep_ep_5 so i think the show is The Staggering Stories of Ferdinand De Bargos. lots of the show is on youtube but it’s a bit all over the place https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP2DAEyOYprpKHWDXT76rc4N82Dw3p3x_