Eric Porter

Over one hour of black-and-white location footage and interviews with the stars and director, all staged outdoors in manifestly frigid conditions. Mann talks about his filmmaking philosophy and the challenges of shooting in such rugged locations, and shares his insights on the Douglas-Harris feud:Harris projects a refreshing honesty and cheeky charm in his interview segment, even asking himself a question at one point! Douglas is equally charismatic, if a little more calculated in his awareness of the camera.

A version of Dennis Potter's play for television, remade shortly before his death as the original 1960s version had been wiped.

8/10

Oliver Twist is a 1985 BBC TV serial. It was directed by Gareth Davies, and adapted by Alexander Baron from the novel by Charles Dickens. It follows the book more closely than any of the other film adaptions.

7.4/10

The Jewel in the Crown, based upon the Raj Quartet novels by Paul Scott, is a British television serial about the final days of the British Raj in India during World War II. The story begins with an unjust arrest for rape. The consequences of this echo through the series. Questions of identity and personal responsibility are explored against a background of war and personal intrigue. The series was produced by Granada Television for the ITV network.

8.3/10

TV play set in an experimental self-rehabilitations unit at a British Prison, where six lifers participate in group therapy.

Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years is an 8-part 1981 drama serial based on the life of Winston Churchill, and particularly his years in enforced exile from political position during the 1920s and 30s. It was written and directed by Ferdinand Fairfax and Churchill was played by Robert Hardy. Hardy's brilliant performance as Churchill won critical acclaim and a BAFTA award in 1982. He reprised the role in The Sittaford Mystery, Bomber Harris and War and Remembrance and at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the end of World War II in 1995 when he quoted a number of Churchill's wartime speeches in character.

8.6/10

The complicated relationship between Winston Churchill and the leaders of the British army during World War II.

7.5/10

Hamlet comes home from university to find his uncle married to his mother, and his father's ghost haunting the battlements and scaring the watch. Then his father's ghost directs him to seek revenge.

8/10

This intriguing story is set in the 1930s at a country house, where two amateur sleuths, Bobby Jones and Lady Frankie Derwent, try to unravel the mystery behind a tale of murder, suspense and false identities. And the only clues the two have to go on are the puzzling last words of a dying man. Featuring characters created by Agatha Christie, Why Didn't They Ask Evans is a classic crime thriller sure to please murder-mystery fans.

7.2/10

An adaptation of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, concerning the Salem witch trials.

6.9/10

Young Cedric Errol and his widowed mother live in genteel poverty in 1880s Brooklyn after the death of his father. Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, has long ago disowned his son for marrying an American. But after the death of the Earl's remaining son, he decides to accept Cedric as his heir.

7.4/10

The year is 1914 and Richard Hannay, Mining Engineer who is visiting Britain for a short time before returning to South Africa, is shocked when one of his neighbours, Colonel Scudder, bursts into his rooms one night and tells him a story that Prussian 'sleeper' agents are planning to pre-start World War I by murdering a visiting foreign minister. However, Scudder is murdered and Hannay is framed for the death by the 'sleepers'. Fleeing to Scotland Hannay attempts to clear his name and to stop the agents with the aid of Alex Mackenzie but not only is he is chased by Chief Supt Lomas for Scudder's death but by the agents who are headed by Appleton who has managed to hide himself in a high-placed position in the British Government...

6.6/10

Anna Karenina was a 1977 BBC television adaptation of Tolstoy's novel.

7.7/10

The environmental measures taken by the oil industry at the Sullom Voe terminal in the Shetlands.

7/10

The term at Osborne Naval College is not yet over. Why, therefore, has cadet Ronnie Winslow returned home? And why, moreover, is he hiding in the garden in the rain?

7.8/10

Set in the Seventies, Hennessy is a Irishman who believes in peace, but who has had connections to the IRA. Hennessy's family is killed, and he plots revenge, setting out to assassinate Queen Elizabeth of England.

6/10

David Callan, secret agent, is called back to the service after his retirement, to handle the assasination of a german businessman, but Callan refuses to co-operate until he finds out why this man is marked for death.

7/10

Hitler: The Last Ten Days takes us into the depths of der Furher’s Berlin bunker during his final days. Based on the book by Gerhard Boldt, it provides a bleak look at the goings-on within, and without.

