Licking Hitler

"Licking Hitler"
Play for Today episode
Episode no.Series 8
Episode 12
Directed byDavid Hare
Written byDavid Hare
Original air date10 January 1978 (1978-01-10)
Episode chronology
← Previous
"Scully's New Year's Eve" 		Next →
"Red Shift"

"Licking Hitler" is the 12th episode of the eighth series of the BBC anthology Play for Today British TV series. The episode was originally broadcast on 10 January 1978.[1] "Licking Hitler" was written and directed by David Hare, produced by David Rose, and starred Kate Nelligan and Bill Paterson. Photography was by Ken Morgan and John Kenway.

"Licking Hitler" is about a black propaganda unit operating in England during World War II. Described as a work of "outstanding and unsettling power",[1] it won the 1978 British Academy Television Award for Best Single Play.[2]

Hare intended the work as a companion piece to his stage play Plenty (staged at the Lyttelton Theatre in April 1978 with Nelligan in the lead role of Susan Trahearne) and he wrote Plenty as he was editing Licking Hitler, scene and scene about.[3][4] Its theme is similar to that of Plenty: the effect of war on individuals' private lives and treating their experiences as a metaphor for the England of the present.

  1. ^ a b Lawson, Mark (3 May 1999). "Splitting Hares". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 December 2018.
  2. ^ "1979 Television Single Play". bafta.org. BAFTA.
  3. ^ Hare, David (1978). Plenty. London: Faber & Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-30105-8.
  4. ^ Hare, David (1984). The history plays. London: Faber and Faber. pp. 11–15. ISBN 0-571-13132-8.