No Man's Land
BBC Four: Saturday 26 October 9pm-10.30pm
A legendary pairing for John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, No Man's Land is Pinter at his most ethereal and individual. Pinter's obsession with memory making victims of us all is the starting point for this tale of Hirst, a wealthy writer haunted by his past, and Spooner, the man without a past who tries to rescue him. Spooner's personality is built on a bundle of self-inventions that are likely to topple at any moment. It is a play of despair, of emptiness, vague in its diction and purveying an air of loneliness and waste. As a hypnotic treatise on the pipe dream of a past made good, it is a spellbinding, haunting cautionary tale.

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Old Times
BBC Four: Monday 28 October 10pm-11.15pm
In a 1998 South Bank Show profile, Pinter remarked that Old Times was one of his favourite works, albeit also one of his most baffling. This intense production from 1975 was originally part of a BBC season capturing recent stage successes on camera with the original casts. Deeley, his wife Anna and her friend Kate reunite to recall events of 20 years ago but all three find their memories are suspect. It is a play about the distance between people and the way people can remember what may never have happened. The late Barry Foster and Anna Cropper, two Pinter veterans, make expert use of the play's sparseness, tension and silence, especially in the twisted final sequence.

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The Basement
BBC Four: Thursday 31 October 10pm-11.15pm
Pinter divided his critics with his acting as well as his writing in this BBC production. "He emanated a sadistic animal quality in a handsome, hairy way," concluded Kenneth Eastaugh in the Daily Mirror, while others were undecided. Another play toying with the favourite theme of the visitation, here it is Law, a bachelor living in a lonely basement, being visited by an old friend who proceeds to move in with his girlfriend. Wendy, played to perfection by the feline Kika Markham, places Law's sexual and social responsibilities at loggerheads as his lust for her battles with his loyalty to his parasitic friend. Pinter uses television particularly well here, offering differing views of reality as Law's perception of events becomes addled by his repression.

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Landscape
BBC Four: Friday 1 November 11.05pm-11.45pm
Penelope Wilton displayed a superb affinity with Pinter's work in a production of The Lover and here stars with Ian Holm in this stunning production from 1995. In a country house kitchen, the past is brewing up again, but as ever with Pinter we cannot trust it to be a real one. Beth and Duff sit across a table, Beth dreaming of a summer of love in her youth. A beach, a man couched in the dunes. Was it Duff? Someone else? And why is he there now? A fascinating companion to The Lover and a beautifully morbid post mortem on the causes of unfulfillment, real and imagined.

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The Dumb Waiter
BBC Four: Saturday 2 November 10pm-10.50pm
Minimal setting and cast naturally suit Pinter's sparse writing style, and he returns to the beloved two hander for what can best be described as a tense farce. Two assassins in the pay of a mystery organisation await their unknown victim, but the talk's the thing, and this time rather than characters lapsing into silence, the deadly duo of Ben and Gus lapse into absurdity. Portions of the play feel like a demo for The Birthday Party, but there is a wonderful air of Tarantino about the concept of hit men bantering complete nonsense. As a dark cloud gradually envelopes the pair, for reasons even they don't seem to understand, the "comedy of menace" fades out leaving us bewildered but haunted by the ghosts of the possibilities the play only hints at, never reveals.

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The Collection
BBC Four: Friday 1 November 10pm-11.05pm
Another of Pinter's short plays from his golden age producing work for television in the 1960s, The Collection is a trim, witty but unsettling vignette depicting a household wobbling with a tremor of adultery. As two couples fall victim to suspicions and jealousy, what really did happen in a hotel room in Leeds one night becomes irrelevant, except as the ignition point to their pursuit to find the truth about each other. Laurence Olivier, Alan Bates, Malcolm MacDowell and Helen Mirren star.

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The Lover
BBC Four: Sunday 3 November 10pm-11pm
The stunningly simple and irresistibly warped premise of The Lover must have perplexed television audiences in 1963. One of Pinter's most direct and economic exercises, The Lover is a squalid tale of the necessity and danger of fantasy. Sarah calmly discusses with partner Richard the wild lover who visits her every afternoon, but the masquerade swiftly dissolves for the audience as we realise that this is pure fantasy, a role-play the couple have created where they can explore their feelings for each other and brighten up a dull relationship. But hiding behind masks to allow their darker desires to run riot reveals insecurities they perhaps would rather had lain dormant.

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The Birthday Party
BBC Four: Monday 4 November 10pm-11.50pm
Pinter's first major full-length play was a critical disaster and cancelled after a week. It is now considered one of the most significant plays of the 20th century. Initially perceived as a weird and confused addition to the kitchen sink dramas of the era, The Birthday Party frustrated the unsuspecting audience by denying them the luxury of raison d'etre and internal logic. Webber, the only lodger at a boarding house, is hunted and questioned by two men. Who are they? Why are they? Why are any of them there? This is real life but placed on a stage it seems to be real life with an ingredient missing. What is missing is the thing we crave in real life but rarely find - that unknown quantity which dramas frequently give us as a comfort blanket: a reason.

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Pinter at the BBC homepage