Piers Haggard
Nearly ten years in the making, This Man Alone is a brand-new feature-length documentary on one of television's highest-rated series. Featuring a remarkable central performance by Edward Woodward, Callan grew from a cult favourite into one of Britain's favourite shows, and this documentary tells the story of its creation and development, its success on television and extended life in film and books. Narrated by Peter Woodward, This Man Alone features contributions from Peter Mitchell, Reginald Collin, Mike Vardy, James Goddard, Piers Haggard, Patrick Mower, Trevor Preston and more
Mark Gatiss examines the history of the horror film, from classic Hollywood monsters to Hammer's glory days and beyond.
Penelope Keeling, a sixty-four-year-old daughter of a famous artist, reflects on her life, and the fate and choices that defined it, when she arrives in the Mediterranean to stay with her headstrong daughter. Shifting through time, and falling into place like the pieces of a jigsaw, the truth of Penelope's rich, heartbreaking and surprising life unfolds.
Doting parents (Maureen Lipman, David Ross, Tom Wilkinson) must adjust to life without their children as their offspring leave for college and form relationships. Sequel to Eskimo Day.
Comedy drama about the trials and tribulations of three sets of parents as they finally realise that their children have grown up and reluctantly they have to let them enroll at Cambridge University.
A CIA agent infiltrates the research team of a scientist who seeks to capture the essence of a dying leukemia patient.
Space Precinct is a British television series that aired from 1994 to 1995 on Sky One and later on BBC Two in Britain, and in first-run syndication in the US. Many US stations scheduled the show in late night time slots, which resulted in low ratings and ensured cancellation. The series was created by Gerry Anderson and was a mix of science fiction and police procedural that combined elements of many of Anderson's previous series such as Space: 1999, UFO and Thunderbirds, but with an added dash of Law & Order and Dragnet. Gerry Anderson was Executive Producer along with Tom Gutteridge. One of the series' directors was John Glen who had previously helmed various James Bond movies.
Ernest Albright opens his eyeglass store in what he thinks is a thriving community, but soon discovers that his store is just a shabby shack in Tombstone, Arizona. The town's Doom Brothers are trouble for everybody including Wyatt Earp, the sheriff. Ernest uses his own special brand of short-sighted shooting to help Wyatt rid the town of its worst citizens and live in peace.
A young man is reunited with his father, who has been presumed dead for ten years, and then tries to unravel the truth behind his disappearance.
Couple wants a baby but husband cannot produce on. Husband calls in his brother, hoping his brother will oblige and his wife will agree. He takes a trip to allow them to get to know each other. Will all turn out as hoped?
During World War II, young Rusty was sent to America for safety. It's now five years later and the spunky redhead returns to her native England. From the family she hardly remembers to snobby classmates and rule-filled boarding schools, Rusty must adapt to a whole new way of life.
Liza Minnelli plays three separate women in three separate stories. There's a serious drama about a hooker and her pimp, a romance about a lonely dancer and a black prince, and a musical about a man and a woman having dog problems.
A bittersweet tale of lost love, based on a short story ("The Apple Tree") by John Galsworthy.
This was the last of Dennis Potter's "one-shot, one-slot" plays for television. It had its origins in Potter's 1983 play "Sufficient Carbohydrate," about two middle-aged executives, one English, one American, who both work for the same multinational food company. Together, they vacation with their wives on a Greek island. In the TV adaptation, British businessman Jack becomes bitter as he faces the prospect of seeing his family company taken over by an American corporation. On a holiday at an Italian villa with his new manager, Eddie, he begins to stir up antagonism prompting Eddie's son Clayton to fantasize a murderous outcome.
The Ruth Rendell mysteries is a British television series made by TVS and Meridian Television for ITV between 2 August 1987 and 11 October 2000.
In 1965, at the age of 25, Alan Ackland is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a business associate. In 1971, Sylvia Barker, lonely and depressed after a failed marriage and with two young children to bring up alone, seeks a new direction in her life and applies to become a voluntary prison visitor. Several years later their paths cross.
Alan and Sylvia fall in love and Alan gains a renewed sense of purpose. He begins to hope for an eventual release on licence. However both he and Sylvia have to face the fact that, for the foreseeable future, they cannot enjoy any physical intimacy. They decide to treat their affair as a long Victorian courtship.
