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?

Letter to Brezhnev is on bbc iPlayer

Cause Celèbre is currently on Talking Pictures TV. Helen Mirren and David Morrissey

At Home With The Braithwaits!

Brass was very funny

This is being shown on U&Drama channel currently and available on UKTV app for free:

https://u.co.uk/shows/at-home-with-the-braithwaites/watch-online

@RoundSquareWithTriangles

Half-Broken Things (2007) is on stv player at the moment

OMG thanks chattyness!!

I loved this series and went on to buy the book. I've been wanting to rewatch this for years!!

Link if anyone else is interested

player.stv.tv/summary/dcd2-half-broken-things

chattyness, thank you, and thanks for the link, mum2jakie.

I don't think anyone has mentioned The Monocled Mutineer - Paul McGann and Cheri Lunghi. I have a feeling it's never been repeated as it was so controversial at the time. It's about a (real life) British army mutiny at Etaples in 1917.

Ooh, I had a thing about Paul McGann back in the day.

There was another thread crushing on him the other day lol

It's never been repeated on the BBC bc the Daily Mail would be apoplectic although they say it's a rights issue. I saw it on Gold a few years ago as part of the WW1 centenary programmes

I can remember a detective series in the 80's ..the detective was called Adam Dalgleish....the theme music was quite haunting.

PD James, the Adam Dalgleish books. Now being refilmed for Channel 5.

There was one about the ladies who worked on the switchboard in the 50s. I think letotoa Dean was in it.....the hello girls!

Seeing Red (2000) - About a woman trying to set up a children's home for disturbed children.

I had the book of the same name (lent it to a friend, never got it back) - by Coral Atkins, I think. Very moving.

Most of these don’t ring a bell as we grew up overseas but my parents would sometimes videotape a series for us when back on summer leave and they would be passed around the expat families in the country. One was Seal Morning about a girl who is ophaned (I think) and goes to stay with her aunt in a remote coastal area and befriends a seal. And the other was about a family of kids called the Cameron’s who solved some crime (I remember a train). They made a big impression on me at the time as they were really the only English language dramas we had access to, it was the 1980s.

Has Rock Follies been mentioned - Julie Covington, Rula Lenska and Charlotte (?)

Screen Two; Leaving. Set in Greenock in the 60s, 3 boys set to leave school. Very evocative of the time n lots of faces you'll recognise from Paul Young to Alex Norton. Funny in places, v sad in others, the ending stayed with me for a long time.

North and South, the miniseries from the 80s with Patrick Swayze and Kirstie Alley.

I actually remember borrowing the book from our school library, when I was 15. Shame you never got your copy back.

The leaving of Liverpool. Early 90s about a boy and girl that went to Australia in the 60s I think under the home children migration scheme. So compelling and heartbreaking, I always remember Jon Lennon's working class hero song in this series. Very powerful!

Care, a drama, again made in the 90s, think it was starring Stephen Mackintosh, about the care system and the abuse there. Utterly heartbreaking.

I forgot about Care. Very horrifying with the rape scene. And how Davey and the others had disturbed adult lives because of it. Obviously based on the North Wales scandal (not much justice).

A film rather than TV drama, but 'Oranges & Sunshine' is fantastic & is about this, too.

I saw Adolescence and Three Girls a few weeks ago .which were both hyped up. Which lead me to check out Walking on the Moon. It was about bullying and was shown a few months after the Columbine massacre. I know bullying has been explored on kid's shows and soaps but this was particularly nasty. Especially the drowning scenes.
I found a screen one film called The Police on YouTube. I'll check that out when I get the chance.

My mum used to love Public Eye, starring Alfred Burke.