'Goldilocks and the Three Bears', Bedtime Stories (BBC Two, 3 March 1974)

Bedtime Stories was a six-part BBC anthology of contemporary takes on classic fairy-tale stories. Plater’s contribution, ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’, was the first instalment, and was followed by others written by Andrew Davies, Julian Bond, Nigel Kneale, Louis Marks and John Bowen. Sadly, Bond’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and Kneale’s ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ do not exist in the archives, but at least we have Plater’s contribution to enjoy, even if the only copy in circulation seems to be a poor-looking black-and-white telerecording.

Definitely not to be confused with the ongoing CBeebies Bedtime Stories, this series was shown on BBC2 at around 10 in the evening, with each episode lasting about 50 minutes. So: what did Plater send his viewers off to sweetly dream about following the show’s first and only broadcast nearly fifty years ago?

In his retelling of the familiar story, the titular heroine is Miss Goldie (Angharad Rees), a naïve social worker tasked with paying a visit to a problem family refusing to leave a house in a northern ‘backwoods estate’ that is due for demolition. The residents she is called to snoop on are called the Burrs (which deserves a groan), and social services have been keeping a beady eye on them. Mr Burr (Bryan Pringle) is claiming unemployment benefit but not actively job seeking, instead earning substantial money through pub darts challenges. Mrs Burr (Rosemary Leech), a self-proclaimed lady of leisure with a handy side-line in Bingo victories, is under surveillance for claiming marital benefits that she may not be entitled to. And teenage Lenny Burr (Dai Bradley) is attending school only selectively, spending the rest of his time fishing on the local canals that have been poisoned by the spillages of the town’s grim-sounding main employer, Global Chemicals.

Miss Goldie reckons that getting answers out of them will be a breeze. After all, unlike her predecessors in her role, she has a university degree, and even did a thesis on the, ahem, social consequences of environmental deprivation. But the Burrs all manage to run intellectual and conversational rings around her, deflecting her questions and robustly justifying their lifestyle beyond the mainstream economy. Young Lenny explains that he only attends school classes that interest him (namely music, football and comparative religion). What’s the point in dwelling on the future or career prospects when the only employment option in these parts is with the very company that’s murdering his beloved fish? In fact, what’s the point about thinking at all: why not just live in the moment?

Miss Goldie asks Mr Burr if he has a job. Well, he says, yes. But from another point of view, no. He would consider his darts expertise as a vocation, nay, a passion – after all, he’s practised the game all his life, and it brings in money and stability. But if the welfare state doesn’t recognise it as gainful employment, then so be it: it stands to reason he can legitimately claim unemployment benefit. Furthermore, when you think about it, who agreed the whole idea of the 40-hour week – doesn’t the bible have a clause about doing all that you have to do within six days, and if you happen to get it done much quicker than that, what’s the problem?

Meanwhile, Mrs Burr won’t give a straightforward answer when asked repeatedly if she and Mr Burr are actually married. As she says, they behave like a family, and love each other like a family, so there’s your answer there. Besides, she says that ‘we all tell the truth in this house except when we tell lies and say nothing’.

Utterly dejected at her failure to make headway with the Burrs, Miss Goldie flees the scene, then goes back to the council office, where she hands over her resignation letter. Plater would often return to this trope of an ambitious authority figure ultimately being sent packing by their quarry. For example, there’s the similarly themed 1977 ‘Short Back and Sides’, for ITV Playhouse, about a town planner confronting a barber who is refusing to leave a clearance area. Twenty years later, there were also couple of joined radio plays (Only a Matter of Time / Time Added on For Injuries) about a pompous industrialist failing to persuade a Welsh everyman about his vision of progress. ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ also slots into a subset of Plater dramas featuring charismatic questioners of capitalist logic that includes the schools programme Terry (1969) and the mid-1980s Beiderbecke Trilogy.

As I’ve not seen or heard much about the other plays in the Bedtime Stories series, I can’t say how they compare tonally, or in their fidelity to the source material. I do know that Nigel Kneale’s contribution, loosely based on Jack and the Beanstalk, jettisoned the fantasy for a more psychological, contemporary-set story, so perhaps there was an emphasis throughout on social satire. In the case of Goldilocks, I’m struggling – without doing any internet research – to recall much of the original story, other than that there’s a woman who visits some bears, has a bit of a squabble, and then leaves. Plater peppers the dialogue with arch references to woods, chairs and porridge and so forth, and there’s also an unseen narrator (a fruity Charles Lloyd Pack) who introduces key developments but is also shushed and challenged by the Burrs/Bears.

Most of the action, as you’d expect, takes place in the dilapidated Burr household, which is set-dressed with some cuddly bears on the dresser, and some beer bottles arranged the place you might expect porridge bowls. Because the only copy of the programme in circulation is black-and-white and a tad blurry, you don’t get a full sense of its visual schemes for generating atmosphere. I’ve seen one contemporary review that pays as much attention to the direction than to the writing, with references to unsettling, flickering shadows cast by the demolition machines outside the Burr’s condemned terrace house.

Otherwise, the mood of Goldilocks is one of slightly escalating unease, rather than anything truly nerve-jangling, although there is an unsettling moment towards the end, involving a doll that Mrs Burr has won at bingo. Observing that it really is the spitting image of Miss Goldie, the doll is placed upon Mr Burrs’ dart-board, and he proceeds to throw his arrows – to the accompaniment of tense, extreme close-ups of everyone, and an electronically-treated soundtrack of them hitting their target.

It's hard to find much in the way of information or recollections of Bedtime Stories online, but it is often presumed to be a successor of sorts to the BBC’s 1972 supernatural anthology series Dead of Night, as they shared the same production team – including script editor Louis Marks, and producer Innes Lloyd. Plater doesn’t tend to do sinister: the Burrs are part of a lineage of loveable goons/outlaws that includes Big Al and Little Norm in the Beiderbecke series, and pretty much the entire cast of Trinity Tales (1975).

Besides, it’s hard to see Daddy Burr as truly threatening, when he’s played by Bryan Pringle, an actor described in his Guardian obituary as ‘born to represent thoughtful inadequacy’. An ideal interpreter of the writer, you might think, so it’s a shame he doesn’t occupy a more prominent place in the Platerverse, alongside Frank Mills and Harold Goodwin, who crop up in minor parts here.

Likewise, Dai Bradley, well known of course for being the fidgety young Billy Casper in Ken Loach’s Kes (1969). He brings an interesting mixture of guile and vulnerability to the role of Lenny/Baby Burr. By the time of Bedtime Stories, when he was still in early twenties, his screen appearances had mostly been guest roles or in kids TV dramas. You can easily imagine him pivoting from here into more substantial starring roles, which didn’t quite happen – but he did pursue a decent career in film, theatre and TV.

‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ is available on the Box of Broadcasts streaming service for those in the UK educational community.