Introduced by Humphrey Burton

In the week that Apollo linked-up with Soyuz and England lost the First Test, playwrights Clive Exton and Tom Stoppard were working flat-out to conceive, write, cast and rehearse a play for live transmission on the Saturday night for the Eleventh Hour series. A series dominated by a unique degree of creative collaboration between the writers and the production team. Tonight Humphrey Burton narrates this behind-the-scenes account of the pressures in creating a TV play against a remorseless deadline. It is followed by a repeat showing of the witty and startling thriller - set in an Oxford library - which resulted.