Liz Smith
Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash discuss the creation of The Royle Family, with a look behind the scenes at the production of the show and interviews with the cast.
For generations, the people of the City of Ember have flourished in an amazing world of glittering lights. But Ember's once powerful generator is failing and the great lamps that illuminate the city are starting to flicker. Now, two teenagers, in a race against time, must search Ember for clues that will unlock the ancient mystery of the city's existence, before the the lights go out forever.
Set in the small hamlet of Lark Rise and the wealthier neighbouring market town, Candleford, the series chronicles the daily lives of farm-workers, craftsmen and gentry at the end of the 19th Century. Lark Rise to Candleford is a love letter to a vanished corner of rural England and a heart-warming drama series teeming with wit, wisdom and romance.
Memphis cop Lieutenant McKenzie is called in to investigate a series of strange deaths and wierd sightings following the resurrection of a murder victim from the 1950s(a local boy) who is brought back to life in modern times and tries to find his teenage sweetheart who is now aged 62 and also to seek revenge for his death.
May 1917. Sixteen year old Indiana Jones joins an international trio of spies plotting against their German counterparts in the neutral city of Barcelona. After his old acquaintance Pablo Picasso helps him get a job at Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, Indy devices a plan to forge a love letter written by the German cultural attaché to make it seem he is having an affair with the Countess of Toledo. In August of the same year, Indiana is reassigned to Prague where he is to receive an important phone call. Unfortunately his hotel room proves to be unequipped with a phone. Indy heads for the Ministery of Telephones, where he learns that having to confront Czech bureaucracy can be quite a trial.
Tension mounts in the Royle household as the family contemplates the prospect of becoming fully laminated throughout. Dr Mahmoud prescribes new medication for Nana in the form of yellow tablets; coincidentally they turn out to be the same colour as the tablets that Joe was prescribed for the swelling when he got his bits stuck in his zip. Meanwhile, a mysterious ginger visitor reminds Nana of her favourite musical.
Cheese-loving eccentric Wallace and his cunning canine pal, Gromit, investigate a mystery in Nick Park's animated adventure, in which the lovable inventor and his intrepid pup run a business ridding the town of garden pests. Using only humane methods that turn their home into a halfway house for evicted vermin, the pair stumble upon a mystery involving a voracious vegetarian monster that threatens to ruin the annual veggie-growing contest.
A young boy wins a tour through the most magnificent chocolate factory in the world, led by the world's most unusual candy maker.
Oliver Twist the modern filmed version of Charles Dickens bestseller, a Roman Polanski adaptation. The classic Dickens tale, where an orphan meets a pickpocket on the streets of London. From there, he joins a household of boys who are trained to steal for their master.
A story about modern family relationships, as seen through the eyes of 15 year-old David. Six years after his dad dies in a car crash, David's mum moves in with the new man in her life. As the two families come together - complete with teenage step brothers and sisters, a crushingly acerbic granny and one feisty, American self-help guru ex-wife - David has fantasies of his father's ghost returning to disrupt the new step-family and test its survival.
A pastor preoccupied with writing the perfect sermon fails to realize that his wife is having an affair and his children are up to no good.
As a young boy, future emperor Nero witnesses the mad Emperor Caligula kill his father and exile his mother. While in exile in the pontine islands, Agrippina, his mother, sees a vision telling her that her son can become emperor, but she will have to die first. She accepts the proposal. Back in Rome, Nero, now being raised by emperor Claudius after Caligula's death, Agrippina returns. She poisons Claudius' food and Nero becomes emperor. At first, Nero cuts taxes and introduces successful programs and invades Brittania. Soon he meets a beautiful slave named Claudia Acte, and marries her, throwing off his engagement with Claudius' daughter, Claudia Octavia, telling her she can marry someone she will be happy with. Heartbroken, she arrives at an island and kills herself. Nero enjoys being married to Claudia Acte, but soon he gradually goes mad with power and sets fire to Rome.
Between the Sheets is a 2003 British television mini-series. This carnal, comedic drama is based around the love life and sexual hangups of several different couples that are all linked in some way. Emotional, touching, and sometimes humorous, the story follows these couples as they are forced to face their demons.
Rita witnesses a murder, and believing she and her family are now in danger, she goes on the run with her daughter Leah and her elderly neighbour Lizzie. In hiding from the police and the villains, Rita resorts to shoplifting in order to survive.
A modern version of the classic Dickens tale, in which Eddie Scrooge is a mean loan shark who sees the error of his ways.
Quirky stranger Donovan (Colin Firth) blows into the Scottish village of Port Clyde. There, he rents a room with the Pannick family and ingratiates himself into their lives. Lucy (Katy Murphy) is the long-suffering matriarch of the clan, caring for her senile grandmother (Liz Smith) and mentally disabled brother, Sandy (David Brown). When the town cancels Sandy's train route to school, Donovan suggests starting their own bus line. They do, much to the consternation of local officials.
