Irene Shubik

Irene Shubik (26 December 1929 – 26 September 2019) was a British television producer and story editor, known for her contribution to the development of the single play in British television drama. Beginning her career in television at ABC Weekend TV, she worked on Armchair Theatre as a story editor, where she devised the science fiction anthology series Out of this World. Moving to the BBC, she briefly worked as a story editor before being promoted to producer, creating the science fiction anthology television series Out of the Unknown. Leaving Out of the Unknown after two seasons, Shubik co-produced The Wednesday Play, overseeing its transition into Play for Today in 1970. She left the BBC in 1976 and subsequently produced the first season of Rumpole of the Bailey for Thames Television before joining Granada Television, where she produced Staying On and devised The Jewel in the Crown. She also wrote film scripts and a novel, The War Guest.

Works

Playhouse

A one-hour anthology television series of one-off contemporary and classic dramas produced by the BBC.

Release Date1974-03-13

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Episode Count10

Vote Count1

Story Parade

Story Parade specialized in adaptations of modern novels. It was broadcast on June 5, 1964 and repeated on August 28, 1964. The teleplay was by Terry Nation (who invented "Blake's 7" and the Daleks in Dr. Who), and Elijah Baley was played by the late Peter Cushing. It also starred John Carson John Carson as R. Daneel Olivaw and Kenneth J. Warren. The master tapes of the program were erased, however a few clips from the production have turned up in various documentaries about Isaac Asimov's work.

Release Date1964-04-24

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Episode Count1

Vote Count1

Out of the Unknown

Out of the Unknown is a British television science fiction anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2 in four series between 1965 and 1971. Each episode was a dramatisation of a science fiction short story; some were created for the series, but most were adaptations of already published stories. The first three years were exclusively science fiction, but that genre was abandoned in the final year in favour of horror and fantasy. A number of episodes were wiped during the early 1970s, as was standard procedure at the time.

Release Date1965-10-04

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Episode Count25

Vote Count8

The Jewel in the Crown

In India, during the final years of British rule in World War II, an unjust arrest for rape sets off questions of identity and personal responsibility being explored against a background of war and personal intrigue.

Release Date1984-01-09

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Episode Count14

Vote Count25

Out of This World

Out of This World is a British science fiction anthology television series made by ABC Television and broadcast in 1962. A spin-off from the popular anthology series Armchair Theatre, each episode is introduced by actor Boris Karloff. Many episodes are adaptations of stories by sci-fi writers including Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick and Clifford D. Simak. The series is generally seen as a precursor to the BBC science fiction anthology Out of the Unknown.

Release Date1962-06-24

DepartmentWriting

JobStory Editor

Episode Count14

Vote Count4

Wessex Tales

An anthology series based on the Wessex Tales, a collection of short stories by novelist Thomas Hardy.

Release Date1973-11-07

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Episode Count6

Vote Count3

Thirteen Against Fate

Thirteen Against Fate is a series of thirteen hour-long episodes based on the novels of Georges Simenon. Noted for the sound psychology of his characters, Simenon's stories deal with many nationalities and are set in numerous European cities and villages. There are sequences filmed in these locations integrated into the episodes. In each of the novels chosen for this series, Fate plays a leading role in the development of the story and the characters.

Release Date1966-06-19

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Episode Count1

Vote Count1

Second Childhood

Charles Dennistoun, a 60-year-old contestant on 'You Bet a Million' - a quiz show for millionaires - wins the jackpot prize, a course in rejuvenation. But his friends and family have mixed feeling, and the repercussions have blackly comic effects on all concerned.

Release Date1966-11-10

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

The Prophet

Robot QT-1, aboard an orbiting space station, controls the massive energy beam which transmits the sun's power to receivers on Earth. But QT-1 (Cutie) has some strange bees in his positronic bonnet. How could weak creatures of protoplasm create a nearly invincible, totally logical entity like himself? It is up to his human supervisors, Powell and Donovan, to convince Cutie of his niche in creation before his new robot theology becomes a threat to all life on Earth.

Release Date1967-01-01

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

The Eye

Julian Clay is accused of murdering Andrew Maddox - a charge he cannot deny because 'The Eye', a device which records the past, saw him do it. However, the law affords one loophole.

Release Date1966-11-24

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Satisfaction Guaranteed

A human-looking robot housekeeper is the latest gadget to acquire in the ceaseless battle to keep up with the Joneses. But housewife Claire Belmont starts to question the wisdom of her husband's purchase when TN3 (Tony) arrives. Can a man-like robot do everything a man can do, but willingly, obediently, tirelessly? Is a robot less than a man, or more?

Release Date1966-12-29

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Long Past Glory

Two aging, shabby men inhabit a decaying sewer pumping station. They live by stealing things, including beds, a piano and a gramophone.They're joined by a younger man who disrupts their dreary small talk with angry, upsetting arguments.

