"Just Another Saturday" is the 15th episode of fifth season of the British BBC anthology TV series ''

Play for Today ''Play for Today'' is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage ...

''. The episode was a television play that was originally broadcast on 13 March 1975.. "Just Another Saturday" was written by Peter McDougall, directed by John Mackenzie, produced by Graeme MacDonald, and starred

Jon Morrison Jon Morrison is a Scottish actor who has appeared in many plays, films and television series since the early 1970s, including ''The Bill'', '' Bergerac'', ''Taggart'' and ''Vera''. His best-known parts have been in the Peter McDougall plays ' ...

and Billy Connolly. "Just Another Saturday" is about the Orange walk culture. The episode won the Prix Italia for Best Drama.

Synopsis

John looks forward with nervous excitement to the annual Orange order march in Glasgow, in which he will lead his local Orange Lodge band as mace-swinger. However, as the day progresses he begins to become disillusioned with the day and his colleagues, as he witnesses their growing drunkenness and unwarranted violence against Catholic homes on the march's route. Events of the day lead him to question his involvement with the band, which also threatens his own safety.

Cast

as John * Eileen McCallum as Lizzie * Bill Henderson as Dan * Ken Hutchison as Rab * Billy Connolly as Paddy * Jim Gibb as Jim * Phil McCall as Joe * Jake D'Arcy as Jackie * James Walsh as Tommy * Martin Black as Man in Fight

Critical reception

The BFI's Screenonline website comments: "Beyond the political issues, it is McDougall's mastery not only of the gallows humour of Glasgow's working class but of the hidden motives of parental kindness that make the drama, in Jeremy Isaacs's words, "a masterpiece" and won the play the Prix Italia."

References

External links

* 1975 British television episodes 1975 television plays British television plays Glasgow in fiction Orange Order Play for Today Prix Italia winners Sectarianism Films directed by John Mackenzie (film director) {{UK-tv-film-stub