Nigel Havers
Miranda Hart and the cast of her sitcom come together to celebrate the show's tenth anniversary with a music-filled, star-studded spectacular from the London Palladium.
Actors Nigel Havers and Sally Lindsay visit some of the UK's poshest hotels, experiencing some of the glitz and glamour on offer to wealthy guests, gaining an insight into the lives of the staff and having a go at their duties.
Simon is taking girlfriend Donna back home to the Isle of Wight for the very first time. Can he survive a long birthday weekend with his biological and extended family without losing his cool, or his girlfriend?
A Blackpool coach driver and a tour guide get caught up in a deadly comedic conspiracy when a train's passengers begin mysteriously dying one by one.
Brian Pern is an ageing rock star and former front-man of ground breaking progressive rock group Thotch. Like many artists of his age, rather than make new music, he spends more time trying to save the planet (including his campaign to teach gorillas how to Skype). Now, the BBC have asked him to front a major new documentary where he presents his guide to The Life Of Rock from prehistoric man to the present day.
Various actors, presenters, directors and other staff who have worked at the iconic BBC Television Centre at Shepherd's Bush in London reminisce about their time there.
Maryam d'Abo suffered a subarachnoid haemorrhage in 2007 and is lucky to be alive. Her experience inspired this film, made by her film director husband (Chariots of Fire, Greystoke, The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes and Revolution). It leads the viewer on a personal journey of recovery, giving a sense of hope to those who are isolated by their condition, one that is not seen and therefore often misunderstood. At times both traumatic and uplifting, this is an intelligent and informative documentary.
Christmas 1919. Downton Abbey is hosting a lavish Christmas party, yet despite being the season of goodwill, tensions are rife and Bates' arrest has cast a shadow over the festivities.
Lunch Monkeys is a British situation comedy, first shown on BBC Three in 2008.
Forlorn heiress Penelope Wilhern is cursed, and the only way out is to fall in love with someone of suitable stock. But how can she find her soul mate when she's sequestered inside her family's estate with only her parents to keep her company. This untraditional fairy tale about a girl who bucks convention to create her own happy ending.
The turbulent personal and professional life of actor Peter Sellers (1925-1980), from his beginnings as a comic performer on BBC Radio to his huge success as one of the greatest film comedians of all time; an obsessive artist so dedicated to his work that neglected his loved ones and sacrificed part of his own personality to convincingly create that of his many memorable characters.
Series giving a voice to 35- to 54-year-old men, very probably the grumpiest sector of our society.
The Afternoon Play is a series of individual plays which sometimes appear on BBC One during weekday afternoons. The first series began on 27 January 2003, and as of 2008 there have been five series. Each play has a separate story and cast.
Stockbroker Terry, art expert Patrick, orthodontist James and decking supremo Gary have been friends since their schooldays. Now, having all reached the age of 50, they are intent on reliving the freedom of their youth, buying hip new clothes and dating beautiful younger women, but despite their best efforts, the concerns of middle-age still catch up with them.
Born and Bred is a light-hearted British drama series that aired on BBC One from 2002 to 2005. Created by Chris Chibnall and Nigel McCrery, Born and Bred's cast was led by James Bolam and Michael French, who play a father and son who run a cottage hospital in Ormston, a fictional Lancashire village in the 1950s. Bolam and French's characters are later replaced by characters played by Richard Wilson and Oliver Milburn.
A scientist in the rain forest squares off against a land developer while trying to solve some unexplained deaths.
Cardiac surgeon Alex Marsden has an affair with Marcella Duggan, but then finds himself having to operate on her husband Larry, who is also his friend.
A celebrity audience pays tribute to the inimitable Freddie Starr, one of Britain's zaniest comedians.
Dangerfield is a British drama series about a small town doctor / police surgeon, which ran for 6 series, between 1995 and 1999. Originally Nigel Le Vaillant played the central role, but this character later left the series, the focus switching to his replacement, played by Nigel Havers. The BBC decided to end the series in November 1999 when Nigel Havers announced his decision to quit. The BBC felt viewers would not find the series credible if the main character was changed for a second time. The show like a number of other BBC dramas of the 1980s and 1990s also featured a number of borderline fantasy episodes. These included "Tricks", "Angel" and "Haunted". The TV trailers for Dangerfield were heavily parodied by The Fast Show in which the character was called Monkfish and would appear as a tough uncompromising Doctor, Policeman, vet and even as an interior designer with titles mixed in with other BBC shows of the time.
In 19th century England, wealthy young Annabella Lagrange lives a comfortable and secluded life on her family's country estate, where her parents own a glass works. As a child, she develops a special friendship with the charming stable boy Manuel Mendoza. When she turns 18, she marries her cousin Stephen and sees what the world is really like.