When Tom Long's brother Peter gets measles, Tom is sent to stay with his Uncle Alan and Aunt Gwen in a flat with no garden and an elderly and reclusive landlady, Mrs Bartholomew, living upstairs. Because he may be infectious he is not allowed out to play, and feels lonely. Without exercise he is less sleepy at night and when he hears the communal grandfather clock strangely strike 13, he investigates and finds the small back yard is now a large sunlit garden. Here he meets another lonely child called Hatty, who seems to be the only one who can see him. They have adventures which he gradually realises are taking place in the 19th century. And each night when Tom visits, Hatty is a different age, chronologically out of sequence.
Scrooge is a miserly old businessman in 1840s London. One Christmas Eve he is visited by the ghost of Marley, his dead business partner. Marley foretells that Scrooge will be visited by three spirits, each of whom will attempt to show Scrooge the error of his ways. Will Scrooge reform his ways in time to celebrate Christmas?
Nine short stories based on the true experiences of London Underground passengers.
Oliver Twist is a 1999 television mini-series produced by ITV based on the book Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.
Alice follows a white rabbit down a rabbit-hole into a whimsical Wonderland, where she meets characters like the delightful Cheshire Cat, the clumsy White Knight, a rude caterpillar, and the hot-tempered Queen of Hearts and can grow ten feet tall or shrink to three inches. But will she ever be able to return home?
After saving each other from jumping off a bridge, Henry Bell and Karen Knightly plot to avenge the people who drove them to suicide. Henry will ruin the life of the woman who married Karen's boyfriend, while Karen will work as a secretary for the man who took Henry's job. Whether revenge will be sweet – or bittersweet – is anyone's guess.
British comedy series focusing on the lives of a working-class family in Manchester who love the TV.
Gordon Comstock is a copywriter at an ad agency, and his girlfriend Rosemary is a designer. Gordon believes he is a genius, a marvelous poet and quits the ad agency, trying to live on his poems, but poverty soon comes to him.
A middle-aged London factory worker is shocked when the mixed-race daughter she gave up at birth decides to track her down. At first she denies she is her mother. All family members become emotional, as everyone's secrets are exposed.
Professor David Ash exposes false spiritulists and mediums. He is invited to Edbrook to resolve the fears and torments within its secretive family. Soon after arriving Ash begins to doubt his own senses, and watching the strange behaviour of its residents does not make his task any easier. In time, he finds there's more to Edbrook than even he can debunk.
Crapston Villas was a British animated television series, in which the characters were made from plasticine and filmed with stop motion clay animation. It was a comedy satire on inner-city London life, directed at a mature audience. It featured a set of characters, living in a grim apartment building in the fictional postcode of SE69, who were plagued by various dilemmas. Foul language, sex and violence are present.
The past catches up with an ageing American jazz pianist when he returns to the clubs of Lancashire and Yorkshire that he last visited 10 years previously.
Reverend Granger is assigned as the Vicar of the rural parish of Dibley, but she is not quite what the villagers expected.
A salesman starts to run a hospital radio station inside a facility for people with mental heath needs.
Pirates is a British children's television sitcom about a family of pirates living in a council house. It featured a number of bizarre characters, such as the "Man in a Sack" and a baby in a pram which was never seen, but gave off a mysterious green glow. The series ran from 1994 to 1997 on Children's BBC, and featured Liz Smith as "Gran".
A princess from a Nordic European country is obligated to marry the boy her family chose. She escapes and discovers love in the arms of a beautiful swimming teacher.
A sensitive drama about a farm labourer's abused daughter who fantasises about the officers of the local U.S. Air Base to escape the guilt and hypocrisy of everyday life. But her dreams of glamour and excitement are shattered when she is seduced by a pilot, setting in motion a chain of events...
British production of Argentinan Roberto Cossa's play, set in Argentina in 1982. Nona is an elderly woman who is causing a drain on the resources of her entire family, with her constant craving for food and demands, which everybody indulges, in spite of falling into prostitution and bankruptcy. Her two grandsons hit on the idea of marrying her off to an elderly man who runs a tobacconists and sweet kiosk, however, the latter believes that Chico is trying to hitch him up with the beautiful young Marta.
Cluedo was a UK television game show based on the board game of the same name. Each week, a reenactment of the murder at the stately home Arlington Grange of a visiting guest was played and, through a combination of interrogating the suspects and deduction, celebrity guests had to discover who committed the murder, which of six weapons and in which room it was committed, whilst viewers were invited to play along at home.
A television special broadcast on PBS in honor of composer, songwriter, pianist, television writer and lyricist Joe Raposo after he passed away.
The wife of an abusive criminal finds solace in the arms of a kind regular guest in her husband's restaurant.
