Leonard Rossiter
A celebration of the actor's life and career, featuring contributions from friends, co-stars and fans including Don Warrington, Sue Nicholls and Mark Lester. The programme also includes a never-before-seen interview with Rossiter himself, and brings new perspectives on one of Britain's best-loved actors, from his upbringing in Liverpool to his remarkable, late-blossoming TV career.
Comedy - Vincent Van Gogh comes back to life after being the recipient of a magic potion. He finds that his work has become quite valuable, and begins stealing his works. At the same time, he has a hard time getting anyone to believe he's really Van Gogh. - David Abbott, Lisa Waltz, Lou Wagner
A compilation of the many characters played by Leonard Rossiter.
Michael Caine stars as Baxter Thwaites, the laid-back Governor of the sleepy British colony of Cascara. But when American oil drillers accidentally strike a gusher of ultra-delicious mineral water, the forgotten Caribbean out-post becomes a global hotbed of political and economic chaos.
A wily publisher of arts magazines tries to cope with ever-growing financial problems - and also his formidable German mother.
Tripper's Day is a British television sitcom produced by Thames Television for ITV. The plot involved Leonard Rossiter as Norman Tripper, a Northern manager assigned to a London supermarket with a problematic staff. The programme is largely remembered for the negative critical reviews it received, and mainly for the fact that it was Rossiter's final television work, the actor dying between the broadcast of the second and third episodes. The series was brought back two years later with Bruce Forsyth in the lead role, under the new title Slinger's Day. In Canada and United States the series had a remake under the title Check it Out!, whilst in Sweden, comical duo Stefan & Krister starred in Full Frys, a TV series largely based on Tripper's Day and Check it Out!.
A middle-aged man is feeling the strain of looking after his elderly grandfather, who is demanding and needs a lot of medical treatment. Then a neighbour suggests a painless way to be rid of him - This black comedy is set in the future, where euthanasia is lawful and increasingly common but it should still, ideally, be voluntary.
The reign of England's King John is threatened by Philip of France who demands that John's nephew Arthur be placed on the throne. Pragmatic and decisive, King John moves to plactate the French, but there are others who seek disputre his authority.
Britannia Hospital, an esteemed English institution, is marking its gala anniversary with a visit by the Queen Mother herself. But when investigative reporter Mick Travis arrives to cover the celebration, he finds the hospital under siege by striking workers, ruthless unions, violent demonstrators, racist aristocrats, and African cannibal dictator and sinister human experiments.
The Pink Panther diamond is stolen once again from Lugash and the authorities call in Chief Inspector Clouseau from France. His plane disappears en-route. This time, famous French TV reporter Marie Jouvet sets out to solve the mystery and starts to interview everybody connected to Clouseau.
"What's a lock-out, my son? A lock-out is engraved in the history of the class struggle. A lock-out is our Glencoe. It's where they try and drive a stake into our underbelly." A factory's workforce is dwindling as divisions between the workers and management widen.
Stingy English landlord Rigsby manages to scam his lodgers Cooper, an arts student, and Philip, an African jock, making both pay for a room they must share. However Rigsby's favorite lodger, miss Jones, now flirts with both boys rather then the old goat, despite his pitiful attempts to be generous. Crossed by her still overprotective dad, she actually prefers an affair with slick veteran Seymour, who is really only interested in her money
The incredibly true story of the legendary French entertainer Joseph Pujol, who performed impersonations with his self-described 'elastic anus' and a surfeit of wind.
The outrageous - and not entirely reliable - memoirs of Irish writer Frank Harris, sometime cowboy in the Old West, friend to the famous in the literary world, essayist and critic, and seducer of beautiful women.
The Losers is a British sitcom that aired on ITV in 1978. Written by Alan Coren, it stars Leonard Rossiter and Alfred Molina. The Losers was made for ITV by ATV and was produced and directed by Joe McGrath. In The Losers, Rossiter plays Sydney Foskett, a wrestling promoter who discovers a young new wrestler called "The Butcher", played by Molina, who Foskett ensures loses to get the public's love.
Disillusioned after a long career at Sunshine Desserts, Perrin goes through a mid-life crisis and fakes his own death. Returning in disguise after various attempts at finding a 'new life', he gets his old job back and finds nothing has changed. He is eventually found out, and in the second series has success with a chain of shops selling useless junk. That becomes so successful that he feels he has created a monster and decides to destroy it. In the third and final series he has a dream of forming a commune which his long suffering colleagues help bring to reality. Unfortunately that also fails and he finds himself back in a job not unlike the one he originally had at Sunshine Desserts.
