"A Matter of Choice for Billy" is the second in a trilogy of television dramas by the Ulster playwright Graham Reid about the Martin family from a working-class Protestant area of Belfast. The action takes place in the late seventies, about a year after the events of the first instalment, "Too Late to Talk to Billy". The patriarch of the family, Norman, has gone to work in England and the mother, Janet, has died of cancer. Billy and his adult sister Lorna are left alone to take care of their two younger siblings, Ann and Maureen. They also have to look after their elderly Uncle Andy, Janet's much older brother, who has moved in with them because of problems with his health.
The "matter of choice" in the title probably refers to the fact that Billy is torn between two girlfriends. While his old girlfriend, June, is at university in England, he has met Pauline, a nurse at the local hospital. A relationship with either would be problematic. June has little wish to return to Belfast, but Billy's family responsibilities mean that he is unable to follow her to England. June's snobbish widowed mother also looks down on Billy and his family and would not welcome him as a son-in-law. On the other hand, Pauline is considering emigrating to Canada. She is also a Catholic, something which many of Billy's Protestant friends and neighbours would consider unacceptable.
Lorna also has a love-interest in her life, the former UDA man John Fletcher who seems to have turned over a new leaf and given up his life of violence. (The UDA were a dangerous Protestant paramilitary group, responsible for over 400 deaths during the Troubles, although in the trilogy they are portrayed more as a gang of street brawlers). Another plotline concerns younger sister Ann, who is in trouble at school after being insolent to a teacher who spoke disrespectfully about her father. All the Martin siblings have a difficult relationship with Norman, but they will unhesitatingly stand up for him against any outsider.
Uncle Andy appears to have been brought in as a sort of substitute for Norman who does not appear in this episode except briefly in a flashback. The two men loathe one another- like Billy, Andy finds it difficult to forgive Norman for the way he treated Janet- but for all their mutual loathing they are very similar in personality, being proud, stubborn and quarrelsome. The main difference is that whereas Norman's solution to any problem is to lash out at it with his fists, Andy prefers to lash out with his tongue. This, however, may simply be the effects of old age and poor health; one senses that when younger he might have been just as ready with his fists as his brother-in-law. (Andy comes across as considerably older than Norman, but Mark Mulholland, who plays him, was in fact six years younger than James Ellis).
There is some good acting here, from Kenneth Branagh as Billy, Brid Brennan as Lorna, Mulholland as the disreputable old Andy and Tracey Lynch as Ann, here played more as a troubled teenager than as the cheeky youngster she was in the first instalment. Nevertheless, I wouldn't rate this play as highly as "Too Late to Talk to Billy", a fine piece of drama and one of the best of the "Play for Today" series. I think that the difference is the absence of Norman; the tension between him and Billy was the main driving force behind the first play, and his removal from the scene means that the second seems somehow lacking, a family drama without a paterfamilias. 7/10.
