The BBC, supported by its licence fee and with no advertisers to placate, continued fulfilling its brief to entertain and inform. The "Play for Today" was a continuation of the "Wednesday Play" which had run from the mid-1960s. As the title implied, it presented TV drama which had relevance to current social and economic issues, done in a way calculated to intrigue or even shock the viewer. As well as using established writers, it was effectively an apprenticeship for new ones who were trying to make a name for themselves; Dennis Potter, John Mortimer, Arthur Hopcraft and Jack Rosenthal all served time on "Play for Today" before going on to write their own independent series. In style, the plays could go from almost documentary realism (of which "Cathy Come Home" is the best known example) to the futuristic or surrealist ("The Year of the Sex Olympics", "House of Character").