John McGrath
Writer · 1935 – 2002 · Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, UK
Born in Birkenhead from Irish Catholic stock, John McGrath was a British playwright, screenwriter. producer, director and socialist who took up the cause of Scottish independence and the principles of a radical, popular theatre with the creation of the 7:84 theatre company alongside his wife, Elizabeth MacLennan, and brother-in-law, David MacLennan. His most famous plays are arguably The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil which was brought to television in 1974 by John Mackenzie for the Play for Today strand, and Events While Guarding The Bofors Gun which was made into the film The Bofors Gun in 1968. He also wrote the screenplays for films such as Billion Dollar Brain, The Virgin Soldiers, The Reckoning, The Dressmaker and 1991's Robin Hood, and produced films such as Carrington and Aberdeen.
Movies2
Movie8.0DramaMusicIn their songs, comedy and exuberant music, a travelling theatre company give a fiercely polemic account of Scottish history, from the aftermath of Culloden to the oil boom. Their production before a live audience is intercut with filmed reconstructions of the Highland Clearances and the Victorian obsession with hunting stags.
The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil
1974 · 1 votes
- Movie8.0Documentary
Peter Watkins recounts the short-lived, happy period making his classic documentary Culloden and discusses, as he sees it, the tragic decline television has taken since it was made.
Making Reel History
2006 · 1 votes
Series1
TV6.6DramaPlay 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.
Play for Today
1970 · 10 votes