1990: "When Did You Last See Your Father"

It is 19 September 1977 and time for the second episode of 1990.

With his appeal to exit Britain rejected, Dr Vickers (Donald Gee) looks for other means of leaving the country. Meanwhile Kyle (Edward Woodward) finds himself drawn into an internal power struggle within the Department of Public Control.

One of the best things about 1990, a near-future dystopia created by Wilfred Greatorex for the BBC, is that it is a subtle dystopia. This is not a future Britain populated by jackbooted guards and Nineteen Eighty-Four style mass oppression. Don't get me wrong, it's getting there, but it is still a lot closer to the real world than it is to George Orwell. That in itself makes 1990 an uncomfortable watch. The world in the real-life 2016 seems an awful lot closer to Greatorex's 1990 than the real-life 1977 did.

1990: "Creed of Slaves"

It is 18 September 1977 and time for the first episode of 1990.

In the year 1990 the United Kingdom is slowly recovering from a total economic collapse. All commerce and industry has been nationalised. Emigrations is strictly controlled by the government. A special Department of Public Control attempts to keep the oppressed British population in line. Within this dystopian environment journalist Jim Kyle (Edward Woodward) fights to hold the government to account while secretly helping to smuggle people out of the country.

The BBC has been making science fiction television for almost 80 years now, and with the explosion of popularity of home video in the past 20 years it seems like every available science fiction series or TV play the BBC ever made has been publicly released in one format or another. That is not entirely true though, since there obstinately remain one or two productions that seem trapped indefinitely in the broadcaster's archives. One of these is the 1954 TV play of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. By an odd coincidence, one of the others is Wilfred Greatorex's near-future drama 1990 - a series he dubbed in the press "1984 plus six".