Peter Cellier
Follow Sugar into the underbelly of Victorian London seething with vitality, sexuality, ambition and emotion.
A Headmistress steals from her own school. As a young girl Colleen McCabe asks a priest in confessional "What is sin?" Thirty years later she is found out for practising it. An ex-nun,she leaves the convent because she becomes disillusioned with spiritual matters and goes into teaching, being appointed headmistress of the John Rigby School in London. Along with a small coterie of chosen staff members to act as her spies,she misappropriates half a million pounds from school funds which she spends on luxury goods and a trip on the Orient Express. Meanwhile the school suffers,having to use ancient text books and pupils as cleaners. She is tried,although admitted to hospital for depression on the trial day, and sentenced to five years in jail, later reduced to four. The film alternates dramatized scenes of Colleen's misbehaviour with interviews with those who knew her.
Andrea, a gifted young Polish violinist from Krakow, is bound for America when he is swept overboard by a storm. When the Widdington sisters discover the handsome stranger on the beach below their house, they nurse him back to health. However, the presence of the musically talented young man disrupts the peaceful lives of Ursula and Janet and the community in which they live.
Clarissa Dalloway looks back on her youth as she readies for a gathering at her house. The wife of a legislator and a doyenne of London's upper-crust party scene, Clarissa finds that the plight of ailing war veteran Septimus Warren Smith reminds her of a past romance with Peter Walsh. In flashbacks, young Clarissa explores her possibilities with Peter.
Comedy drama set during World War Two following the misadventures of two very different bandsmen - one an ex-air force pilot, the other a draft dodging, scheming private detective - as they get caught up with gangsters and romance in blitz torn London.
A group of women of Indian descent take a trip together from their home in Birmingham, England to the beach resort of Blackpool.
A rule bound head butler's world of manners and decorum in the household he maintains is tested by the arrival of a housekeeper who falls in love with him in post-WWI Britain. The possibility of romance and his master's cultivation of ties with the Nazi cause challenge his carefully maintained veneer of servitude.
A saga of class relations and changing times in an Edwardian England on the brink of modernity, the film centers on liberal Margaret Schlegel, who, along with her sister Helen, becomes involved with two couples: wealthy, conservative industrialist Henry Wilcox and his wife Ruth, and the downwardly mobile working-class Leonard Bast and his mistress Jackie.
Mary Linden works for the French Red Cross in Occupied France during World War II and helps allied soldiers who have been shot down to escape to the unoccupied side. Her activities are complicated by her high profile and her daughter's love affair with a German officer. Based on the true story.
Shoot to Kill is a four-hour drama documentary reconstruction of the events that led to the 1984–86 Stalker Inquiry into the shooting of six terrorist suspects in Northern Ireland in 1982 by a specialist unit of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), allegedly without warning (the so-called shoot-to-kill policy); the organised fabrication of false accounts of the events; and the difficulties created for the inquiry team in their investigation.
The story of the rise of a madame of a suburban brothel catering to older men, inspired by the real experiences of Cynthia Payne. The story follows Christine Painter (Julie Walters) as the down-at-heel waitress who, with the help of prostitute Shirley (Shirley Stelfox) and cross-dressing Wing Commander Morten (Alec McCowen), seeks to up her earnings by turning her suburban home into a brothel. Before long she and her girls are chaining up judges, spanking Generals and attending to the needs of Honourable Members. Christine sees herself as providing a vital service to these harmless pervs and when finally the house is busted and the case comes to court, it's fair to say that the presiding judge isn't unfamiliar with her work.
When Lucy Honeychurch and chaperon Charlotte Bartlett find themselves in Florence with rooms without views, fellow guests Mr Emerson and son George step in to remedy the situation. Meeting the Emersons could change Lucy's life forever but, once back in England, how will her experiences in Tuscany affect her marriage plans?
This seven-hour British-Italian adaptation of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1834 epic, set against the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. and previously filmed in 1935, and in 1960 was a vehicle for muscleman Steve Reeves, was trashed by the critics as the campiest of sword and sandal sagas to emerge in years. This despite its reported $19-million price tag, the nobility of its cast that includes Laurence Olivier, Siobhan McKenna and Anthony Quayle, and its rather unspectacular special effects. The central figures are Nicholas Clay as Glaucus, the noble Athenian; Olivia Hussey as the high-born Ione, his love, who is seduced by the Egyptian, Arbaces (Franco Nero), a religious fanatic; Duncan Regehr as Lydon, the champion gladiator; and Linda Purl as the blind slave Nydia, who is torn between Glaucus and Lydon.
