Martin Ellis (Dobie) is a blocked screenwriter who invites Helen, an actress (Markham), to a hotel in central London to discuss an idea for a play he is writing with her in mind.

He explains that the play he intends to write involves a meeting between a businessman and a call girl at a hotel; Martin's intention is to explore the tension this scenario would create by talking to Helen about how far she would go for the sake of her profession.

As they discuss the play, Martin discovers that a businessman and an escort named Carol are sat at a nearby table and appear to be speaking lines from the as yet unwritten piece.

According to Markham, early rehearsals were spent trying to "wring the giggles" out of the material; Potter's very specific stage directions appearing overwrought compared to the 'clipped-down' style of other writers.

While Martin assumes responsibility for the eventual fate of the call girl, even going so far as attempting to warn her of the danger she faces, he ultimately resigns himself to the view that the act of writing is nothing more than a form of precognition.

Martin recites Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poem "Sudden Light" (c.1853-4) to Helen in an attempt to woo her, but emphasises the subtext that all things, even human relationships, are mapped out in advance by unseen forces.

Reviewing the play for The Guardian, Martin Amis praised the drama's build-up of tension, its Russian doll effect and commented that it forced him to "increase [my] nicotene intake."

The sex scenes between Markham and John Hamill, included as a flashback from another play, intended to show the lengths to which Helen will go in the pursuit of her craft, were considered to be among the strongest shown on British television up to that point.

When director Herbert Ross was preparing a film version of Pennies from Heaven for MGM, producer Rick McCallum drew his attention to "Double Dare" as a potential project to adapt for the cinema.

Karaoke features a writer called Daniel Feeld (Albert Finney) who starts to hear lines from his latest screenplay coming from the mouths of total strangers and those closest to him.

Their conversation appears to consist of Daniel's dialogue and the young girl ("Sandra", played by Saffron Burrows) is being asked to have sex with one of her gangster boyfriend's business associates to broker a favour.