Lights Up
UK Theatres / bbc four / BBC iplayer

With theatres remaining closed, under the government’s “road map”, until 17 May at the earliest – though many are optimistically selling tickets for on or after that date – the lockdown alternative of streamed plays achieves an extravagant manifestation in Lights Up, a season of theatre pieces filmed on empty stages or in studios, screened on BBC Four and available until next spring on iPlayer.

The run includes new productions of plays previously staged live, including Sitting by Katherine Parkinson and Colm Tóibín’s monologue Pale Sister, both seen in 2019. But world premieres include David Ireland’s Sadie, recorded on the empty stage of the Lyric Belfast, in place of the run cancelled by the pandemic. Most of the shows carry a warning about “strong language”, upgraded to “very strong” for Sadie and Sitting. This reveals a linguistic difference between theatre and TV/ radio drama. Although newspaper Letters pages regularly feature complaints about “appalling” swearing on screen, broadcast dialogue is pretty decorous: writers pre-censor speech, aware of what is likely to be allowed, and the finished product is heavily, in media jargon, “complied”. So texts that originate on stage, where anything can be said,  are automatically tougher-talking.