The owner of a failing cinema and his mysterious boarder are caught up in the political intrigue of Argentina.
2 February 1959. The Winter Dance party, Clear Lake, Iowa - another date on Buddy Holly's whistle-stop tour. Across the Atlantic, a schoolboy models his life on the rock 'n' roll star whose music and untimely death affected the lives of a generation.
When Peter Plunkett's Irish castle turned hotel is about to be repossesed, he decides to spice up the attraction a bit for the 'Yanks' by having his staff pretend to haunt the castle. The trouble begins when a busload of American tourists arrive - along with some real ghosts.
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.
Fledge needs a job. He'll take anything. And when Dawlish gives him strange errands to run, for cash in hand, strictly 'on the palm', it's a welcome change from the dole. Until he finds himself digging dirt on an old friend....
Three married couples discover that, through a legal technicality, they are, in fact, not actually married in the eyes of the law. This was the fifth television film version of this play by J.B. Priestley made by the BBC.
An old bitter miser who makes excuses for his uncaring nature learns real compassion when three ghosts visit him on Christmas Eve.
In the summer of 1947, Britain prepares to commemorate the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. To get around food-rationing laws, Dr. Charles Swaby, accountant Henry Allardyce and solicitor Frank Lockwood are fattening a black-market pig for the big day. Egged on by his wife, meek Gilbert Chilvers steals the swine, but the couple must conceal it from inspector Morris Wormold.
Two one-act plays explore love and loneliness. In "Table by the Window" an aging fashion model contrives a reunion with her ex-husband, a politician ruined by scandal, and their passion is rekindled. In "Table Number Seven" a meek woman harbors a secret love for a man accused of fraud and sex offenses, forcing her to take a stand for the first time in her life.
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.
Writer and Director Mike Leigh discusses the techniques used to create his plays.
In this story-within-a-story, Anna is an actress starring opposite Mike in a period piece about the forbidden love between their respective characters, Sarah and Charles. Both actors are involved in serious relationships, but the passionate nature of the script leads to an off-camera love affair as well. While attempting to maintain their composure and professionalism, Anna and Mike struggle to come to terms with their infidelity.
Sir Henry Rawlinson attempts to exorcise the ghost of his brother Humbert, who was accidentally killed in a drunken duck-shooting incident.
In 1800, as Napoleon Bonaparte rises to power in France, a rivalry erupts between Armand and Gabriel, two lieutenants in the French Army, over a perceived insult. For over a decade, they engage in a series of duels amidst larger conflicts, including the failed French invasion of Russia in 1812, and shifts in the political and social systems of Europe.
Based on the book "Spend, Spend, Spend" by Vivian Nicholson and Stephen Smith. Story of pools winner, Vivian Nicholson.
Based on James Herriot's books about life as a 1930s' veterinarian in Yorkshire, John Alderson plays the kindly doctor who ministers to animals in this enjoyable family film. Sequel to the 1975 film All Creatures Great and Small.
Nell tries hard to cope with her husband, family and friends - but her asthma creates problems. Everyone seems to be helpful - but are they? Is there something sinister about Mrs Pritchett , the new housekeeper, or is it Nell's imagination? Who knows where reality ends and fantasy begins?
I Didn't Know You Cared is a British comedy series set in a working class household in South Yorkshire in the 1970s, written by Peter Tinniswood loosely based upon his books A Touch Of Daniel, I Didn't Know You Cared and Except You're A Bird. It was broadcast by the BBC in four series from 1975 to 1979. The main characters are Carter Brandon; his Uncle Mort; his mother, Annie; his father, Les; his girlfriend, Pat Partington; and Uncle Staveley. Auntie Lil appears in the first two series. Other recurring characters, mostly from Carter's workplace, are Linda Preston; Mrs Partington; Sid Skelhorn
Pubs, pigeons, weight-lifting - that's Terry's life, and his wife Glenda feels neglected. But now Terry's best mate, Albert, is on leave from the Merchant Navy, and Albert knows how to treat a lady. 'Fireworks assured,' says the wrestling poster.
Mike comes home on leave from Ulster. After six years in the Army he has to decide whether to sign up again or not. His parents want him to leave the army and come home, but the family flare-ups and bickerings are not conducive to helping him choose.
Rivalry at a local Gilbert and Sullivan Society over who will play Jack Point in the Silver Jubilee production. Rowland Matthews has always been the main star, but he is getting on, and the young Clive Bates is a strong rival.
Moments from the uncompromisingly bleak existence of a secretary, her intellectually disabled sister, aloof and uneasy teacher boyfriend, bizarre neighbor and irritating workmate.
In Loving Memory is a British period sitcom set in an undertakers business that starred Thora Hird and Christopher Beeny. A pilot was transmitted in 1969 by Thames Television who rejected the idea before it was finally accepted by Yorkshire Television in 1979 where it further ran for five series between until 1986.
