Frances Barber
Greg Kielty's life is turned upside down when his estranged brother Dan turns up, claiming to have drunkenly run someone over. But has Dan just murdered a gangster's son? Or maybe there's an even more sinister explanation.
An ordinary woman makes an extraordinary decision which will change her life forever.
Built upon a 14 hour interview, McKellen: Playing the Part is a unique journey through the key landmarks of McKellen's life, from early childhood into a demanding career that placed him in the public eye for the best part of his lifetime. Using an abundance of photography from McKellen's private albums and cinematically reconstructed scenes, a raw talent shines through in the intensity, variety and devotion to that moment in the light.
He's a low level criminal with no future and just out of prison. She's a low level lawyer never noticed by others, a lost soul without a life. Their anger and hostility makes them serious criminals. Love happens in the strangest of places.
A new production of the Rolls-Royce of English comedies, Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, will be broadcast live to cinemas from the Vaudeville Theatre in London's West End. This entertaining and still topical play brings an act of political sin into the heart of the English home. As an ambitious government minister, Sir Robert Chiltern's smooth ascent to the top seems assured until Mrs Cheveley appears in London with damning proof of his previous financial chicanery. This is the third play from the Oscar Wilde Season, a year-long celebration of the brilliant Victorian playwright being staged by the Classic Spring Theatre Company, and it will be directed by Jonathan Church.
A new republican prime minister strips the British monarch and her family of their money and assets, and forces them to live on a rundown council estate.
Liverpool, 1978: What starts as a vibrant affair between a legendary femme-fatale, the eccentric Academy Award-winning actress Gloria Grahame, and her young lover, British actor Peter Turner, quickly grows into a deeper relationship, with Turner being the person Gloria turns to for comfort.
Set in an small English town in 1959, the story of a woman who decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop, a decision which becomes a political minefield.
Spain, 1937. Ramón Mercader, a young communist combatant, is recruited and trained by the Soviet intelligence service to participate in a top secret mission ordered by the ruthless dictator Joseph Stalin: the assassination of his former political rival, Leon Trotsky, who is living in exile in Mexico…
The story is set in 1947, following a long-retired Holmes living in a Sussex village with his housekeeper and rising detective son. But then he finds himself haunted by an unsolved 50-year old case. Holmes' memory isn't what it used to be, so he only remembers fragments of the case: a confrontation with an angry husband, a secret bond with his beautiful but unstable wife.
1930s comedy drama based on EF Benson's novels, about the rivalry between two women in a quaint village.
Funny, passionate, exciting, and smart: ‘Muse Of Fire’ will change the way you feel about Shakespeare forever. This unique feature documentary follows two actors, Giles Terera and Dan Poole, as they travel the world to find out everything they can about tackling the greatest writer of them all. Together they have directed and produced an inspiring film that aims to demystify and illuminate Shakespeare’s work for everyone: from actors, directors and students of all disciplines, right through to the? man on the street? Denmark with Jude Law, Baz Luhrmann in Hollywood, Prison in Berlin, and on the street with Mark Rylance. Think Shakespeare is boring? Think again!
We’ll Take Manhattan explores the explosive love affair between Sixties supermodel, Jean Shrimpton, and photographer, David Bailey. Focusing on a wild and unpredictable 1962 Vogue photo shoot in New York, the drama brings to life the story of two young people falling in love, misbehaving and inadvertently defining the style of the Sixties along the way.
The Doctor, Amy, Rory and River Song are reunited in the Utah desert.
«The Nativity» is a 2010 British four-part drama television series. The series is a re-telling of the nativity and was broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD across four days, starting on 20 December 2010. It was rebroadcast in two hour-long parts on the mornings of 24 and 25 December 2011. The series stars Tatiana Maslany as Mary; Andrew Buchan as Joseph; Neil Dudgeon as Joachim; Claudie Blakley as Anna; Peter Capaldi as Balthasar and John Lynch as Gabriel.
Georgie Godwin is the fattest man in Britain. A tourist attraction, thanks to greedy 'agent, cabbie Morris. Devoted neighbour Janice is Georgie's only other regular outside contact until he meets Amy, a pregnant teenager fleeing a violent boyfriend ,whom he takes in as a lodger. Amy tries to help Georgie change his lifestyle, but Morris is more than keen to stop her ruining his tourist attraction.