Set in 1870s England, the story tells of Annabella Lagrange and the terrible secret her wealthy parents have kept from her. When she finally learns the truth, she runs away and eventually finds solace in the company of her family's former groom, a young Irishman with the very Spanish name of Manuel Mendoza. Together they travel the Northumbria countryside from job to job in his horse and caravan, Annabella trapped in limbo between her upper class upbringing which has rejected her, and the working class who are sometimes suspicious of her, only Manuel understanding her situation.
Chiller is a five-part British horror fantasy anthology television series, produced by Yorkshire Television, that first broadcast on ITV on 9 March 1995. Described by The Guardian as ITV's "answer to The X Files", the series was inspired by, but unconnected to, the 1991 Channel 4 thriller Gray Cray Dolls, which broadcast under the Chiller banner, the series featured writing contributions from renowned playwrights Stephen Gallagher, Glenn Chandler and Anthony Horowitz.
Based on the true story of a Brazilian rubber tapper who leads his people in protest against government and developers, who want to cut down their part of the rainforest for a new road and ranch land. The rich and the powerful will stop at nothing, and frequently resort to murder
Doctor Peter Husak introduces the American Jack Carver to his friend, nurse Kate, and it's love on first sight. But when she learns, in a dramatic incident, that Jack's a C.I.A. agent, she leaves him and marries Husak instead. Together, they go into a war area in Nagorny Karabach for a relief organization.
Amidst the thaw of glasnost, the Kremlin discovers that two Soviet agents, sent to England under deep cover in 1965, have been “lost.” A beautiful and ambitious Russian agent, sent to London to track them down, becomes embroiled in a tangle of CIA, KGB and MI-5 plots and counterplots as the two lost agents, now utterly assimilated, try to avoid detection.
Starring Nigel Havers as a recovering WWII pilot trying to adapt to life after being shot down. After suffering horrific facial burns when the bomber he is piloting is shot down, Hugh Fleming (Havers)'s once promising future lies in ruins. Abandoned by his girlfriend, and forced to sit out the war while his former colleagues fight on, Fleming's only hope lies with an offer of help from renowned plastic surgeon Angus Meikle (James Fox).
Amidst the thaw of glasnost, the Kremlin discovers that two Soviet agents, sent to England under deep cover in 1965, have been "lost." A beautiful and ambitious Russian agent, sent to London to track them down, becomes embroiled in a tangle of CIA, KGB and MI-5 plots and counter-plots as the two lost agents, now utterly assimilated, try to avoid detection.
Expatriate Henry Miller indulges in a variety of sexual escapades while struggling to establish himself as a serious writer in Paris.
An American soldier who escapes the execution of his comrades by Japanese soldiers in Borneo during WWII becomes the leader of a personal empire among the headhunters in this war story told in the style of Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. The American is reluctant to rejoin the fight against the Japanese on the urging of a British commando team but conducts a war of vengeance when the Japanese attack his adopted people.
A young orphan girl, Portia, goes to live with her well-to-do aunt and uncle. As she is groomed to become a lady, she is confused by the young man who seems to be courting her. Surrounded by pretentious people who have no clue how to deal with teenagers, she soon loses her naïveté and thinks of running away.
Jamie Graham, a privileged English boy, is living in Shanghai when the Japanese invade and force all foreigners into prison camps. Jamie is captured with an American sailor, who looks out for him while they are in the camp together. Even though he is separated from his parents and in a hostile environment, Jamie maintains his dignity and youthful spirits, providing a beacon of hope for the others held captive with him.
The Charmer was a 1987 British television serial set in the 1930s, and starring Nigel Havers as Ralph Ernest Gorse, a seducing conman and murderer, Rosemary Leach as Joan Plumleigh-Bruce, the smitten victim widow and Bernard Hepton as Donald Stimpson, Plumleigh-Bruce's would-be beau, who vengefully pursues Gorse after he has conned her. It was made by London Weekend Television for ITV, and based on the 1953 novel Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse by Patrick Hamilton, the second work in the Gorse Trilogy. The series was repeated in February and March 1990. ITV3 also repeated the series in full at 01:45am from 5 September 2009. Narrative repeats were on Mondays from 7 September 2009 at 10:05am.
A war veteran tries to investigate the murder of his son who was working as a Russian translator for the British intelligence service during the Cold War. He meets a web of deception and paranoia that seems impenetrable...
Roddy and Lola strike up a romance on the cruise liner SS Mara as it heads to Hong Kong from San Francisco.
A mother wants her son to marry but has to accept he is living with a man.
A story based on true events about two explorers on a doomed journey trying to cross Australia on foot in the 19 century.
