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?

I remember Mackenzie
There was a lot of comment about how he wore nothing in bed with his (many) mistresses but with his wife he wore a manky old vest <not envy>

IIRC he was a builder ?

Just remembered another one. The Boys from the Bush with Tim Healy. It only ran for two series and I don't think I've ever seen it repeated.

TVTP want viewers to ask them for ideas for old TV servies (and films), if they get enough of a demand they will try to run them.

This is on YouTube. about a school trip. I watched it not long ago.

I'd forgotten about Brides of Christ. Another Aussie one - Come in Spinner.

The Sullivans reminds me of school lunch times - we used to go to a friend's house to eat our sandwiches and watch The Sullivans and The Cedar Tree.
Angels - a drama about nurses.

Angels - I remember this.

I remember one episode clearly. A nurse got accused of stealing stuff from the lockers, as she was always on duty when thefts occurred. Turned out to be workmen.

Also Richard Whitley’s (Countdown host) partner was one of the main actresses in it.

The second coming I think it was called about Jesus coming to earth. Christopher Eccleston was Jesus.

A programme possibly a play I remember just a little bit of when an old lady and her husband are at the seaside. All very slow and peaceful then they go to the public toilet and she's waiting outside for him and he doesn't come out and she asks someone to check and then there's an ambulance bringing him out. 😔 I think he'd had a stroke but gosh as a teenager i found it so sad.

And something called so haunt me about a Jewish lady who was a ghost in a house new people moved into. I think it was a comedy.

Follyfoot, I so wanted to be Dora!

I think the seaside play is Alan Bennett's Sunset Across the Bay which is on iPlayer.

Sunset Across the Bay:

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02n9tb6

Does anyone remember Gems? It was about fashion designers, two brothers maybe? It was on in the daytime during the 1980’s teacher strikes and I used to be delighted to be off so I could watch Gems!

@CrossPurposes yes it is! Thank you!

Does anyone remember A Country Practice (I think it was called)? Australian drama about vets which they showed in the afternoon in the 80's.

Remember A Country Practice very well - one of the later storylines was Dr Alex going to work in an aboriginal community and ending up with a drinking problem . The show featured just about every Australian actor ever known. See also Blue Heelers.

I certainly do remember Gems, as I do those other shows on at the same time on ITV including Sons and Daughters. I think my crush on Tony Slattery began when I was watching Gems!

I used to love common as muck. You can’t find it anywhere now.

I watched something in the 90s I can’t remember if it was a film or series but it was about a woman who conceals her pregnancy, gives birth to the baby, hides it for a while in a caravan then eventually kills it by putting crushed up tablets in the milk. I remember a scene of her expressing milk into the toilet at work. It’s bugged me I can’t remember the name of it. I thought it was called a small cry but I’ve never found it again. It was one that stayed with me a long time.

French and Saunders did a wonderful send-up of House of Eliot, called House of Idiot. It was really funny.

I remember a one-off BBC drama called Across The Lake, about Donald Campbell's final fatal speed record-breaking attempt in the Bluebird on Coniston Water. It starred Anthony Hopkins as Campbell and interspersed the final run scenes with film of the actual crash on the lake. I don't think the film was ever repeated or released, but my mum videoed it off the TV. There was a cynical journalist who missed the events because he was in the pub and went to the lake after the event, slagging off Donald Campbell and one of the others just said "he made another run and he's dead" - and then the friends of Campbell sailing on the water looking for him but only ever finding his teddy bear mascot floating at the scene. Excellent drama.

@Gorgonemilezola and @Riverlee I never saw Angels, but I remember No Angels a comedy drama about naughty nurses in the mid 2000s on C4. Kind of raised issues of snobbery and taking sexual advantage in the NHS.

@delilabell I think the ghost comedy was called so haunt me

I think that was A Small Dance, written by Lucy Gannon

Place

House of Elliott is showing on Drama Channel. Can watch it online UK TV PLAY

https://uktvplay.co.uk/shows/house-of-eliott/watch-online

God yes, I loved that series!! Didn't it star Nicole Kidman and Denham Elliott?

I also remember A Time to Dance, from 1992. Dervla Kirwan played an 18 year old from the wrong side of the tracks who had an affair with a much older man. Like A Sense of Guilt, I don’t think the BBC would ever show this again.

@Floogal I remember No Angels too, loved it.

Also Mr Wroe's Virgins, a historical drama starring Jonathan Pryce.

And more recently Crashing, a comedy set in an abandoned hospital starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

I started that Howards' Way thread! Ken Masters' snake hip shuffing to Sade is etched in my memory!

Just had a look and it's no longer available on UK TV Play. They repeated the whole series on Drama channel again last year so sure it will turn up again soon.