John Gorrie
The Ruth Rendell mysteries is a British television series made by TVS and Meridian Television for ITV between 2 August 1987 and 11 October 2000.
TV play set in an experimental self-rehabilitations unit at a British Prison, where six lifers participate in group therapy.
Tales of the Unexpected is a British television series which aired between 1979 and 1988. Each episode told a story, often with sinister and wryly comedic undertones, with an unexpected twist ending. Early episodes were based on short stories by Roald Dahl collected in the books Tales of the Unexpected, Kiss Kiss and Someone Like You. The series was made by Anglia Television for ITV with interior scenes recorded at their Norwich studios whilst location filming mainly occurred across East Anglia. The theme music for the series was written by composer Ron Grainer. Although similar in theme and title, the show is not related to the American anthology television series, Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected, which ran for one season in 1977.
Boysie discovers he has 'second sight' but neither his girlfriend Gloria nor his work-mate Brian will accept his 'gift'. He sets out on a spiritual voyage that leads to Adler, a 'sensitive', and finally to the devil himself.
The Rise and Fall of a Professional Beauty. It was the affair that shook Victorian society to its core. He was the Prince of Wales, the future monarch; she was a professional beauty, who became a royal bedmate. Follow the fascinating life of the Dean of Jersey's daughter from her modest childhood to her emergence as one of the most celebrated beauties of her time. Lillie's liaison with the heir to the throne marked only the beginning of a remarkable, scandalous and daring series of adventures in open defiance of accepted morality imposed by Victorian and Edwardian society.
In Victorian England, handsome Dorian Gray (Peter Firth) makes a Faustian deal that his portrait painted by Basil Hallward (Jeremy Brett) will age while he remains young. But his vain bargain eventually leads to murder and destroys Gray's life. This 1976 installment of the BBC's long-running "Play of the Month" television series co-stars Gwen Ffrangcon Davies, Judi Bowker and John Gielgud as Lord Henry Wotton.
Edward the Seventh is a 1975 television drama series, made by ATV in 13 episodes. Based on the biography of Edward VII by Philip Magnus, it starred Timothy West as the elder Edward VII and Simon Gipps-Kent and Charles Sturridge as Edward in his youth, Annette Crosbie as Queen Victoria, Deborah Grant and Helen Ryan as Queen Alexandra, Robert Hardy as the Prince Consort, Alison Leggatt as the Duchess of Kent, and Felicity Kendal as Princess Vicky. It was directed by John Gorrie, who wrote episodes 7-10 with David Butler writing the remainder of the series. The series also featured John Gielgud as Benjamin Disraeli, Michael Hordern as William Ewart Gladstone, Harry Andrews as young Edward's tutor Colonel Bruce, Jane Lapotaire as Empress Marie of Russia, Christopher Neame as Kaiser Wilhelm II and, in one of his earliest roles, Charles Dance as Edward's eldest son Eddy, who died at the age of 28. Gielgud previously played Disraeli in the 1941 film The Prime Minister. The actresses playing Edward's mistresses include Moira Redmond as Alice Keppel and Carolyn Seymour as Daisy Greville. Francesca Annis was featured in two episodes as Lillie Langtry which led to Butler writing a full series about Mrs Langtry's life for Annis to star in, Lillie.
When Mrs Hinch, the sinister charlady, decides to move in, General Suffolk fights his last battle.
Under stress, Irish tenant farmer Michael Regan, suddenly snaps one day and locks himself in his home, threatening the lives of his wife and child.
Tom is a working class Scots teenager, but he dreams of much more.
Thirty-Minute Theatre is an anthology drama series of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, which was used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short running length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known. It was initially produced by Graeme MacDonald. Thirty-Minute Theatre followed on from a similarly named ITV series, beginning on BBC2 in 1965 with an adaptation of the black comedy Parsons Pleasure. Dennis Potter contributed Emergency – Ward 9, which he partially recycled in the much later The Singing Detective. In 1967 BBC2 launched the UK's first colour service, with the consequence that Thirty-Minute Theatre became the first drama series in the country to be shown in colour. As well as single plays, the series showed several linked collections of plays, including a group of four plays by John Mortimer named after areas of London in 1972, two three-part Inspector Waugh series starring Clive Swift in the title role, and a trilogy of plays by Jean Benedetti, broadcast in 1969, focusing on infamous historical figures such as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
The TARDIS arrives on the planet Marinus on an island of glass surrounded by a sea of acid. The travellers are forced by the elderly Arbitan to retrieve four of the five operating keys to a machine called the Conscience of Marinus, of which he is the keeper. These have been hidden in different locations around the planet to prevent them falling into the hands of the evil Yartek and his Voord warriors, who plan to seize the machine and use its originally benevolent mind-influencing power for their own sinister purposes.
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.
Compact was a British television soap opera shown by the BBC between 1962 and 1965. The series was created by Hazel Adair and Peter Ling, who together went on to devise Crossroads. In contrast to the kitchen sink realism of Coronation Street, Compact was a distinctly middle-class serial, set in the more "sophisticated" arena of magazine publishing. An early "avarice" soap, it took the viewer into the business workplace, and aligned the professional lives of the characters with more personal storylines. The show was scheduled for broadcast on Tuesdays and Thursdays, thus avoiding a clash with ITV's Coronation Street on Mondays and Wednesdays. When Compact began, the editor was a woman, Joanne Minster, yet it was not long before she was replaced by Ian Harmon, the son of the magazine's owner. Despite being largely criticised by reviewers, Compact was popular with the general public, and in 1964 a regular omnibus edition was introduced, broadcast on Sundays. Morris Barry, a some-time actor and BBC director – he directed several Doctor Who stories in the 1960s – took over as producer and was given a brief to spice the series up in view of the criticism it had received from the national press. But the BBC, never comfortable with the concept of soap opera, quietly dropped the series in 1965.
