First broadcast 10 December 1970.

Play for Today was a series of original television plays produced by the BBC between 1970 and 1984. The genre of each individual production varied, with a few key plays representing some of the BBC’s best speculative fiction. The first of these was Robin Redbreast, a cosy folk horror broadcast during the very first season.

Norah Palmer (Anna Cropper) is a recently separated script editor, who decides to temporarily move into the rural cottage that she kept as part of her split from her ex-boyfriend. Once in she is immediately struck by the strange residents in the village nearby: the superstitious Mrs Vigo, the creepy and invasive Mr Fisher, and the withdrawn and awkward Rob – real name Edgar – who practices martial arts near-naked in the forest and with whom Norah begins to feel an attraction. When unexpected events lead her to want to leave the village, however, she finds the locals conspiring to keep her trapped there.

Robin Redbreast was written by John Griffith Bowen, who would go on to write a number of Christmas-themed supernatural dramas for the BBC, and directed by James MacTaggart. In many respects it reflects the typical Play for Today episode. The production budget was clearly limited, with a small cast and a very theatrical sensibility. The fashions and the dialogue are charmingly dated. The pace, by today’s standards, is relatively slow. At the same time it remains a rather effective horror story.

It is easy to ridicule much of Play for Today’s output today. Many of the plays now seem charmingly naïve, or tediously didactic, and more often than not hopelessly dated. To criticise them this harshly, however, overlooks what a tremendous achievement in television drama they were. Over 15 years more than 300 separate self-contained dramas were written and produced. They gave early opportunities to a raft of film and television talent, including acclaimed film director Mike Leigh. Some of them led to independently successful TV series, including Rumpole of the Bailey and Boys from the Blackstuff. Like all long-running productions, some instalments were better than others, and the very best of Play for Today remain strong, dramatic works today, decades after their original broadcast.

While Robin Redbreast does begin in a rather awkward and stolid fashion it rapidly begins to slide off the rails into a uneasy and rather creepy thriller. Norah is disturbed by the strangely malevolent villagers, particularly the presumptive and eerily calm Mr Fisher (Bernard Hepton, giving what is probably the play’s best performance) who tells her of Anglo-Saxon traditions and her cottage’s propensity to trap birds that fly down its chimney. Norah grows wary of the simple and earnest Rob, who seems obsessed with the history of Nazi Germany and clearly has amorous designs on her. By the time the play hits its climax it has twice offered surprising shifts in direction. Then, without warning, it is all over. The credits roll on an unsettling and uncertain open ending.

To a large extent the small village horror and folkloric overtones of the play prefigure Robin Hardy’s popular horror film The Wicker Man, released three years later in 1973. Together they help form a peculiarly British style of folk horror alongside the likes of Ben Wheatley’s Kill List and Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General, and which was excellently satirised in the BBC comedy series The League of Gentlemen. These texts reflect – to one extent or another – an eerie discomfort with insular rural communities, British folklore and the unknown wilds of nature.

Norah makes for a strong protagonist, and for a 1970 production she seems remarkably progressive. The play includes direct references to both contraception and abortion, and in the case of the latter it gets rather forthright and heated about a woman’s reproductive rights. It came as a slight surprise to see such issues discussed so positively and yet so long ago.

Like a lot of early 1970s BBC drama, the original colour tape of Robin Redbreast has long since vanished, leaving only a black and white 16mm film copy in existence. The BFI’s DVD release – which I used to review the film here – is beautifully remastered, and at least presents the sound and picture in as good a condition as can be managed.