bobbydj

Can anyone please help me to identify a mid-late '80s made for TV play? I seem to recall the title being something like "In the Shadow of the Sun" - but googling revealed this to be the title of a film(s). Which made it very difficult to suss out whether it was the title of this play too.

Plot outline, as I remember it: Set in Scotland in the early '60s a small boy becomes interested in space travel. An older boy in his street, slightly rougher round the edges and not so bright, likes to bully the strange white haired/skinned guy across the road. And the small boy gets pulled along in all this. The albino guy wears dark glasses and avoids strong sunlight - so the kids see him as a total weirdo. However, it turns out that albino guy is awesome at star gazing and is really up on the space race. The small kid finds this out and starts to respect him and learn from him.

Something like that.

The play was really compelling, not least because the small boy was such a great actor. At one point his teacher asks him a question about the royal family, and because he's been listening to his dad, he calls them "parasites". The teacher goes mental, even though the kid innocently and ignorantly used the term. Another humorous scene sees the older, thicker kid pluck a squashed piece of chewing gum off the pavement and eat it (you had to be there). Also, the small boy's favourite word is "preposterous" - which he deploys at various points to humorous effect.

In any case, I'm not sure why I'm even asking about this as it's unlikely that it's been released or that anyone taped it at the time. But it really was a highly effective, touching and funny production. Great stuff!

bobbydj

Heh - well whaddya know. I searched with "albino" and found the answer here.

It was apparently called A Shadow on the Earth, from 1988.

Now all I have to do is wait 4 thousand years for it to be released on dvd.