Lost and forgotten dramas

[Floogal]

A few weeks ago I started a thread about hard to find documentaries. A few people brought up Cathy Comes Home and Play for today. They're a bit before my time but I remember things like Screen One and Two in late 80s to mid 90s. Like the documentaries, they are difficult to find on YouTube and has no DVD release (as far as I know).
The ones I remember are:

1. Alive and Kicking (1991) where Lenny Henry plays a reformed yardie who forms a football team for recovering drug addicts with the help of tough social worker played by Robbie Coltrane (similar to his Cracker character). Apparently it's based on a true story. I specifically remember this one as they showed it to us in social studies at school.
2. Somewhere to run (1989) about two teenage runaways. Stars the lady who plays Simon's mum in Inbetweeners.
3. On the 8 ball (1998). Also about Yardies.
4. On the edge of the razor blade (1998- I think that's what it was called). About these two women who hide in a public toilet to get away from rapacious drug dealers. There's a bit when one turns on the other because she was left to be assaulted while the other one was too high. It was on a gay film season on channel 4.
5. Dancing in the dark. Set in Liverpool. A woman bumps into her ex boyfriend on her hen do
6. Letter to Breshnev. Sometime in the 80s. Also set in Liverpool where this girl falls in love with a Russian sailor and tries to join him in the USSR.

Does anyone else remember these. Or where to find them, or do you remember any hard to find dramas?

If you have Prime, Letter to Breshnev is on a free trial of BFI player

It's Dancing thru the Dark not in the dark. It was released on DVD a few years ago following a rights problem.

Dancin' Thru The Dark https://amzn.eu/d/5R1YT53

It is also available in full on YouTube.
It is one of my favourite things ever!

Codename Icarus. Children’s spy drama set in a school for genius children. It probably doesn’t stand the test of time, but I remember my mum enjoying it as muc (or more) as we did.

Letter to Brezhnev was definitely available on DVD, it's how I first saw it.

A Sense Of Guilt - starring Trevor Eve
Mother Love - Diana Rigg.
Take Me Home - Keith Barron.

3 thoroughly good dramas from 1989-1991.

All BBC I think.

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It's later than these, but another good Liverpool-filmed drama is "Don't Worry About Me". It's on the BBC occasionally.

I watched Letter To Brezhnev on YouTube not long ago, may still be on there.

Also watched No Surrender on there recently..A funny 80s film set in Liverpool in the 80s by Alan Bleasdale. Peter Kay said it was what influenced Phoenix Nights.

Growing Rich with Martin Kemp as the devil offering three female friends things in return for their soul - saw it in my adolescence and would love to watch again!

Hope and Glory- Lenny Henry was a headteacher of a troubled school

Loved Dancin thru the Dark - it's an adaptation of a Willy Russell play

Twotelevised plays starring Maureen Lipmap about a son going to university "Cold enough for snow" and "Eskimo day"

Mother Love was wonderful

FIrst Born. A bbc drama was excellent
Ultraviolet. About vampires with Idris Elba

The Tribe, 90s Australian tween apocalyptic dystopian fabulousness

I’d completely forgotten about this until now! I remember it had Claire Hacket from (the afore mentioned) Dancin Thru the Dark, as that was the main reason I watched it.

Ultraviolet is on DVD if you want to see it again.

Does anyone remember Barriers? Early 80s, starred Benedict Taylor (as everything seemed to back then), had the most haunting theme tune.

I remember that. It was superb.

I absolutely love dancing thru the dark. Off to find it on youtube. Thank you!

I loved cold enough for snow

The leaving of Liverpool was about looked after children being sent to Australia essentially in to servitude. It utterly haunted me. I watched oranges and sunshine about the exposure of the practice quite recently too. I'm a sw and frankly it broke me.

And I love that Anne got puffed sleeves 😉

Bouquet Of Barbed Wire is one I thought of recently, that was Trevor Eve too.

I always remember a drama called Maelstrom, I think it may have been set in scandaniva on the fjords. Would have been late 80’s / 90s maybe?

Roger Roger
Brilliant drama starring Robert Dawes, Keith Allen and Philip Glenister. Set in a taxi cab company

Common as Muck - loved this so much

Dirty Something - it was a BBC I think in the 90s with Rachel Weiss joining some travellers and living in an abandoned house.

This should be it

A wonderful dramatisation of the Roads to Freedom, decades ago.
Robin Redbreast, for full on folk horror
Pennies from Heaven
the Singing Detective
Boys from the Blackstuff

Yep, one of Michael J Bird’s - He also did Dark Side of the Sun and The Aphrodite Inheritance. There was always some looming potential supernatural edge to his dramas, I loved them. There’s a DVD but honestly it’s better in memory than it is in reality.

While I was checking YouTube for Mother Love (it's not there) I came across In This House of Brede with Diana Rigg becoming a nun. It was based on a book by Rumer Godden and I remember it being very good.