In 1914, a cruise ship sets sail from Naples to spread the ashes of beloved opera singer Edmea Tetua near Erimo, the isle of her birth. During the voyage, the eclectic array of passengers discovers a group of Serbian refugees aboard the vessel. Peace and camaraderie abound until the ship is descended upon by an Austrian flagship. The Serbians are forced to board it, but naturally they resist, igniting a skirmish that ends in destruction.
While investigating a vanishing Concorde at Heathrow Airport, the Doctor and his companions are thrown millions of years back in time, when a mysterious alien called Kalid is trying to control the ancient powers of the Xeraphin.
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.
Breaking Glass is the story of punk singer Kate and her meteoric rise to stardom. Starting out in the rock pubs of London, Kate, assisted by her manager Danny, becomes a huge star overnight. Once at the top the pressure is immense as Kate's band are squeezed out and she is left to cope alone in the spotlight.
Low-budget superhero flick about a young man given a mystical medallion by a South American shaman, in order to become a puma- empowered champion like his father before him. In trying to locate the young man initially, the shaman has the nasty habit of pushing candidates out windows to test them.
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.
A re-creation of some of the confrontations and sketches in the remarkable background of the Windscale Enquiry. The dialogue is taken from the Official Verbatim Transcript of Proceedings. It was filmed on location in the Lake District and at Whitehaven Civic Hall where the Enquiry took place.
A medieval tale with Pythonesque humour: After the death of his father the young Dennis Cooper goes to town where he has to pass several adventures. The town and the whole kingdom is threatened by a terrible monster called 'Jabberwocky'. Will Dennis make his fortune? Is anyone brave enough to defeat the monster?
"All I said was the gramophone's too loud." Tony and Zoe Lyle 's silly row starts like any other, but Tony finds that Zoe means it this time. She's walking out and he's got a week to save a marriage that he hasn't looked at in 18 years, and with it all the trappings of a good life in Maida Vale.
Englishman Robinson Crusoe, stranded alone on an island for years, is overjoyed to find a fellow man, a black islander whom he names Friday. But Crusoe cannot overcome the shackles of his own heritage and upbringing and is incapable of seeing Friday as anything other than a savage who needs Crusoe's brand of cultural and religious enlightenment. Friday attempts to share his own more generous and unashamed culture, but ultimately realizes that Crusoe can never see him as anything but an inferior being. With that awareness, Friday sets out to turn the tables on Crusoe.
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.
An unscrupulous property developer wants to flatten the street to make way for new buildings.Householder George Roper is happy to take the offered money and run but his wife Mildred and their lodgers join with other residents to take a stand and keep things as they are, finally winning the day
A young woman and her friend rent a room in a boarding house. Soon they become aware of the fact that the other "renters" are a very strange lot, and that there are some very odd goings-on in the house that seem to be centered in the attic... Part of the ITV 'Thriller' anthology series.
The true story of a strike in 1970 by female textile-factory workers in Leeds who wanted to be paid the same as their male colleagues, but whose efforts were undermined by the trade union that they belonged to.
Based on the hit play. A British Government Minister puts forward a bill to battle filth in the UK but that doesn't stop him having an affair with both his secretary, Miss Parkyn and Wendy, the wife of a high-up reporter. Opponents to the bill - mainly some hippy girls, lead by Johnny, kidnap the Minister's best friend and co-founder of the bill, Barry Ovis just as he was getting married to his fiancee, Joan. Barry escapes, just before the police raid the hippies hiding place - to claim that Ovis was in a orgy and get the bill defeated - and dashes back to his and Joan's flat followed by Inspector Ruff, who is investigating the kidnap and Damina, one of the hippies. Meanwhile, the Minister is also trying to use the flat to carry on his affairs with both Wendy and Miss Parkyn. The Minister, Barry & Joan tries to keep the truth from Ruft, Wilfred Potts, an old and honest MP, Birdie, the Minister's wife and stop the hippies, and this causes no end of trouble.
Ellis Cripper has lost his money and his memory; in different ways he tries to make sense of his situation.
The story of the breakout of the German battleship Bismarck—accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen—during the early days of World War II. The Bismarck and her sister ship, Tirpitz, were the most powerful battleships in the European theater of World War II. The British Navy must find and destroy Bismarck before it can escape into the convoy lanes to inflict severe damage on the cargo shipping which was the lifeblood of the British Isles. With eight 15 inch guns, it was capable of destroying every ship in a convoy while remaining beyond the range of all Royal Navy warships.
