Peter Jones
A documentary on the history of Doctor Who (1963) featuring new interviews with cast and crew, transmitted as part of "Doctor Who Night" on BBC2.
Forty-five-year-old Adrian has been living with his mother Lucy and running their Wiltshire dairy farm all his adult life. When Lucy unexpectedly dies of a heart attack, a rogue's gallery of family members show up at the farm to argue over the execution of Ruth's will. The one object that everyone seems to want, and several people try to steal, is Ruth's valuable Modigliani painting. In the midst of all this confusion over Ruth's death, a mysterious visitor named Ilaria inserts herself onto the scene and has a surprising effect on those gathered.
Night nurse Elaine Dobbs may be overworked and underpaid, but she has created a very special atmosphere in her ward and is extremely attentive to her patients. However, rather too many of them are dying.Inspired by the real-life case of four nurses in Austria who were tried for the murder of 42 patients in their care, this chilling drama stars comedian Dawn French in her first serious role, as an apparently irreproachable carer.
The plot follows Timothy Gedge, a socially inept yet intrusive teenage boy as he wanders around the dull seaside town of Dynmouth, spying on the town's residents. At first this behaviour is seen as merely annoying, even comical, until people begin to realise that his purpose may not be as innocent as initially thought.
Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without the special edition of your favourtie comedy show to fill the gap between the staggeringly huge Christmas dinner and the Queen's speech, and the ITV network have rolled hours of Christmas's into one with their latest DVD set of ITV comedy. With almost ten hours of classic, festive merriment featuring some of the channel's most memorable Christmas specials the whole family can relive the joys of Christmas past.
Don't Panic! The story of Arthur Dent, an average Englishman who life was spared by his friend, who turned out to be an alien, while the planet Earth is destroyed. His friend tells him about the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a guide with anything you ever needed, and wanted to know. They travel across the galaxy, meeting friendly, and not so friendly characters in order to find the great question (the answer being 42).
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.
Captain S. Melly takes over as the new Commanding Officer at an experimental mixed sex air defence base. It's 1940 and England is under heavy bombardment, but the crew seem more interested in each other than the enemy planes above. Captain Melly plans to put a stop to all this, and becomes the target of a campaign to abandon his separatist ideals...
Handsome Prince George arrives on board his ship in Japan. Youthful, immaculate in naval uniform and smiling broadly, he goes through the complicated formalities of being greeted by a host nation. But housed with the Ambassador and his family, the Prince finds the atmosphere stuffy and dull; he longs for freedom and, for once, rebels against his upbringing with all its constraints and responsibilities, escaping for a week of romance, and unexpected drama…
Either you've got it or you haven't - some like randy young Timothy Lea (Robin Askwith), manage to get it all the time! Signing up with a pop group, our boisterous hero progresses rapidly from local gigs to scoring a titillating hit with The Climax Sisters, with plenty of ribald adventures along the way!
The famous Pink Panther jewel has once again been stolen and Inspector Clouseau is called in to catch the thief. The Inspector is convinced that 'The Phantom' has returned and utilises all of his resources – himself and his Asian manservant – to reveal the identity of 'The Phantom'.
From a Bird's Eye View is a 1970 ATV and ITC Entertainment co-produced sitcom. In the United States it aired on NBC, which had originally ordered the series as an entry in the 1969-70 TV season but pushed it back to the 1970-71 season as a mid-season replacement. The series followed two International Airlines stewardesses, a scatterbrained Briton and a savvy American, as they flew the London-European routes. The series ran for 16 25-minute colour episodes. The series was not a big success in either the UK or the US, but ITC re-used the format for the Shirley MacLaine series Shirley's World. That show also flopped, but ran to one more episode than From a Bird's Eye View.
Q... was a surreal television comedy sketch show from Spike Milligan which ran from 1969 to 1982 on BBC2. There were six series in all, the first five numbered from Q5 to Q9, and a final series titled There's a Lot of It About. The first and third series ran for seven episodes, and the others for six episodes, each of which was 30 minutes long. Various reasons have been suggested for the title. One possibility is that it was inspired by the project to construct the Cunard liner QE2, launched in September 1967, which was dubbed Q4. Another theory is that Milligan was inspired by the BBC 6-point technical quality scale of the time, where "Q5" was severe degradation to picture or sound, and "Q6" was complete loss of sound or vision. This was extended by some engineering departments to a 9-point scale, finishing at "Q9". According to Milligan's autobiography, the final series was renamed There's a Lot of It About after the BBC felt the public might find Q10 too confusing.
