Gwen Taylor
Alan Bennett’s sharp and hilarious new play is ‘just what the doctor ordered’ (Daily Telegraph). Filmed live at London’s Bridge Theatre during its limited run, don’t miss this acclaimed production full of ‘singalongs and stinging wit’ (Guardian). The Beth, an old fashioned cradle-to-grave hospital serving a town in Yorkshire, is threatened with closure as part of an efficiency drive. A documentary crew, eager to capture its fight for survival, follows the daily struggle to find beds on the Dusty Springfield Geriatric Ward, and the triumphs of the old people’s choir. One of Britain’s most celebrated writers, Alan Bennett’s plays include The History Boys, The Lady in the Van and The Madness of George III, all of which were also seen on film. Allelujah! is his tenth collaboration with award-winning director Nicholas Hytner.
Directed by Christopher Menaul ('Summer in February', 'Fatherland) and written by Jenny Lecoat, Another Mother's Son tells the true story of Louisa Gould, a widow living in Nazi occupied Jersey who takes in a Russian prisoner of war, Feodor Burrij. Jenny Seagrove, Julian Kostov, John Hannah, Ronan Keating and Amanda Abbington star. The producer is Bill Kenwright.
The two tradesmen Ib and Edward are tired of their lifeless marriages and dream of living the good life from the stash of money they've earned moonlighting for years. After a huge fight with their wives the two men get drunk and hire a Russian contract killer to do a hit on their spouses. But they have badly underestimated their wives, and this becomes the start of an absurd journey where Ib and Edward to their own horror end at the top of a kill list.
The true story of the relationship between Alan Bennett and the singular Miss Shepherd, a woman of uncertain origins who ‘temporarily’ parked her van in Bennett’s London driveway and proceeded to live there for 15 years.
Grown man, W, struggles to come to terms with the death of his domineering mother, only to discover that she's spending her dead existence very happily in a suburb of London.
An upbeat 30 minute single camera comedy which follows a group of female friends united by a shared history but divided by almost everything else. Most friends meet for dinner, or at the pub, but for these four old school friends their monthly get together is in the unsettling surroundings of an intensive care unit. Siobhan is a failing TV presenter, Sarah is a rather reluctant mother of three, Pip is a pseudo bohemian and Lucy, well Lucy is in a coma. After the initial shock, the three old school friends soon realise that Lucy is in dire need of help, if only they could provide it. As Lucy becomes more aware of what is going on around her, we delve into unexpected and funny moments from her subconscious.
A retrospective of Colin Baker's turbulent three-years as the Sixth Doctor in Doctor Who (1963), covering his casting, the 1985 hiatus, and his sacking on the orders of BBC One controller Michael Grade.
Documentary tracing the life of James Ellis, one of Northern Ireland’s best loved actors.
Belonging is an English-language Welsh television drama series, produced by BBC Wales and broadcast on BBC One Wales. The programme revolved around the lives of the Lewis family, and their various trials and tribulations in the changing environment of their South Wales town Bryncoed and modern Wales. The programme began in 1999, and its ninth and final series started in April 2008 and ended in June. A one-off ten-year anniversary special was broadcast on 16 April 2009, centring around a reunion of the Lewis family.
Barbara is a British sitcom starring Gwen Taylor in the title role. A pilot was broadcast in 1995, and three series were then televised from 1999 to 2003. It was made by Central Television, and filmed at their Lenton Lane studios in Nottingham in front of a live studio audience. The majority of location scenes for the series were filmed in various suburbs of Nottingham, including Mapperley and West Bridgford, with other scenes filmed around Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Despite winning awards and respectable viewing figures, it was axed by ITV in 2003.
A Perfect State was a 1997 British situation comedy starring Gwen Taylor, Richard Hope, Trevor Cooper, Emma Amos and Danny Webb. It debuted on BBC1 on Thursday 27 February 1997 and ran for seven episodes. Taylor took the leading role of Laura Fitzgerald, the Deputy Mayor of Flatby, a town on the East Coast of England. As the series begins, she is informed that because Flatby was never surveyed for the Domesday Book, it has never officially been annexed into the United Kingdom. As a result, and much to the chagrin of the Government in London, Laura rallies the townsfolk to declare Flatby an independent state. Most of the filming was carried out in Wivenhoe in Essex.
