The Land of Green Ginger by Noel Langley

In Plater's play the significance is rather different. In Holtby's novel the significance of the romantic-sounding name 'Land of Green Ginger' is that it symbolises for her heroine Joanna the exotic foreign countries which she longs to visit. Despite its brevity and apparent simplicity, however, there is a lot going on in this play under the surface. (She has recently met a former neighbour who lost his job as a trawler skipper after a run of bad luck). Mike is a trawlerman who hopes to be promoted to captain, but Sally would prefer him to get a shore job, which she regards as both physically safer and more financially secure. The plot is also a simple one, with much of the play consisting of Sally and Mike walking around Hull discussing their future. Most plays in the series weighed in at, on average, around 75 minutes, longer than the normal 60-minute TV drama but shorter than most feature films. At under 50 minutes, 'The Land of Green Ginger' is relatively short for a 'Play for Today'. The company she works for want to transfer her to a job abroad, and Sally is not keen, largely because this would mean longer separations from her family and from her boyfriend Mike, all of whom still live in Hull. A young woman named Sally Brown returns to her home town of Hull from London, where she has been working.

Plater was born in the north-east, but his family moved to Hull when he was only three years old, and this play is set in the city. It has lent its name to at least three works of literature a novel by the East Yorkshire writer Winifred Holtby, a children's story by Noel Langley and this play by Alan Plater, broadcast as part of the BBC's 'Play for Today' series. The Land of Green Ginger is a street in the old town of Hull how it acquired that name has long been disputed.

The Land of Green Ginger by Noel Langley