A stressed television producer and his unhappy lounge singer wife are growing tired of each other.
Francis Bigger, a notorious charlatan who tours the country lecturing on the subject of mind over matter, slips off the platform in the middle of his performance and ends up in hospital under the care of Dr Tinkle. The hospital is about to enter a period of total chaos. The regular Carry On team is joined by Frankie Howerd as the fraudulent Francis in this 'bed-panorama of hospital life'.
Two young women arrive in London to make it big in show business, and become corrupted by money and fame in the process.
Beggar My Neighbour was a black-and-white British sitcom starring Reg Varney, Peter Jones, June Whitfield, Pat Coombs and Desmond Walter-Ellis. It aired from 1966 to 1968 and was written by Ken Hoare and Mike Sharland.
When Dexter Munro (Baxter) and his new wife Juliet (Sally Smith) get married, they decide to escape Juliet's meddling father (James Robertson Justice) by buying a rundown cottage and doing it up themselves. But when the cottage proves to be more ramshackle than they thought, and the scale of the repairs needed far out of their budget, the newlyweds are forced into calling on Juliet's father after all. Before long he's employed incompetent builder Josh Wicks (Ronnie Barker), and the situation goes from bad to worse.
Political satire has Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet story updated for the cold war era, with the children of the US and Russian ambassadors falling in love.
John Cummings, an unsuccessful cosmetics salesman, has his unpaid-for car stolen by one of the hoods in the employ of Lionel Meadows, the sadistic organizer of a London car conversion racket. The car was not insured, and since the police appear indifferent to his plight, Cummings decides to find it himself -- and gets himself involved in an underworld battle.
Hapless Henry Palfrey is patronised by his self-important chief clerk at work, ignored by restaurant waiters, conned by shady second-hand car salesmen, and, worst of all, endlessly wrong-footed by unspeakably rotten cad Raymond Delauney who has set his cap at April, new love of Palfrey's life. In desperation Henry enrolls at the College of Lifemanship to learn how to best such bounders and win the girl.
During World War II, a Royal Artillery officer is assigned to an anti-aircraft battery that is filled with female soldiers of the Auxiliary Territorial Service. His wife who has enlisted is mistakenly posted to the battery in violation of regulations of husbands and wives serving together in the same formation. She becomes jealous of what she perceives as him paying too much attention to the other Auxiliary Territorial Service women.
Drama set in an Italian prisoner of war camp during World War 2, where a group of British soldiers find their plans for escape thwarted by a mysterious traitor in their midst.
St. Trinian's contrives to win a competition which has a European trip as the prize, in order for the Girls of the Flash Harry St Trinian's Marriage Bureau to meet a rich Roman royal.
An American tourist on a day trip to Sussex from London inadvertently finds himself at Glyndebourne Opera House in Sussex where he learns to appreciate Opera.
Stanley Windrush has to interrupt his university education when he is called up towards the end of the war. He quickly proves himself not to be officer material, but befriends wily Private Percival Cox who knows exactly how all the scams work in the confused world of the British Army. And Stanley's brigadier War Office uncle seems to be up to something more than a bit shady too - and they are both soon working for him, behind the enemy lines.
The adventures of two children who runaway to London to see the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.
In postwar London a young graduate and his girlfriend decide to marry. Her well-to-do parents are not convinced, but they agree once he has got a £5.10.0 job and a 30/- a week single-room flat. The newly-weds find money fearfully tight, the flat cramped, the neighbours a trial, and her parents always hovering. Can faith conquer all? Is there some way of getting rid of tea-leaves except down the sink?
The British inmates of a POW camp think they have an informer among them after several escape attempts fail. One of the prisoners constructs a dummy which they christen "Albert" and use at roll call in order to foil the German guards.
After their honeymoon, Johnny Lipton and his wife Kit move into their small apartment. Kit runs the flat on a tight budget, for she hopes that one day with her support her husband will eventually run his own business. A lack of understanding of each other s character and aspirations, however, leads to many problems before Johnny and Kit are able to attempt a 'good beginning' to their marriage.
