BBC iPlayer no longer works on Android. Can anything be done?

A relative has a tablet running Android 4.4.2 and since August, the BBC iPlayer requires version 5 or above. The tablet is quite old and doesn't seem to be able to upgrade the Android system, so is there anything that can be done, such as downloading a previous version of the iPlayer? If that is possible, is it easy and safe to do so? Thanks for any help.