Release Date1963-11-17

DepartmentWriting

JobStory Editor

Vote Count1

The Joke

Bendel is known for his practical jokes and his self-confidence. But when Dr Walden, one of his victims. takes him seriously, trouble ensues.

Release Date1976-05-26

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Charlie

James has come in search of his feckless older brother, Charlie, to ask him to come home and settle down.

Release Date1968-09-18

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Level Seven

Level 7 is the deepest and the safest level in a nuclear bunker. The nerve centre of the government is based here. But how safe is it?

Release Date1966-10-27

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

The Villa Maroc

A stolid British family from Bishops Stortford are adventurous and book a holiday in a villa in Morocco, where things befall them.

Release Date1972-02-17

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

The Rainbirds

After a suicide attempt, John Rainbird is in a coma. Whilst in this state his mind experiences fantasies involving nightmare creatures and his relatives.

Release Date1971-02-11

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Staying On

A british colonel and his wife decide to remain in India after the departure of the British raj in the 1940s.

Release Date1980-12-28

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count2

The Exiles

Three Trinidadians consider what it means to be exiles in an essentially white society.

Release Date1969-04-23

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

The Fox Trot

The first in a series of new plays. Arthur and Gwen, a cosy middle-aged couple, remember with nostalgia the pre-Motorway Britain of their youth. When Tom, an old friend, returns from voyaging the world their life takes a strange new turn.

Release Date1971-04-29

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

The Right Prospectus

A school story with a noticeable difference - the adults regress to children.

Release Date1970-01-02

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

The Dead Past

The Chronoscope is a device that analyses ancient photons to allow a glimpse into any event in Earth's distant past. Historian Arnold Potterley is rebuffed when he petitions for use of the Chronoscope to study ancient Carthage. So he commissions the building of a private time-viewing machine.

Release Date1965-10-25

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Michael Regan

Under stress, Irish tenant farmer Michael Regan, suddenly snaps one day and locks himself in his home, threatening the lives of his wife and child.

Release Date1971-11-18

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

The Caves of Steel

In the future New York City, the Deputy Commissioner of Police is assisted by a robot detective in solving the murder of a scientist.

Release Date1964-06-05

DepartmentWriting

JobScript Editor

Vote Count1

Meriel the Ghost Girl

Livingston, a psychic investigator, is asked to attend a seance. Can it be that he has finally discovered a genuine supernatural phenomenon!?

Release Date1976-09-28

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

The Last Train Through Harecastle Tunnel

A young train spotter heads to Staffordshire for a historic journey through a soon to be condemned tunnel. During his trip, he encounters a series of eccentric characters. With his passion for the railways and naïve disposition, Benjamin inadvertently encourages them to reveal their innermost fears and darkest secrets.

Release Date1969-10-01

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count2

The Long Distance Piano Player

The first Play for Today is the story of one man's obsession (to win the world long distance piano playing record) and the battle for good (his wife) and evil (his agent) that rages around him.

Release Date1970-10-15

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Too Many Cooks

Dr Andrew Cook, inventor of a process for making living replicas of human beings, has unwittingly duplicated himself and becomes a secret weapon in the Solar System's struggle for economic survival against a powerful alien culture, the Sentients.

Release Date1966-12-15

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Andover and the Android

Roger Andover will inherit a fortune if he marries. But he is a solitary man with no ambition: human relationships mystify and dismay him. But to present a life-like female android as your wife: surely that will satisfy everyone? Andover finds more than he bargained for when his robot bride challenges his preconceptions about humanity.

Release Date1965-11-29

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

The Fox and the Forest

Sarah and David Kirsten are tourists from the 21st century who take a forbidden holiday in 1938 Mexico. But enforcers from the future, trying to keep the time-stream free from pollution and paradox, are on their trail. Can they evade their pursuers without betraying their origins?

Release Date1965-11-22

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Triple Exposure

Len climbs Veronica and Percy’s fence intent on burglary, but what really happens next? The three acts of the play show the incident from each of the three perspectives.

Release Date1972-11-06

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Time in Advance

The future. Criminals serve prison sentences before they commit their crimes. Prisons are on new planets that are being colonised. After serving their time, the former prisoners return to their home planet.

Release Date1965-11-01

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

The Midas Plague

The Future. Robot labour and free energy make the creation of goods easy and automatic. Now people are continually supplied with more things than they can possibly consume.

Release Date1965-12-20

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Walk's End

Dr Saint's offer of a free place in his comfortable old-folks' home appears entirely philanthropic to Miss Claythorpe. However, he is suspiciously vague about the treatment that goes with it.

Release Date1966-12-22

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

The Breakthrough

An adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's 1966 short story of the same title, broadcast as part of the BBC's "BBC2 Playhouse".

