After the War
The life and career of Michael Jordan contrasts with that of Joe Hirsch. One is born into a comfortable middle class family; the other a poorer refugee. Their stories cross and parallel over 25-years from the end of the Second World War, taking in British social change as they go.
Frederic Raphael
John Madden
Nicholas Renton
John Glenister
Michael Cox
Casts & Crew
Adrian Lukis
Robert Reynolds
Anton Rodgers
Ingrid Hafner
Clare Higgins
Caroline Goodall
Serena Gordon
Shaughan Seymour
Nicholas Jones
Art Malik
Also Directed by John Madden
Beautiful Carmen Colson and her ironworker husband Wayne are placed in the Federal Witness Protection program after witnessing an "incident". Thinking they are at last safe, they are targeted by an experienced hit man and a psychopathic young upstart killer.
When three university friends turn up unexpectedly, twenty-something lawyer Lorna Johnston is led into a dangerous world.
When a Greek fisherman leaves to fight with the Greek army during WWII, his fiancee falls in love with the local Italian commander. The film is based on a novel about an Italian soldier's experiences during the Italian occupation of the Greek island of Cephalonia (Kefalonia), but Hollywood made it into a pure love story by removing much of the "unpleasant" stuff.
He is a respectable pillar of London society who yearns for an idyllic existence away from the noise and the smoke. She feels hemmed in by the confines of an isolated fishing village and dreams of the bright lights, and even brighter people, of the great metropolis. On a hot August day in 1883, Clement Scott, the writer, and Louie Jermy, the miller's daughter, meet each other for the first time.
A scalding, hilarious play written by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer, Grown Ups careens with a unique comic energy. It centers on a family dominated by the smothering, sanctimonious love of Helen, the mother of our middle-aged hero Jake. Played by All in the Family's Jean Stapleton, she is a masterpiece of malignant maternity while her husband, played by Martin Balsam, cushions himself with stiff drinks and asks everyone, "So what's new?" Charles Grodin plays the long-suffering son and Marilu Henner of Taxi is his uneasy wife. The combination of play and cast is irresistible. Spicy and sharp, Grown Ups is a comic feast.
Catherine is a woman in her late twenties who is strongly devoted to her father, Robert, a brilliant and well-known mathematician whose grip on reality is beginning to slip away. As Robert descends into madness, Catherine begins to wonder if she may have inherited her father’s mental illness along with his mathematical genius. When Robert’s work reveals a mathematical proof of potentially historic proportions, it sets off shock waves in more ways than one.
An elderly woman, a former aviatrix, is gradually recovering from a stroke.
As the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has only a single remaining vacancy - posing a rooming predicament for two fresh arrivals - Sonny pursues his expansionist dream of opening a second hotel.
An ambitious lobbyist faces off against the powerful gun lobby in an attempt to pass gun control legislation.
Young Shakespeare is forced to stage his latest comedy, "Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter," before it's even written. When a lovely noblewoman auditions for a role, they fall into forbidden love -- and his play finds a new life (and title). As their relationship progresses, Shakespeare's comedy soon transforms into tragedy.
Also Directed by Nicholas Renton
Brian Jessel, a civil servant in the Cabinet Office, is asked to investigate the mysterious death of the civil servant Stephen Summerchild twenty years earlier. Summerchild was working on a Cabinet project, under the Oxford philosophy don Elizabeth Serafin, to find the "quality of life" in Britain. Jessel finds a box of audio tapes from the project containing all the discussions up to the time Summerchild fell off the Admiralty Building.
This powerful adaptation of Thomas Hardy's classic novel spins a story of passion and destruction set in the nineteenth century. The proud, flighty and bewitching Bathsheba Everdene finds herself entangled into the passions of three men and her impulsive nature pushes her into a web of deceit and destruction.
Tending her husband's grave one day, Annabel Fox meets Jack Ives, a retired regimental sergeant-major. But when their friendship turns to love and talk of marriage, Annabel's children step in. They have other plans for her and, anyway, "He's so common, mummy..."
A suspect is brought to a London police station charged with gross indecency. Police at the station believe he is connected with a murder in the area earlier that night, but the suspect refuses to speak.
Murder in Eden is a British television series directed by Nicholas Renton and featuring Ian Bannen, Peter Firth and Alun Armstrong. It was first aired on the BBC in 1991 in three episodes of 55 minutes. It was set in a remote part of rural County Donegal where a landlord of a pub murders his barmen. He is blackmailed by one of the other inhabitants, while the police are busy hunting for the killer. It was based on the novel Bogmail by Patrick McGinley.
Bob Geldof and Harvey Goldsmith set up one of the world's greatest ever concerts, Live Aid in 1984 to help ease the Ethiopian Famine.
A drama about a couple on the edge of divorce, their solicitors, their daughter and of course, their dog.
Two girls decide to join a local judo club.
Adaptation of John Osborne's play.
Back in London from abroad, Bill English has it all - smart flat with a river view, flash car and, of course, the beautiful Anna. But he was born and brought up in these parts and everything's changed. Anna asks: 'Where are the ghosts Bill?'
Also Directed by John Glenister
Adaptation of the play by Bernard Shaw.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
Champagne dialogue alleviates nervousness of sleeping together.
Drama about a small-time gangster Thomas Gynn (Dennis Waterman) from London who discovers a new life up north in Yorkshire. Helping widowed, self-sufficient businesswoman Sally Hardcastle (Jan Francis) when her car breaks down on the motorway, Thomas reluctantly accepts an offer of a lift to Leeds. Over the coming months, the two become involved in a series of misadventures that soon find them being drawn closer together.
The Italian adventurer and libertine Giovanni Jacopo Casanova lived from 1725 to 1798, but in this six-part series Dennis Potter attempted to find a contemporary relevance through his central themes of sex and religion. He commented that Casanova "was concerned with religious and sexual freedom, and these are the things we have to address ourselves to now." Casanova was imprisoned in Venice in 1755, and Potter used that event as a central device, constantly inter-cutting to contrast Casanova's amorous escapades, radiant, joyful and brightly lit, with his oppressive solitary confinement in the gloom of a half-darkened cell.
Softly, Softly is a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It centred around the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID officers based in the fictional region of Wyvern, supposedly in the Bristol area of England.
BBC mini-series with Jane Lapotaire in the title role. The programme chronicles the work of scientific pioneer Marie Curie as she conducts her research into radioactivity, makes the famous discovery of Radium and wins Nobel Prizes for both Physics and Chemistry. The programme also looks at key events that affected the soon-to-be famous revolutionary including the devastating death of her husband (Nigel Hawthorne) and her subsequent controversial affairs.
Adaptation of Noel Coward's stage play sequence.
Frank Stubbs (Timothy Spall) is a down-at-heel ticket tout with grand ideas. He has an ambition to become a 'high class' promoter of famous and talented performers. In reality, his ambitions tend to outstrip his capabilities.
A bored Rumpole, living in Florida retirement, uses an inquiry from Phyllida as a pretext to re-establish himself back in chambers.
Also Directed by Michael Cox
ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.