King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.
Tempted away from Newcastle United to join Real Madrid, rising star Santiago Munez finds this latest change of fortune the greatest challenge yet - personally as well as professionally. He is reunited with Gavin Harris, though they must compete to be on the team, and estranged from fiancee Roz, whose nursing career keeps her back home.
Adrian Savage will have to marry if he wants to inherit his father's estate and he plans to marry Lola. However Lola loves Russell; a man she met in a night of passion who went off to become a war photographer where he was shot and lost a leg. When the two meet at the engagement party, Lola remembers how much she cares for him; but now Russell has a mistress (Elizabeth) who jealously spies Lola's flickering of lust.
Gary Oldman is Lynch, a strangely charming hit man in this explosively funny dark comedy in the tradition of Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. With an all-star cast including Terence Stamp, Elena Anaya, Robert Carlyle and Billy Zane, Dead Fish is a chaotic tale of criminals looking for love, money and revenge that will have you falling out of your chair laughing!
Funland is a comedy thriller serial, produced by the BBC, about a detective who arrives in Blackpool to find the killer of his mother with only the flimsiest of clues to go on. It was first screened from 23 October 2005 to 7 November 2005, on the digital channel BBC Three. Created by Jeremy Dyson and Simon Ashdown, the series consists of a fifty-minute opening episode followed by ten half-hour installments.
Like millions of kids around the world, Santiago harbors the dream of being a professional footballer... However, living in the Barrios section of Los Angeles, he thinks it is only that--a dream. Until one day an extraordinary turn of events has him trying out for Premiership club Newcastle United.
Based on a true story, the movie tells the story of two pigs, named Butch and Sundance, who staged a dramatic escape from an abattoir in January 1998 and remained at large for a week ...
Monkey Dust is a British satirical cartoon, notorious for its dark humour and handling of taboo topics such as bestiality, murder, suicide and paedophilia. There were three series broadcast on BBC Three between 2003 and 2005. Following co-creator Harry Thompson's death, no further series were made.
Nearly 13, Alice rebels, telling the Paris police that her mother is a murderer. Alice has no evidence; her mother, Eva, rich and powerful, avoids charges. Alice promptly runs away, determined to find her dad whom she claims lives in Portugal. The police believe he is dead and that Alice is in denial. Nonetheless, they dispatch Anita, an Italian police officer on loan to the French, to find Alice and bring her back. Meanwhile, Eva has launched her own paramilitary force to hunt for Alice, and Alice has found a protector in Hugo, an ex-soldier turned hit man and gang member. He promises to get her to her father. All roads lead to a small town on the Portuguese coast.
Good-looking, well-spoken Phil is broke and cannot understand how flatmate James has recently acquired a lot of extra cash and a permanent grin on his face. James's secret? Adonis Escorts - 40 pounds an hour, 150 for the night. Faced with imminent eviction, a reluctant Phil is persuaded to join the agency and soon the two gigolos have a loyal following including bored housewife, Frances. In fact business is booming until love rears its ugly head. And then chaos reigns as James falls in love with Phil, Phil falls in love with Helen, Helen takes Phil home to her mother - Frances, Frances goes crazy because she had fallen for her daughter's new boyfriend Phil, and Darren just wants to make it alright - by settling down with James. Who is definitely not gay. Just confused!
Dramatization of Nancy Mitford's novel about three aristocratic young girls' adventures in love.
19 year old babysitter aupair Julie is accused of murder when the bed of the sheltered baby inflames. Is seems as if Julie possesses rare telepathic skills, that she cannot control. Her young lawyer fights for her in court and against the public opinion in Italy, who take her for a witch.
A movie about a middle aged french man who after a family crisis travels on the spur of the moment to London only to get caught up in the male prostitution business and eventually drugs.
A seemingly happily married, successful plastic surgeon embarks on a torrid affair with tragic consequences for his marriage and those close to him.
Bremner, Bird and Fortune is an award-winning satirical British television programme produced by Vera Productions for Channel Four, uniting the longstanding satirical team of John Bird and John Fortune with the satirical impressionist Rory Bremner, and to date has 16 series.