Release Date1975-01-08

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Alma Mater

Jimmy Nicholson returns from working in the Middle East to visit his son at boarding school. He went to the same public school himself and is disturbed to find that things have changed and the traditions by which he has always lived and been guided now seem to be obsolete.

Release Date1971-01-07

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Sucker Bait

An expedition sets out to discover what has happened to a lost colony on a distant planet. Amongst the scientists is a teenager raised to be a kind of human computer, able to make connections between different specialisms.

Release Date1965-11-15

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

The Drummer and the Bloke

Alf and Jack, two labourers hired to work in a quarry,have decided to go on strike because of the degrading nature of the job.

Release Date1968-01-31

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

The Cafeteria

An eccentric Jewish writer is drawn into the world of an apparantly delusional young woman and her invalid father

Release Date1974-08-13

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Song at Twilight

Eddie Ritchie once ' played for England,' or did he? The team have their doubts.

Release Date1973-02-05

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

O Fat White Woman

The wife of a public school head becomes gradually aware that her husband has been physically abusing his pupils. Written by the master of late-middle-age morality plays, William Trevor.

Release Date1971-11-04

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Edna: The Inebriate Woman

A British play about homelessness by Jeremy Sandford, writer of "Cathy Come Home", first broadcast as a BBC Play For Today. It details the deterioration of Edna, a homeless alcoholic and was made at a time when vagrancy was still a criminal offence.

Release Date1971-10-21

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Frankenstein Mark 2

A stranger calls at the home of divorcée Anna Preston, asking to collect some of her ex-husband's belongings. Anna agrees, but is suspicious, and tries to contact her 'ex' at the space-research establishment where he worked. But none of his colleagues can tell her where he is and the authorities block all her efforts to find out. Anna grows more convinced that he is in danger, but the truth is more horrifying than even she can imagine.

Release Date1966-10-13

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

A Distant Thunder

Peter Barkham hero-worships his distinguished father. However, this is threatened by the intrusion of events and people from his father's wartime past.

Release Date1970-11-26

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Thirteen to Centaurus

Interstellar travel at sub-light speeds: the enormous distances, isolation from human culture and the aching loneliness of space are enough to drive the strongest personality insane. Better to block all memories of human contact and to program the 12-strong crew to accept only the reality they can see and touch within their spacecraft. But a child born on "the Station" becomes insistent on learning the truth about 'Outside'.

Release Date1965-12-13

DepartmentWriting

JobStory Editor

Vote Count2

Sling Your Hook

A group of coal miners from Nottingham go on their annual trip to Blackpool.

Release Date1969-04-02

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

The World in Silence

College student Sarah Richards is alone in fearing and disliking the new teaching machines but even she does not foresee the terrifying situation that arises when her supervisor, Stephen Kershaw, re-arranges the machines to conform with revised fire regulations.

Release Date1966-11-17

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

The Pigeon Fancier

When Len Shelton retires from a life of work in the coal mines, he turns to his first love - pigeons, which become a symbol of hope for him.

Release Date1971-12-09

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Chariot of Fire

A prison visitor becomes involved with a convicted sex offender.

Release Date1970-05-20

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

The Love of a Good Woman

Isabella and Henry were childhood sweethearts. Isabella dreams of the arrival of a vulgar woman named Emily.

Release Date1976-10-15

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Everybody Say Cheese

Comedy play about a seaside photographer, Henry Hunter, who goes to Margate every year to work, staying with his friends Frank and Hylda. However, he is getting older, and his trade is dying out as people have their own instamatic cameras.

Release Date1971-06-03

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

House of Character

Bisthorpe moves into a flat where a host of bizarre events occur: hands come through walls, light bulbs explode, furniture talks, he turns into a table-top model in an advertising agency, etc. Finally, it's revealed that the new flat is, in fact, a room in a psychiatric asylum.

Release Date1968-01-10

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Stones

From BBC2 Playhouse's The Mind Beyond series. Professor Reeve wonders about strange events that seem to be connected to Stonehenge (Source: BBC).

Release Date1976-10-27

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

In the Beautiful Caribbean

Play set in the Caribbean showing how life is hard and a struggle, with problems of unemployment and lack of money.

Release Date1972-02-03

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

The General's Day

When Mrs Hinch, the sinister charlady, decides to move in, General Suffolk fights his last battle.

Release Date1972-11-20

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Pal

Two sworn enemies, one black and the other white, are forced to confront their prejudices when they are forced together by circumstance.

Release Date1971-12-02

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

I Can't See My Little Willie

When it's time to wet the baby's head, it's surprising the secrets that emerge...

Release Date1970-11-19

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Mrs. Lawrence Will Look After It

When an elderly woman is hospitalised, the truth behind her illegal adoption of 14 children is revealed.