Play by Howard Brenton. Two expeditions meet, both lost in the Kalahari desert
Fu Manchu's 168th birthday celebration is dampened when a hapless flunky spills Fu's age-regressing elixir vitae. Fu sends his lackeys to round up ingredients for a new batch of elixir, starting with the Star of Leningrad diamond, nabbed from a Soviet exhibition in Washington. The FBI sends agents Capone and Williams to England to confer with Nayland Smith, an expert on Fu.
After the mysterious destruction of the new space station, young people find themselves drawn to a stone circle in England, and other locations around Earth. They believe they'll be taken to a better place by a higher power. Only Professor Quatermass realizes that the young people are being tricked by an alien power, who wants to "harvest" humanity. It's up to Quatermass to find a way to stop the deadly plans of the aliens.
Jolly sing-song with an important message; switch off all appliances before going to bed, because your life could depend on it.
Influenced by the social and geopolitical situation of the early nineteen-seventies and the hippie youth movement of the late nineteen-sixties, Quatermass is set in a near future in which large numbers of young people are joining a cult, the “Planet People”, and gathering at ancient sites, believing they will be transported to a better life on another planet.
In Howard Schuman’s contribution to the Against the Crowd series, Jamaican Albert Sharpe II (Warrington) is no longer at ease with the cultured white family who have virtually adopted him.
Zodiac was a six-part series transmitted by ITV in 1974. Starring Anton Rogers and Anouska Hempel as a cynical detective, David Gradley and Esther Jones, his astrologer assistant, the unusual astrological premise set this show apart from the humdrum detective dramas of the time. Little seen since its original transmission, the series has garnered something of a cult status Written by erstwhile Avengers scribe Roger Marshall, who was also behind the excellent but low-key Public Eye, this series has an unusual, almost claustrophobic feel to it. The action rarely ventures outdoors. The studio based ‘back yard' seems a little too false to be taken seriously, though as with many programmes of this vintage, you forgive the production values and concentrate on the stories being told. On the whole, the stories are intriguing in their complexity and have a good sense of pace. Each episode title makes reference to a specific star sign. A shame then, they only made six shows as twelve would have given them the full zodiac of titles.
When an aging ex-IRA man is found dead, a Garda inspector suspects the involvement of his old comrade, now a powerful politician and industrialist. But pursuing the case is likely to have consequences for both the policeman and his family.
Play set in Northern Ireland about Carson and the setting up of the Stormont Government of 1918-1920, after strong protests by the Northern Irish Protestants against Home Rule and separation from Great Britain.
A successful folk singer and his entourage are locked down in a Belfast hotel during the Troubles, as the authorities demand he identifies himself as either a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist.
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes is a British television series
The accidental unearthing of Satan’s earthly remains causes the children of a 17th-century English village to slowly convert into a coven of devil worshipers.
Three young merchant seamen from Liverpool take shore leave in their home city after three years away.
I Can’t I Can’t tells the tale of a young Irish Catholic bride who is devastated when her pregnant mother miscarries and dies on her wedding day. The young woman (Tessa Wyatt), one of seven children, blames her father’s lust for the death. When her own wedding night arrives she is terrified and refuses to consummate the marriage with her husband (Dennis Waterman). Her parish priest forbids her to accept her doctor’s suggestion that she should use contraception and she is driven to desperate measures.
Callan is the title of a British television series set in the murky world of espionage. Originally produced by ABC Weekend Television and later Thames Television, it was aired on the ITV network over four seasons spread out between 1967 and 1972. The series starred Edward Woodward as David Callan, a reluctant professional killer for a shadowy branch of the British Government's intelligence services known as 'the Section'.
A politically-active couple's involvement in an election campaign threatens their marriage through personal entanglements with the candidate and other campaigners.
Thirty-Minute Theatre is an anthology drama series of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, which was used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short running length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known. It was initially produced by Graeme MacDonald. Thirty-Minute Theatre followed on from a similarly named ITV series, beginning on BBC2 in 1965 with an adaptation of the black comedy Parsons Pleasure. Dennis Potter contributed Emergency – Ward 9, which he partially recycled in the much later The Singing Detective. In 1967 BBC2 launched the UK's first colour service, with the consequence that Thirty-Minute Theatre became the first drama series in the country to be shown in colour. As well as single plays, the series showed several linked collections of plays, including a group of four plays by John Mortimer named after areas of London in 1972, two three-part Inspector Waugh series starring Clive Swift in the title role, and a trilogy of plays by Jean Benedetti, broadcast in 1969, focusing on infamous historical figures such as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