Based on The Hand and the Flower, a novel by Jerrard Tickell, A Day to Remember stars Stanley Holloway as Charley Porter, captain of London darts team. When the team travels to the French town of Boulogne for the annual darts tournament, a good time is had by all--and more besides. Jim Carver one of the team's members, is reunited with a little French girl he'd befriended during the war, who has now developed into a beautiful young woman. And Fred Collins makes a poignant journey to the hotel where he'd honeymooned with his late wife. The film works best as a low-key comedy-drama; it is least successful when it ventures into O. Henry territory and strains for "surprise" story twists. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
A young boy is blackmailed by a crook who saw him unwittingly cause his friend's death.
Because of its high productivity and "almost" 100 per cent employment, the town of Hayhoe, England is expecting a visit from the Prime Minister. The "almost" is because of Dan Dance (Eddie Byrne), an old rogue who would rather drink and philosophize than work. The Village Council are determined to have a perfect record so they connive to have the old man put into the alms-house which has been unoccupied for many years, where he must abide by rules laid down 400 years ago. A new Vicar arrives and discovers that, because of the circumstances created by the Council, Dan Dance is entitled to 6,000 pounds a year at the expense of the village.
The year is 1940, Pilot Officer T.B. Baird arrives straight out of flight school to join a front line RAF squadron at the height of the Battle of Britain. After an unfortunate start and a drumming down from his commanding officer, Baird must balance the struggle to impress his Group Captain, regain his pride, fit in with his fellow pilots, and survive one of the most intense air battles in history.
In this delightful fantasy adventure, a mild-mannered newspaper columnist (Richard Hearne) finds himself presented with an intriguing proposition from an elderly fan (Margaret Rutherford). She suggests that they conspire to steal a secret whiskey formula from ruthless distillers, who themselves stole it from her family in years gone by. With the recipe back in hand however, it's not long before they attract attention from the Inspectors of Scotland Yard. ...Miss Robin Hood
Rona Anderson plays a wealthy young Englishwoman, long estranged from her father. She returns home when papa dies, reluctantly agreeing to listen to the will reading. It soon becomes clear that some unknown party is out to bump off Anderson as well--though she is the only person who stands to benefit from her father's demise.
Now old, ill, poor, and largely forgotten, William Freise-Greene was once very different. As young and handsome William Green he changed his name to include his first wife's so that it sounded more impressive for the photographic portrait work he was so good at. But he was also an inventor and his search for a way to project moving pictures became an obsession that ultimately changed the life of all those he loved.
Andrew Crocker-Harris has been forced from his position as the classics master at an English public school due to poor health. As he winds up his final term, he discovers not only that his wife, Millie, has been unfaithful to him with one of his fellow schoolmasters, but that the school's students and faculty have long disdained him. However, an unexpected act of kindness causes Crocker-Harris to re-evaluate his life's work.
The workers in a small plough factory take over the firm, but when a large order falls through, the old management come back to help out.
George Bird is a salesman of agricultural machinery who finds out that he hasn't long to live. On his doctor's advice, he goes to an exclusive seaside resort to spend his savings on one last holiday.
A police chief stationed in Egypt sets out to crack down on drug traffickers along the frontiers. With his assistant, he attempts to block the smugglers' passage along the notorious Cairo Road route into the country.
In the Victorian period two British children are the survivors of a shipwreck in the South Pacific. After days afloat, they are marooned on a lush tropical island in the company of kindly old sailor. Together they survive solely on their resourcefulness, and the bounty of their remote paradise.
Set on Blackpool’s Golden Mile, Jim (Douglass Montgomery), a once promising scientist, sets up in business as a patent medicine man selling hair tonic at the fair with his ex-army colleague Dan (Ronald Shiner). Following a fight with local hoods over pitch spaces, Jim falls for Jane (Hazel Court), the girl on a nearby candy floss stall. The two begin dating but Jim fails to mention he is already married.
Determined, independent Bridie Quilty comes of age in 1944 Ireland thinking all Englishmen are devils. Her desire to join the IRA meets no encouragement, but a German spy finds her easy to recruit. We next find her working in a pub near a British military prison, using her sex appeal in the service of the enemy. But chance puts a really vital secret into her hands, leading to a chase involving Bridie, a British officer who's fallen for her, a German agent unknown to them both, and the police...paralleled by Bridie's own internal conflicts.
Architect Walter Craig, seeking the possibility of some work at a country farmhouse, soon finds himself once again stuck in his recurring nightmare. Dreading the end of the dream that he knows is coming, he must first listen to all the assembled guests' own bizarre tales.