Bob Payne (Gary Olsen) used to work as a 'roadie' for a rock band. He decided to buy a roadside cafe called Pilgrim's Restaurant. It looked like a good investment with a healthy turnover. Bob bought the restaurant with the help of a loan from his sister Tilly (Gwen Taylor), who's married to a wealthy businessman. A year later, a new by-pass opened and most of the 'passing trade' dissapeared. Turnover dropped dramatically and Bob was left to scrape a living by catering for a small band of regular customers. Then Tilly's husband left her and she needed somewhere else to live, so she moved in with her brother.
Young housewife Alison tries to care for both her husband, who became brain-damaged after a motorbike accident, and their young child. Her husband's mother and best friend make things even more difficult.
A Bit of a Do is a British comedy drama series based on the books by David Nobbs. The show starred David Jason and was aired on ITV in 1989. It was made for the ITV network by Yorkshire Television. The show was set in a fictional Yorkshire town. Each episode took place at a different social function and followed the changing lives of two families, the working-class Simcocks and the middle-class Rodenhursts, together with their respective friends, Rodney and Betty Sillitoe, and Neville Badger. The series begins with the wedding of Ted and Rita Simcock's son Paul to Laurence and Liz Rodenhurst's daughter Jenny; an event at which Ted and Liz begin an affair. The subsequent fallout from this affair forms the basis for most of the first series.
Oedipus's wanderings come to an end when he finds his final resting place, as foretold by the gods. But his brother-in-law and his son each try to take him away.
In a final battle for the control of Thebes, Oedipus's two sons kill each other. Creon issues an order that no one is to bury Polynices upon pain of death. But Antigone is determined that her brother's body will have the proper rites of burial.
Belfast, 1980: July, the marching season ... Norman Martin, away for two years, returns with his 'English woman', Mavis. How will the family - particularly Billy - react? And has she achieved the impossible in mellowing the man?
Following her husband s death, a wife discovers and confronts her husband's lover. Their mutual pain, love, envy and jealousy bring them together in an unexpected emotional and physical relationship.
Brian Cohen is an average young Jewish man, but through a series of ridiculous events, he gains a reputation as the Messiah. When he's not dodging his followers or being scolded by his shrill mother, the hapless Brian has to contend with the pompous Pontius Pilate and acronym-obsessed members of a separatist movement. Rife with Monty Python's signature absurdity, the tale finds Brian's life paralleling Biblical lore, albeit with many more laughs.
Based on a short story by George MacDonald, a princess experiences constant weightlessness.
Not as well-known as Fawlty Towers or The Rutles, Michael Palin and Terry Jones's Ripping Yarns is poised for discovery as among the best of the post-Python projects. Palin essays a gallery of colorful (or colorless, as in the case of one of the series' best episodes, "The Testing of Eric Olthwaite"), archetypal characters drawn from the storybook adventures that thrilled English schoolboys pre-World War II.
If you ought to finish that bathroom, but NATO goes on Nuclear Alert, and curious people appear at the bottom of your garden - you dig a hole to hide in, don't you?
Rutland Weekend Television was a television sketch show on BBC2, written by Eric Idle with music by Neil Innes. Two series were broadcast, the first consisting of six episodes in 1975, the second of seven in 1976. A Christmas special also aired on Boxing Day 1975. It was Idle's first television project after Monty Python's Flying Circus, which ended the previous year. The show was the catalyst for The Rutles. Rutland Weekend Television or RWT centred on "Britain's smallest television network", situated in England's smallest county, Rutland. The show's title alludes to London Weekend Television. A Rutland TV station would be pretty small, so a Rutland Weekend Television would have to be ridiculously tiny. The joke was doubly meaningful as Idle had accidentally been granted a presentation budget instead of the more lavish budgets associated with light entertainment - so the weekly patter about their inability to buy props and sets was in fact quite real. Indeed, the last show of the first series featured Idle and Innes, stripped and shivering in blankets under a bare bulb, singing about how the power's about to be shut off. Idle speaks bitterly about these conditions now but his attempts to overcome them formed the basis of a lot of the show's jokes.
Faced with the prospect of being sent to work abroad, Sally Brown returns home from London to Hull, to see if she still feels the same attachment for her home town - and for her old boyfriend Mike Thurlow. Will she decide to take the job abroad or return to live with Mike in Hull?
