Talking to a Stranger

Talking to a Stranger (1966) is a British television drama, written by John Hopkins for the BBC, which consists of four separate plays recounting the events of one weekend from the viewpoints of four members of the same family. The play cycle was directed by Christopher Morahan and produced by Michael Bakewell and first shown in the Theatre 625 series on BBC 2

The four episodes were individually subtitled Anytime You're Ready I'll Sparkle, No Skill or Special Knowledge is Required, Gladly, My Cross-Eyed Bear and The Innocent Must Suffer. They were respectively the stories of the daughter, Terry; the father, Ted; the son, Alan and the mother, Sarah. Her viewpoint is recounted after her suicide. The role of the daughter Terry provided a major early role for Judi Dench in one of her first starring roles on television. The other leads were played by Maurice Denham, Margery Mason and Michael Bryant.

According to Hopkins, he was seven months late delivering the scripts and, when he was commissioned by the BBC, all he had in his head was the final line of the final play: "Somebody hold me."

Frequently hailed by critics as one of the most important and affecting television dramas of the 1960s, in a 2000 poll of industry professionals conducted by the British Film Institute to determine the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century, it was placed seventy-eighth.

The Observer TV critic George Melly called it "the first authentic masterpiece written directly for television" and claimed that "on the evidence of this work alone, the medium can be considered to have come of age."

Dench won the 1968 British Academy Television Award for Best Actress for her performance.

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