Heads Up: Playing The Field on CBS Drama

Starting soon the Freeview channel CBS Drama will be showing the BBC1 series Playing the Field written by Kay Mellor about the women's football team The Castlefield Blues.  It begins on Thursday 8th October at 9pm and then every subsequent weekday at the same time.

Playing the Field began in 1998 and ran for five series ending in 2002 with 32 episodes made in total.

The first couple of series had a fairly high female nudity quotient, but by the time of the latter few series this had almost entirely disappeared as an ingredient.

I know which of the known scenes take place in series 1 having seen that one in full.  The remaining scenes must be from series 2 onwards with a fairly high likelihood that most of them are from the second series.


SERIES 1 (1998, 6 episodes, 50 mins each) - started 8th March 1998
No nudity in episodes 1, 3 or 6

Episode 2
Jo McInnes - Brief rear nudity (mainly) jumping into a communal bath

Episode 4
This episode has what is probably the drama's most well known scene when the team are celebrating in the showers.  Marsha Thomason and Saira Todd are the main actresses seen topless; and Saira Todd also has another bit of brief nudity elsewhere in the episode

Episode 5
Tracey Whitwell and Saira Todd have nudity together in a bedroom scene


SERIES 2 (1999, 7 episodes, 50 mins each) - started 18th February 1999
Updates in blue to confirm episode numbers

Debra Stephenson - There are several episodes in which she is seen topless - a few in a bedroom and one sitting in a communal bath (that one I believe to be episode 2).  She is seen almost topless twice in episode 1; topless in the baths in episode 2; and topless in a bedroom scene in episode 6.
Marsha Thomason - She is topless in the same communal bath scene as Debra Stephenson and another scene in a normal bath in which she is briefly topless.  The communal bath scene is in episode 2 and the other bath scene is in episode 5.
Lorraine Ashbourne - She is seen topless is a scene in which she is giving birth.  This is in episode 1.
Jo McInnes - there is a scene in which she is topless in a bedroom getting dressed while talking to a man.  This is in episode 4.


SERIES 3 (2000, 6 episodes, 50 mins each) - started 8th February 2000
Emma Rydal - A brief topless side view getting out of bed.  This is in episode 3 of series 3
+ There is a topless scene involving an uncredited extra lying in bed next to a man that has been pinpointed as being from episode 5 of the third series.


SERIES 4 (2000, 7 episodes, 60 mins each) - started 13th July 2000
No known scenes hail from this series


SERIES 5 (2002, 6 episodes, 60 mins each) - started 6th January 2002
The only nudity in this series was in episode 5 when Kelli Hollis "supposedly" flashes her backside from the clubhouse door - but it is a cutaway close-up and so could have been a double.


Some collages showing various scenes from throughout the series
This run down currently assumes any unpinpointed scenes are from series 2.

Debra Stephenson from various episodes in series 2

Emma Rydal from series 3

Jo McInnes from series 2 and series 1 (bottom right)

Kelli Hollis from series 5

Lorraine Ashbourne from series 2

Marsha Thomason from series 1 and series 2 (bottom left)

Saira Todd in two episodes from series 1

Tracy Whitwell from series 1

Uncredited from series 3