In the seventies Strange Fruit were it. They lived the rock lifestyle to the max, groupies, drugs, internal tension and an ex front man dead from an overdose. Even their demise was glamorous; when lightning struck the stage during an outdoor festival. 20 years on and these former rock gods they have now sunk deep into obscurity when the idea of a reunion tour is lodged in the head of Tony, former keyboard player of the Fruits. Tony sets out to find his former bandmates with the help of former manager Karen to see if they can recapture the magic and give themselves a second chance.
Photographer Charles Castle is numbed with grief following the death of his beautiful bride. He goes off to war, working in the trenches as a photographer. Following the war and still in grief Charles is given some photographs purporting to be of fairies. His search for the truth leads him to Burkinwell, a seemingly peaceful village seething with secrets
A corpse is found in an ice house ten years after Phoebe's husband went missing. The police seem determined to accuse Phoebe, to the delight of the villagers.
Martin Shaw stars as Cecil Rhodes, the man whose controversial career included the creation of de Beers, the addition of nearly one million square miles to the Britain's African Empire, and had given his name to a country (Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe) larger than most of Europe. Martin Shaw's son plays the younger Rhodes and other cast members include Neil Pearson, Frances Barber and Ken Stott.
A bereaved woman adopts multiple disguises to track down the last three people to see her boyfriend before he died.
October 1918: After returning to the civil life, the young Doctor Giorgino Volli searches for a group of children, which he had been the care-taker of before the first world war began. However, soon the searching becomes a part of hide-and-seek with death. Giorgio finds a village bordered with a treacherous marsh and rumours of wolves. There he also meets the mysterious Catherine....
Douglas Livingstone has direct experience of the tensions in South Africa. On a research visit there in the summer of 1993, he was mugged within 24 hours of arriving in Johannesburg. Over the following week. the East Rand riots claimed 600 lives.
It is the late 1930s and some British households still eagerly await the arrival of electricity. When a pylon is erected in the garden, Morris's mother can't wait to show off her Swedish lumbago belt and toaster. But Morris is gripped by a deeper passion that will change his life - one that will not be illuminated for 50 years.
A boozy barmaid (Frances Barber) and her newly found gay friend (Con O’Neill) quit London and hightail it to north east England on the lookout for sex and excitement in this multi-award-winning film based on Tennessee Williams’ short story Two on a Party. This sensitive and finally very moving film both celebrates and challenges the unusual relationship between the two characters.
Gentle Scottish Road Movie . Eight years ago, Gavin artistic son of an Scots/Italian ice-cream dynasty, turned his back on Glasgow and moved south to London to make his name illustrating children's books. Now, frustrated and broke, his Uncle Sal appears with an offer. Gavin's father has sold the family business. To get his share of the proceeds,Gavin must return home for his father's birthday party. Swayed by the money, he sets off north and picks up a hitchicker with a secret. Their journey is difficult but ultimately rewarding.
The Leaving of Liverpool is a 1992 television mini-series, an Australian–British co-production between the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and British Broadcasting Corporation. The series was about the Home Children, the migration scheme which saw over 100,000 British children sent to Commonwealth realms such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa.
Young Soul Rebels is a 1991 film by Isaac Julien which examines the interaction between youth cultural movements in Britain. Skinheads, Punks & Soulboys along with the political and cultural tensions between them. The film received the critics prize at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival
As an express train hurtles towards its destination, John (Alan Bates) a man whose sanity hangs by a thread, attempts to uncover his possible role in a brutal murder and the identity of the victim. The balance of his mind is strained to the limits by dark memories of a punishing childhood and a passionate jealousy for a beautiful young woman (Gina Bellman) - who may be a prostitute... or his wife.
When Jenny and Bruce Coldfield bring a curious party of literary enthusiasts to a remote Norfolk village to visit the hidden world of ghost story writer Eleanor Mont other forces start to stir.
Poirot becomes a criminal himself when he agrees to help a beautiful woman recover a letter written in her youth that is being used to blackmail her.
Behaving Badly is a 1989 British television serial directed by David Tucker. The teleplay by Catherine Heath and Moira Williams is based on Heath's novel of the same name. It was initially broadcast by Channel 4. The series was released on DVD in 2005. The plot focuses on Bridget Mayor, a middle-aged housewife and part-time teacher who is forced to re-evaluate her life when her husband of twenty years abandons her for a younger woman.