Release Date1968-08-21

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Ackerman, Dougall & Harker

A salesman learns a few lessons from the locals when he goes to Yorkshire for a business course.

Release Date1972-02-10

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

The Fastest Draw

Amos Handworthy's grandfather was quick on the draw: as a U.S marshal, it was a job requirement if you wanted to stay alive. But now Amos has built a gun-slinging robot, programmed to be a split second slower than him in a gunfight, so that he can perpetuate the myth and glory of his grandfather's frontier past. But will Amos bet his life on a duel with real bullets?

Release Date1966-12-08

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Some Lapse of Time

Dr Max Harrow is awakened from a re-current nightmare in which he is pursued by a barbaric accusing figures, to find a tramp collapsed on his doorstep, The tramp is suffering from a genetic radiation disorder that should killed him in infancy as it did Harrow's baby son. The man is the living image of Harrow's nightmare figures, Clutched in his hand is a human finger bone and he speaks a strange, unknown tongue,

Release Date1965-12-06

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

No Place Like Earth

Earth is no more, destroyed by nuclear war; but itinerant handyman Bert Foster, wandering the canals of Mars, is possessed by a restlessness for a home which no longer exists. He considers a move to an isolated outpost on Venus.

Release Date1965-10-04

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

The Machine Stops

The future. The material needs of people are tended by the Machine, which makes their environment, in vast tunnels beneath the earth, comfortable and safe. But if the Machine stops, what then?

Release Date1966-10-06

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count2

Double Echo

A psychologist comes to believe that the acutely autistic 17-year-old girl that he has been attempting to treat is gifted with telepathic powers, and begins to exhaustively test her capabilities, enlisting the aid of a psychiatric colleague to impartially observe.

Release Date1976-10-05

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Come Buttercup, Come Daisy, Come......?

Henry Wilkes cultivates rare tropical plants as a hobby, with an attention to detail closer to obsession. The length to which he goes to propagate and nurture new hybrids alarms his wife. Is there more going on in the greenhouse than could safely be exhibited at the next Battersea Flower Show?

Release Date1965-11-08

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Eleanor

Eleanor seems normal enough to her parents and teachers. Why then has she disappeared?

Release Date1974-12-12

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Stranger in the Family

A boy is skilled at telepathy and in mind control. He attracts the attention of the government.

Release Date1965-10-18

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Hearts and Flowers

A family gather together for the funeral and cremation of the head of the family.

Release Date1970-12-03

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count2

Death of a Private

An army private is driven to murder when his wife falls in love with another man.

Release Date1967-12-13

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Mrs. Acland's Ghosts

Mr Mockler and Mrs Acland have never met, but gradually Mrs Acland 's ghosts begin to take over Mr Mockler 's life.

Release Date1975-01-15

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Sovereign's Company

Sovereign's Company is the story of a boy from an army family with a long tradition of honour and distinction, who goes to a military academy as an officer cadet and finds himself temperamentally unsuited to the life.

Release Date1970-04-21

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count2

When the Bough Breaks

NSPCC social worker Margaret Ashdown is given the case of investigating into the Gosse family, when the young mother, Sheila, is unable to explain her baby's fractured skull at the hospital. She discovers the family live in poverty and ignorance, and have a tradition of instability.

Release Date1971-05-06

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Moss

TV play by Bernard Kops. Moss is a miser whose only love is his grandson. Then tragedy strikes and Moss is "reborn".

Release Date1975-10-28

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Tunnel Under the World

Déja vu: as Guy Birkett goes through the day he has a nagging feeling that he's been here before, experienced this already; except the details are always different. Is it conceivable that he is merely a simulacrum, the ultimate in consumer market surveying?

Release Date1966-12-01

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Infidelity Took Place

A happily married couple divorce for tax purposes, but their lawyer, not knowing the real reason for their divorce, falls in love with the wife.

Release Date1968-04-08

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

The Counterfeit Man

On Jupiter's moon Ganymede, an alien life-form has taken over the body of a human astronaut, creating an almost perfect copy. It then begins the long return journey to Earth.

Release Date1965-10-11

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Access to the Children

A married man forms a liaison with a woman he meets on a train, and is divorced by his wife who allows him access to their daughters on Sundays, which they usually spend at the zoo.

Release Date1973-03-05

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count2

Lambda 1

The future. The TAU-mode shuttle carries passengers to Australia through the earth's crust. When a routine TAU-shuttle becomes entombed in solid rock miles under the earth, the only means of rescue is the experimental LAMBDA-mode shuttle; which its creator is unsure about.

Release Date1966-10-20

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1

Late Summer

Helga and David travel to a secluded hotel for some alone time. Helga is much older than David and tongues wag among the other guests. The more time they are together the more age difference becomes a rift between them.

Release Date1963-07-07

DepartmentWriting

JobStory Editor