Demise
The programme officially ended in 1984, although there was one further series not broadcast in its original name but in its replacement name Screen One and Screen Two in 1985. The general trend in 1980s television production was away from one-off plays and towards a concentration on series and serials. When one-offs were produced, such as the Film on Four on Channel 4, they tended to be made with a cinematic approach rather than betraying television drama's roots in the theatre that Play for Today and the earlier series had often demonstrated.
Nonetheless, the series is generally remembered as a benchmark of high-quality British television drama, and has become a byword for what many continue to argue was a golden age of British television. In 2000, the British Film Institute produced a poll of industry professionals to determine the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century, and five of the programmes included in the final tally were from Play for Today. Some of the better-known plays in the series, such as "Abigail's Party", "The Black Stuff", "The Flipside of Dominick Hide", "Brimstone and Treacle" and "Blue Remembered Hills" have been made available on VHS and DVD.
A new programme publicised as a return of Play for Today, but under the working title of The Evening Play, was announced at the beginning of March 2006, but nothing has been heard from it since. Kevin Spacey, film star and director of the Old Vic, in March 2008 told BBC News that he would like to see the return of the show, but the Conservative MP Michael Gove and journalist Mark Lawson expressed disagreement, Gove describing them as "exercises in viewer patronisation". Jan Moir in The Daily Telegraph wrote in support of Spacey, saying "the British loved Play for Today once, and would do so again. A good piece of drama looks at the human condition, and tells us something we should know about ourselves."
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