Based on the historical work "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", "The Nightmare Years" tells the story of William Shirer, American journalist who, during his days of correspondence as a foreign press in report in 1930s Germany, had to deal with the growing oppression of the Nazi regime, the increasing censorship of the press, and finally the prospect of World War. In the last days of peace, Shirer also struggles to have his German wife and child escape to the United States.
An aimless young man, Johnny, is sent prison. He entrusts his beloved dog, Evie, to the care of his former lover and best friend, Frank. When he gets out of prison, he has to face difficulties at home. Added to this, is the fact that he may have to give up Evie to Frank.
The tale begins when a brother and sister are separated in a shipwreck, but survive to be washed up on the shore of Illyria. The sister, Viola, disguises herself as a man and takes service with Duke Orsino, who has fallen in love with Lady Olivia. Entrusted with pleading on her master's behalf, Viola is utterly disconcerted to find that Olivia has fallen in love with her. Thus begins the confusion of this delightful comedy.
Sammy and Rosie are an unconventional middle-class London married couple. They live in the midst of inner-city chaos, surround themselves with intellectual street people, and sleep with everybody - except each other! Things become interesting when Sammy's father, Rafi, who is a former Indian government minister, comes to London for a visit. Sammy, Rosie, and Rafi try to find meaning through their lives and loves.
Stephen Frears directs this biographical drama focusing on controversial British playwright Joe Orton, revealed in flashback after his murder by lover Kenneth Halliwell. Born in 1933 in Leicester, in the English Midlands, John 'Joe' Orton moves to London in 1951, to study at RADA, and enjoys an openly gay relationship with Halliwell in their famous Islington flat in the 1960s. However, when Orton achieves spectacular success with such plays as 'What the Butler Saw' and 'Loot', Halliwell begins to feel alienated and the pair's future looks increasingly uncertain.
Middle-aged Gerald Kingsland advertises in a London paper for a female companion to spend a year with him on a desert island. The young Lucy Irving takes a chance on contacting him and after a couple of meetings they decide to go ahead. Once on the island things prove a lot less idyllic than in the movies, and gradually it becomes clear that it is Lucy who has the desire and the strength to try and see the year through.
Twin zoologists lose their wives in a car accident and become obsessed with decomposing animals.
Brixton in the early 80s. Viv presides over a cheerfully immoral and variously under-employed bunch of ex-Oxford playmates in her parents' gentrified home. But when Jane's boyfriend introduces a discordant note of reality from the streets, Viv plots her retribution. And behind her double-locked doors there are some hard feelings to contend with.
A BBC film crew is interviewing a ‘typical Catholic family’ in the Divis Flats area of Belfast, when news comes in that a child, known to the family, has been hit by a stray plastic bullet fired by a British soldier – a version of events contested by the army. Back in London, editing the footage, the producer and researcher on the project wrestle with how to present the incident, and with their responsibility to the people in the film.
Girls growing up in 1960-61 London develop a passion for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, the first British team in the 20th century to win the English league and FA Cup "double". Twenty years later, one of the girls tracks down players of the '60-'61 Spurs for a documentary.
A countess and her military sons prepare for the German invasion of Poland in 1939 as World War II begins.
Three postal workers and their dysfunctional families interact over cups of tea and Sunday dinner.
In 1905, after 10 years of missionary work in Africa, the Rev. Charles Fortesque is recalled to England, where his bishop gives him his new assignment - to minister to London's prostitutes
Having it Off is a one-off TV comedy series for BBC Choice made by Red Production Company in 2002. It was set at a cheap hairdressing salon in Eccles, Greater Manchester. It was shown only once and is not available yet on DVD. Out gay bitchy stereotype Guy La Trousse, desperately tries to escape the drudge of daily wash and crop and change the fortunes of the salon - and his career. This is all thwarted by April, nymphomanic loud-mouthed wife of the hairdressers owner. The BBC website describes it as "rude, crude, strongly working-class sitcom on the lesser-seen BBC Choice, Having It Off promised much yet fell curiously short of the mark, lacking the key that would have propelled it to a higher level". However, tapes have been known to change hands on eBay for high prices.
A group of six friends, who have known each other since childhood, find their friendship tested when one of their number is found dead, leading to the question - were they murdered or did they commit suicide?
