Alan Bleasdale - Broadcasting

Broadcasting

His first successes came as the writer of radio dramas for the BBC; several of these plays followed the character of Scully and were broadcast on BBC Radio Merseyside in 1971 (Scully was a young man from Liverpool). Bleasdale's plays typically represented a more realistic, contemporary depiction of life in that city than was usually seen in the media.

The character became so successful that Bleasdale wrote a stage play, two novels and in 1978, a Play for Today ("Scully's New Year's Eve"). That same year, he wrote another single play for the BBC1 anthology series, entitled The Black Stuff. This latter play concerned the story of a group of Liverpudlian tarmac layers. The group are assigned a job laying tarmac (the 'black stuff' of the title) on a housing development in Middlesbrough, with their hotel and meals being paid for. However, ambition and greed drives four of the six men to doing a 'foreigner'—a job 'on the sly' behind their supervisor's back, laying tarmac for a farmer. However, this turns out to be a disaster, after they spend their life savings on it, but end up being swindled by two Irish gypsies. The mental anguish of the four is seen, but they and the others from the collective group are sacked by the project manager.

Although the play was not transmitted for two years as it waited for an available slot, on its eventual broadcast in 1980 it won much praise, and producer Michael Wearing of BBC English Regions Drama managed to commission the sequel serial that Bleasdale had already been working on. The series, Boys from the Blackstuff, was transmitted on BBC Two in 1982.It benefitted enormously from a brilliant cast led by Bernard Hill in the (in)famous role of Yosser Hughes,whose catch-phrase "Gissa job" came to represent the Thatcher years. It established Bleasdale as one of Britain's most important television writers and social commentators.

Bleasdale scripted the film No Surrender (1985), a black comedy in which a group of elderly Protestant hardliners are booked into a party at a pub on the same night as a group of Catholic old-timers.

Since Boys from the Blackstuff, Bleasdale has been responsible for further award-winning television dramas, including The Monocled Mutineer (1986, BBC One), G.B.H. (1991, Channel 4) and Jake's Progress (Channel 4, 1995) the story of a couple (Robert Lindsay and Julie Walters) struggling to cope with a 'difficult' child (Barclay Wright). In 1999 Bleasdale adapted Oliver Twist for ITV. The adaptation was well received but attracted some controversy as Bleasdale expanded the narrative by adding a backstory.

In 1987, Charlottetown Festival director Walter Learning presented the Canadian premiere of the Bleasdale musical Are You Lonesome Tonight? at the Confederation Centre of the Arts, a national arts centre located on Prince Edward Island. A storm of controversy erupted across the country with opponents decrying the presentation of the tough look at the life of Elvis Presley at the festival, which had been known for lightweight family fare such as Anne of Green Gables - The Musical. The chairman of the Board of Directors resigned in protest over the Bleasdale play and objections to the rough language and subject matter were even brought up in the provincial legislature. However, the play was allowed to proceed and became a major critical and financial success for the festival that season.

After 11 years of absence from the TV screens Alan Bleasdale returned in January 2011 on BBC 2 with a two-part TV film, The Sinking of the Laconia, about the World War II ocean liner RMS Laconia and the Laconia incident, which he had been working on since 2004.

Bleasdale's house is the main location in Nickelodeon's new youth series called House of Anubis, which premiered in January 2011.