Cathy Come Home

Cathy Come Home is a 1966 BBC television play about homelessness and social inequality in Britain, directed by Ken Loach, written by Jeremy Sandford and produced by Tony Garnett. Broadcast on BBC1 on November 16, 1966 as part of The Wednesday Play anthology, it was watched by about twelve million people, roughly a quarter of Britain's population at the time, and was shot mostly on sixteen millimeter film on location with handheld camera work that gave it the look of a current affairs broadcast rather than a studio drama. The play had an unusually direct effect on public life, helping to prompt the founding of the charity Crisis in 1967, bolstering support for Shelter, and sparking parliamentary debate on housing policy; later polls named it among the best British television dramas ever made, including a 2005 Broadcast magazine ranking as the most influential British television programme of all time.