6.5/10
3.3%

An international assassin known as ‘The Jackal’ is employed by disgruntled French generals to kill President Charles de Gaulle, with a dedicated gendarme on the assassin’s trail.

7.8/10
8.9%

Based on the novel "The Ballad of the Belstone Fox", this heartwarming film chronicles the life of a fox much smarter than the dogs that hunt him. In fact, they never could catch him!

6.5/10

Adaptation of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, a historical drama that attempts to bring an epic visual style to the Bard's original stage play. The story concerns Marc Antony's attempts to rule Rome while maintaining a relationship with the queen of Egypt (Hildegarde Neil), which began while Antony was still married. Now he is being forced to marry the sister of his Roman co-leader, and soon the conflict leads to war.

5.8/10

A series of murders occur that mirror those committed by the Whitechapel Ripper. Through his experiments with psychoanalysis Dr Pritchard discovers a deadly violence in one of his young female patients. As he delves into the recesses of her mind he uncovers that Anna is possessed by her dead father's spirit, willing her to commit acts of gruesome savagery over which she has no control. But the most chilling revelation of all is the identity of her father: Jack the Ripper himself.

6.2/10
8.6%

Tsar Nicholas II, the inept last monarch of Russia, insensitive to the needs of his people, is overthrown and exiled to Siberia with his family.

7.2/10
6.7%

A play by Terence Rattigan about the stories of several people staying at a seaside hotel in Bournemouth which features dining at "Separate Tables."

7.9/10

Running from 1969 until 1977, the BBC Christmas shows were usually on Christmas Day. These classic sketches revolved around famous guest stars, such as Eric Porter, Fenella Fielding, Ann Hamilton, Peter Gushing, Glenda Jackson, Andre Previn and Des O'Connor, being made fun of by Eric and Ernie.

An eclectic group of characters set sail on Captain Lansen’s leaky cargo ship in an attempt to escape their various troubles. When a violent storm strikes, the ship is swept into the Sargasso Sea and the passengers find themselves trapped on an island populated by man-eating seaweed, giant crabs and Spanish conquistadors who believe it’s still the 16th century.

5.6/10
4%

The Forsyte Saga is a 1967 BBC television adaptation of John Galsworthy's series of The Forsyte Saga novels, and its sequel trilogy A Modern Comedy. The series follows the fortunes of the upper middle class Forsyte family, and stars Eric Porter as Soames, Kenneth More as Young Jolyon and Nyree Dawn Porter as Irene. It was adapted for television and produced by Donald Wilson and was originally shown in twenty-six episodes on Saturday evenings between 7 January and 1 July 1967 on BBC2, at a time when only a small proportion of the population had television sets able to receive this channel. It was therefore the repeat on Sunday evenings on BBC1 starting on 8 September 1968 that secured the programme's success with 18 million tuning in for the final episode in 1969. It was shown in the United States on public television and broadcast all over the world, and became the first BBC television series to be sold to the Soviet Union.

8.5/10

Barney Lincoln is a rambling gambling man who scores sensational wins at poker and chemin de fer because he has succeeded in marking the original plates for the backs of all the playing cards manufactured in a plant in Geneva and used in all the gambling joints in Europe. In his gambling depredation, Barney is spotted by Angel McGinnis, the daughter of a Scotland Yard Inspector 'Manny' McGinnis on the lookout for a man to do a job. The inspector enlists Barney's help in playing poker with a shady London character whom Scotland Yard wants to force to financial ruin.

6/10

A film following Harold II at the Battle of Hastings

Set in German-occupied Norway, resistance fighter Knut Straud enlists the reluctant physicist Rolf Pedersen in an effort to destroy the German heavy water production plant in rural Telemark.

6.5/10
6.7%

A 1965 BBC adaptation of William Shakespeare's first historical tetralogy (1 Henry VI, 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI and Richard III), which deals with the conflict between the House of Lancaster and the House of York over the throne of England, a conflict known as the Wars of the Roses. It was based on the 1963 theatre adaptation by John Barton, and directed by Peter Hall for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

8.8/10

Drawn from the same events that later inspired Gladiator, the film charts the power-hungry greed and father-son betrayal that led to Rome's collapse at the bloody hands of the Barbarians.

6.7/10
10%