Premiering on Sunday 30 August 1970, this anthology series of six hour-long plays from London Weekend Television examined if 1970s society was heading towards the dystopian world predicted in the classic George Orwell novel 1984.
The debut episode, ‘The Eleventh Commandment’, was about student rebellion and the subtle forces which can be brought to bear on a young man pushed into trouble by not-so-subtle idealists. Mrs Hazel Victoria Pride (Valerie White) was the leader of an organisation called “Keep The Great in Britain.”
She believed that the rebellious young should be firmly kept in place. When practising her beliefs during a university riot, she wounds a student and calls on her hidden forces of law and order for protection.
‘The Wife Factor’ revolved around a big company called Bryce International vetting three executives in the running for a directorship, with the investigation resulting in a contest between three wives. Lawrence Priest (Bernard Hepton) is a strong candidate for the job until the vetting of his wife, Elaine (Faith Brook), begins.
‘Dying Gets You Nowhere’ concerned Wendell Meade (Michael Gwynn), a government official who leaked top-secret security information to the press. An X-ray machine which – if misused – could be used for mass sterilisation has fallen into the wrong hands. The security man (John Thaw) leaves no stone unturned to find the source of the leak.
Burglar Arthur Wicks (Ronald Lacey) steals valuable industrial documents in ‘There’s Always a First Time’, and a security man is killed in the process. Jailed for seven years, the crook is brainwashed in an attempt to discover who commissioned him to do the job.
In ‘A Little Bit Like God’, the CIA wants to create a program to unify the whole of Africa that will bear fruit in a hundred years. Someone must sell it to them, and Max Hughes (Alfred Burke) – an eccentric, irritable lone wolf – appears to be the ideal person. But a thorough investigation of his past private life sets off alarm bells.
The final episode, ‘A Touch of the Jumbos’, had Abel Rock (David Bauer) – the ruthless and tyrannical president of an American packaging firm – completing a goodwill trip around Europe in the company’s private jumbo jet.
He forces his top executives to fly back to the US with him and keeps an eye on them using closed-circuit television, but he doesn’t realise that a plot is being hatched to dethrone him.
Cast members in the six episodes also included Paul Eddington, Peter Vaughan, Glynn Edwards, Rudolph Walker, and Janet Key.
Episodes
The Eleventh Commandment | The Wife Factor | Dying Gets You Nowhere | There’s Always a First Time | A Little Bit Like God | A Touch of the Jumbos
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In ‘A Little Bit Like God’, the CIA wants to create a program to unify the whole of Africa that will bear fruit in a hundred years. Someone must sell it to them, and Max Hughes (Alfred Burke) – an eccentric, irritable lone wolf – appears to be the ideal person. But a thorough investigation of his past private life sets off alarm bells.
