ScreenPlay is a television drama anthology series broadcast on BBC2 between 9 July 1986 and 27 October 1993.

After single-play anthology series went off the air, the BBC introduced several showcases for made-for-television, feature length filmed dramas, including ScreenPlay.

Writer Jimmy McGovern was hired by producer George Faber to pen a series five episode based upon the Merseyside needle exchange programme of the 1980s.

[2][3] The episode, directed by Gillies MacKinnon, was entitled Needle and featured Sean McKee, Emma Bird, and Pete Postlethwaite.

[2][4] The last episode of the series was titled "Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Islands" and featured Robbie Coltrane as English writer Samuel Johnson, who in the autumn of 1773, visits the Hebrides off the north-west coast of Scotland.