The play soon brought him to the attention of Kenneth Tynan, the literary manager of the National Theatre Company who promptly commissioned Griffiths to write the play that became "The Party". This critique of the British revolutionary left featured the National's artistic director Laurence Olivier in his last stage role as the Glaswegian Trotskyist John Tagg. Griffiths had by now begun to write television plays, such as "All Good Men" ("Play for Today", BBC, 31 January 1974) and "Through the Night" (2 December 1975). Influenced by the experience of his wife, the latter is concerned with a woman's treatment for breast cancer. In between these two plays came "Absolute Beginners" (BBC, 19 April 1974), in the series "Fall of Eagles", which presents a version of events in 1903 involving Lenin and Trotsky. He developed a series about parliamentary democracy, "Bill Brand", which was first shown by ITV in the summer of 1976.