A long time ago, we used to watch Play For Today on the TV, my mother and me. The pioneering drama series, which ran from 1970 to 1984, is being revived – and hurrah for that. Perhaps oddly, though, it will run on Channel 5 rather than the BBC.

The BBC must have been too busy trying to serve up a half-baked season of MasterChef featuring two presenters it had just sacked; oh, and making sure its news departments mention Nigel Farage in every other bulletin.

My mother would have been perhaps in her 40s when we watched Play For Today. Now she is 93 and in hospital after a fall.

We visited her earlier in the week. At one point, the woman in the next bed had the curtains pulled round while talking to an occupational therapist about going home.

A series of questions gauged the suitability of where she lived, how many stairs there were, if she had a bath or a shower, and so forth. Then she was asked if she smoked, and if she did how many cigarettes in a day. “As many as I can possibly get my hands on,” she said as her wheezy laugh rose from behind those curtains.

What a line, a real-life exchange worthy of a TV dramatist.

Play For Today dates from an age when British television was not afraid of serious drama. With fewer channels and few distractions, the box then had a broad reach; and it was a box, not a panoramic glass canvas hung from the wall.

While there is undeniably much more choice today, it’s a fragmented TV universe with too much on in too many places; and too many companies wanting a slice of what you don’t have (money, attention).

Play For Today, still recalled as one of the most influential British television series, was known for exploring thorny societal issues. It began so long ago that I’d not even started at university.

Actors who appeared in the dramas included Ray Winstone, Alison Steadman and Helen Mirren, while Dennis Potter was among the playwrights whose work was featured, including Blue Remembered Hills, with an adult cast playing children during wartime.

Potter also contributed Brimstone And Treacle, wherein a strange young man (played by strange young Sting, no less) has a sinister effect on the family of a middle-aged writer.

It’s not possible at this distance to say for sure which dramas we watched together. I recall one about a George Best-like footballer who, when cornered by a man accusing him of being a softie about being kicked, slammed a car door into his shin, saying: “That now I earn my living”, or something like that.

Disappointingly, a trawl through the list of dramas doesn’t pin that memory down, so perhaps it wasn’t a Play For Today. Plays that do occur include Our Day Out by Willy Russell, Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh, Spend Spend Spend by Jack Rosenthal, Nuts In May (Leigh again), and Edna The Inebriate Woman, by Jeremy Sandford and starring Patricia Hayes.

I can’t ask mum what she remembers about all that, or not at present. A question to be saved for another day.

As I sat typing this, my wife came in with my mother on the screen on her phone for a video chat. Calls keep being missed or cut off, the wrong button having been pressed, or the right button having been pushed the wrong way. But here she was. Mum said she was having a good day as assorted friends had been to see her, and she was out of bed at last. So that was something.

Channel 5 has revived Play For Today to “give young writers, actors and producers from lower-income backgrounds a way into TV, helped by established talent”, according to a report in the Guardian.

Good for them.

If those writers want any steers on dialogue, perhaps they should hang around a geriatric ward.

Flags, flags, flags. When did we all get so hung up about bits of fluttering material?

Surely it is possible to harbour no strong feelings about the union flag or the St George’s flag; to think, oh there’s the flag, then turn your mind to higher matters, or lower matters if you prefer.

Of course, most of those hanging these flags from lampposts do so because they wish to engineer a row, cause a spat – and then act all affronted about their ‘rights’. To them flags are a symbol of Britishness, although heaven knows why. A country strong in its identity, one sure of its culture and history, doesn’t need to pull such playacting patriotism from the dressing-up box.

The weaponisation of flags will disappear soon, if only to flap back when those with angry insecurities wish to cause a fuss.

As for pride in your country, that always seems a strange feeling to indulge. Shouldn’t you rather have pride in your own achievements, or better still those of people you love or respect. Being proud about the mere happy accident of your birth seems odd.

Of course, those demanding this dusty fealty really just want to have a scrap, so best to walk on by and leave them to it.