Set during the period of growing influence of the Indian independence movement in the British Raj, the story begins with the arrival in India of a British woman, Miss Adela Quested, who is joining her fiancé, a city magistrate named Ronny Heaslop. She and Ronny's mother, Mrs. Moore, befriend an Indian doctor, Aziz H. Ahmed.
Two doctors, estranged from their spouses, become roommates...but they also happen to be father and son! Can they share an apartment without driving each other crazy? No, but they do it anyway.... Tom Latimer is a young and hard working general practitioner who has managed to survive an expensive and nasty divorce. Now he lives in an apartment while his ex lives in their beautiful home. And things get worse for Tom when his father, dermatologist Toby Latimer, arrives at Tom's place with the news that he and Tom's mother will also be getting divorced” and that he's moving in! It's shades of The Odd Couple as father and son must learn to tolerate one another's idiosyncracies.
Series about the life of Nancy Astor who was the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons.
In the class-obsessed and religiously divided UK of the early 1920s, two determined young runners train for the 1924 Paris Olympics. Eric Liddell, a devout Christian born to Scottish missionaries in China, sees running as part of his worship of God's glory and refuses to train or compete on the Sabbath. Harold Abrahams overcomes anti-Semitism and class bias, but neglects his beloved sweetheart in his single-minded quest.
Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years is an 8-part 1981 drama serial based on the life of Winston Churchill, and particularly his years in enforced exile from political position during the 1920s and 30s. It was written and directed by Ferdinand Fairfax and Churchill was played by Robert Hardy. Hardy's brilliant performance as Churchill won critical acclaim and a BAFTA award in 1982. He reprised the role in The Sittaford Mystery, Bomber Harris and War and Remembrance and at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the end of World War II in 1995 when he quoted a number of Churchill's wartime speeches in character.
Birth of The Beatles is a 1979 biopic motion picture, produced by Dick Clark Productions and directed by Richard Marquand. Focuses on the early history of 1960s rock band The Beatles. It was released only nine years after the announced break-up of The Beatles themselves, and is the only Beatles biopic to be made while John Lennon was still alive. The film tries very hard to be accurate, opening with a written statement read out by a narrator stating the authenticity of the production, emphasising as it put it: "former Beatle, Pete Best" acting as technical advisor.
Lewis, a gay writer of romantic novels, writes an article on gay issues under the pseudonym of "Zippy Grimes." The reason for this is that he hasn't come out yet and he doesn't want to alienate his mainly female fan-base. The article is a great success and leads to a huge amount of reactions, mainly from other gay men who are leading a double life. He decides to meet a number of these letter writers and eventually is forced to come out.
Mystery abounds when it is discovered that, one by one, the greatest Chefs in Europe are being killed. The intriguing part of the murders is that each chef is killed in the same manner that their own special dish is prepared in. Food critics and the (many) self-proclaimed greatest Chefs in Europe demand the mystery be solved.
Pennies From Heaven is a 1978 BBC television drama serial written by Dennis Potter. The title is taken from a song of the same name written by Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston. It was one of several Potter serials to mix the reality of the drama with a dark fantasy content, and the earliest of his works where the characters burst into miming to popular 1930s songs.
Having been invalided out of the Boer War, Paul Craddock buys Shallowford, a manor house and estate in Devon, with money from his late father's scrap-yard business. He soon becomes a much-respected "Squire" who is determined to treat all his tenant farmers fairly, unlike his predecessor.
Set in an alternative 1970s where Germany won the Second World War and occupied Europe, a soap opera called 'An Englishman's Castle' plays out through writer Peter Ingram.
The Glittering Prizes is a British television drama about the changing lives of a group of Cambridge students, starting in 1952 and following them through to middle age in the 1970s. It was first broadcast on BBC2 in 1976.
Coronation Street is a British television soap opera first broadcast on Granada Television in 1960. It was soon syndicated on other ITV franchises. The programme concerns the lives of the residents of Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional area of Salford, and centres around its terraced houses, cafe, corner shop, newsagents, textile factory and the Rovers Return pub. The programme was devised in 1960 by local scriptwriter Tony Warren at the recently formed Granada Television in Manchester. Warren's initial kitchen sink drama proposal was rejected by the station's founder Sidney Bernstein but he was persuaded by producer Harry Elton to produce the programme for thirteen pilot episodes. It was first broadcast on 9 December 1960 and within six months had become the most-watched programme on British television. It has been one of the most financially lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of the Granada Television franchise and the broadcaster ITV. Coronation Street is made by Granada Television at Granada Studios in Manchester. It is shown in all ITV regions as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production. Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour and strong characters.
A woman has doubts about the intentions of her husband, even to the point where she thinks he might kill her.