A luxury liner carries Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany in a desperate fight for survival.
A 'machinegunner' (West Country slang for a debt-collector), turns amateur sleuth but finds himself in hot water with local criminals.
Charles Dreyfus, who has finally cracked over inspector Clouseau's antics, escapes from a mental institution and launches an elaborate plan to get rid of Clouseau once and for all.
An Irish rogue uses his cunning and wit to work his way up the social classes of 18th century England, transforming himself from the humble Redmond Barry into the noble Barry Lyndon.
"The voice will make its effect. And it will, undoubtedly, be very touching. But, tell me: after his voice has broken, can you make anything of him then?" After the solo, after the chorus, after the applause?
Set in a seedy bedsit, the cowardly landlord Rigsby has his conceits debunked by his long suffering tenants.
Set in a cemetery, the film tells the story of a young man whom a blind man wrongly imagines to be black, and explores the nature of human prejudice.
A junk dealer is caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between a woman, her husband and his mistress when they sell a piece of their furniture.
Humanity finds a mysterious object buried beneath the lunar surface and sets off to find its origins with the help of HAL 9000, the world's most advanced super computer.
Influenced by concerns about overpopulation, the counterculture of the 1960s and the societal effects of television, the play depicts a world of the future where a small elite control the media, keeping the lower classes docile by serving them an endless diet of lowest common denominator programmes and pornography. The play concentrates on an idea the programme controllers have for a new programme which will follow the trials and tribulations of a group of people left to fend for themselves on a remote island. In this respect, the play is often cited as having anticipated the craze for reality television.
British agent Bulldog Drummond is assigned to stop a master criminal who uses beautiful women to do his killings.
The Whisperers tells the story of an impoverished old woman living alone in a seedy apartment who enjoys a rich fantasy life as an heiress. When she discovers stolen money hidden by her son, she believes her fantasy has come true.
In Victorian England, a fortune now depends on which of two brothers outlives the other—or can be made to have seemed to do so.
The discovery of mysterious egg-shaped objects at the sites of a series of disasters lead people to believe that we are being attacked by alien beings, but it is revealed to be a conspiracy.
Following a nervous breakdown, Gwen takes up the job of head teacher in the small village of Haddaby. There she can benefit from the tranquillity and peace, enabling her to recover fully. But under the facade of idyllic country life she slowly unearths the frightening reality of village life in which the inhabitants are followers of a menacing satanic cult with the power to inflict indiscriminate evil and death if crossed.
Monsieur Feydeau has writer's block, and he needs a new play. But he takes an opportunity to observe the upper class of 1900 Paris - Monsieur Boniface with a domineering wife, and the next-door neglectful husband Henri with a beautiful but ignored wife Marcelle. Henri traces architectural anomalies (most ghost sounds are drains), and plans a night at the Hotel Paradiso; but this hotel is the assignation spot of Marcelle and Boniface. One wife, two husbands, a nephew, and the perky Boniface maid, all at this 'by the hour' hotel, and consummation of the affair is, to say the least, severely compromised (not the least by a police raid). All of this under Feydeau's eye, and his play is the 'success fou' of the next season.
When Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in 1942, the Allied POWs, mostly British but including a few Americans, were incarcerated in Changi prison. There were no walls or barbed-wire fences for the simple reason that there was no place for the prisoners to escape to. Included among the prisoners is the American Cpl. King, a wheeler dealer who has managed to established a pretty good life for himself in the camp. While most of the prisoners are near starvation and have uniforms that are in tatters, King eats well and and has crisp clean clothes to wear every day. King soon forms a friendship with Lt. Peter Marlowe, an upper class British officer who is fascinated with King's élan approach to life.
In Northern England in the early 1960s, Frank Machin is mean, tough and ambitious enough to become an immediate star in the rugby league team run by local employer Weaver.
A young Englishman dreams of escaping from his working class family and dead-end job as an undertaker's assistant. A number of indiscretions cause him to lie in order to avoid the penalties. His life turns into a mess and he has an opportunity to run away and leave it all behind.
An English professor decides that there are too many useless people in the world and invents a gas that will kill them off. But first they'll at least have a good laugh.
As Vic Brown vacillates between infatuation and disinterest for his co-worker Ingrid Rothwell, she finds out that she is pregnant and Vic has to reconcile how he thought his life would go with what life actually has in store for him.
