Prunella Scales
Documentary charting and celebrating five decades of often groundbreaking, boundary-pushing comedy from BBC Two.
Heather is a shy lady who works in a helpline call centre. When she receives a phone call from a mystery man, she has no idea that the encounter will change her life forever.
When Henry fails yet again to hand in his homework for the umpteenth time, he has no idea that this will set off a chain of events which will see him forming an unlikely alliance with Moody Margaret, the infuriating girl next door, and his irritating little brother Perfect Peter, outwitting corrupt School Inspectors and toppling an evil Headmaster, winning a talent contest and facing his ultimate nemesis with no way out - all because he is trying to save the very school which he has always professed to hate!
30 years after Fawlty Towers (1975) ended, Stephen Fry narrates a documentary about the making of this classic sitcom.
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.
Satirical drama by Evelyn Waugh, adapted by Sam Hobkinson. Visiting her father Lord Moping in the county asylum, Angela meets a fellow inmate who appears far too sane to be locked up in an institution. She manages to get him released, but he returns two hours later, having achieved a terrible ambition.
Fawlty Towers Revisited features the 80-minute, 30th anniversary retrospective TV special on one of the world’s funniest and best-loved comedies, as well as an additional 10 minutes of behind-the-scenes stories and recollections from recent interviews with Fawlty Towers’ cast and crew.
Sheila and Bri share their struggles as they raise a severely handicapped daughter in this recorded performance of the play by Peter Nicholls. Broadcast on BBC4 in 2002.
At a rural railway station in Victorian England, Jim is a spunky Jack Russell Terrier who escapes his mean master at the circus, and is soon befriended by station porter Bob and lonely orphan Henry. His performing feats soon become a local attraction, and before long he's in the middle of a battle to save the local orphanage.
Teenager James Greville has lived in children's homes his whole life, so he is surprised when a Great Uncle invites him to his country manor for a holiday. While exploring the sprawling Greville Lodge he soon discovers that it has many secrets.
When her TV star husband Alex decides to divorce her so that he can start a career in politics, newly single mother Maddy goes shoplifting and ends up in jail. Losing custody of her infant child, Maddy hatches a scheme to break out of prison with the assistance of her friend Gillian, who's avoiding the law herself for credit card fraud. Now Maddy has to find the couple who have adopted her son and avoid falling in love with selfish Alex all over again.
Rising politician Robert Chiltern once sold secret information and is now being blackmailed by Laura Cheveley. She has proof, and it will damage his career and marriage severely. Chiltern calls in the help of his friend Arthur Goring.
Stiff Upper Lips is a broad parody of British period films, especially the lavish Merchant-Ivory productions of the 'eighties and early 'nineties. Although it specifically targets A Room with a View, Chariots of Fire, Maurice, A Passage to India, and many other films, in a more general way Stiff Upper Lips satirises popular perceptions of certain Edwardian traits: propriety, sexual repression, xenophobia, and class snobbery.
A biography of the English mathematician Alan Turing, who was one of the inventors of the digital computer and one of the key figures in the breaking of the Enigma code, used by the Germans to send secret orders to their U-boats in World War II. Turing was also a homosexual in Britain at a time when this was illegal, besides being a security risk.
Comedy drama. Retired Lord Chancellor Bill Webster decides to sell his memoirs to a tabloid newspaper in order to save his crumbling Cornish house. The Prime Minister wants to stop him as he believes the government will fall if his book is published. One of Bill's old girlfriends, now the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, is sent to try and stop him, but also on his trail is a tabloid journalist who senses a scoop.
Emma Woodhouse has a rigid sense of propriety as regards matrimonial alliances. Unfortunately she insists on matchmaking for her less forceful friend, Harriet, and so causes her to come to grief. Through the sharp words of Mr. Knightley, and the example of the opinionated Mrs. Elton, someone not unlike herself, Emma's attitudes begin to soften.
Liverpool. 1947. A star-struck young girl learns about the grown-up world of the theater.
It is 1970, there is World Cup and General Election fever. Marco, a wealthy Italian has come to England to discover his true identity. Carl, a student is torn between canvassing for the Labour party, watching the World Cup or going on a walking holiday with his girlfriend Ellie. Their paths cross in Preston library and the three take an epic journey across the Pennines.
Three-part dramatization of the novel by Joanna Trollope. A clergyman's wife shocks the church establishment and infuriates her husband by taking a job in a supermarket. She attracts the passionate interest of three very different men: a newly-appointed archdeacon; his younger brother, a philosopher and academic; and a wealthy businessman new to the village.
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.
Sir Walter Raleigh,who laid his cloak over a puddle so Queen Elizabeth I could cross, meets up with his friend and long lost cousin: Bess Throckmorton.He lives with them as a ghost but causes a bit of havoc! So, what will happen next?... Based on the book by Michael Morpurgo
The story about a man-sized frog named Prince Frederic who is turned into a frog by his wicked aunt Messina and hired by British Intelligence to solve the mysterious disappearances of some of Britain's greatest monuments. Several hundred years later, Freddie is now living in modern day Paris -- a six-foot-tall amphibian with the moniker Secret Agent F.R.O.7. Messina, too, is still around causing mischief, joining forces with an arch-villain named El Supremo in a scheme to shrink Big Ben. Freddie, alerted to Messina's nefarious plans, gathers his fellow agents Daffers and Scottie together, planning to hide out in Big Ben and surprise the evil doers when they are set to strike at the much-loved British landmark.
Sir Anthony Blunt, who was a Soviet agent for 25 years, is routinely questioned and gives no answers, but is knighted and works as Director of the Courtauld Institute, and presents his interrogator with a puzzle in the shape of a doubtful Titian painting. He also does art restoration work in Buckingham Palace, where he gets into an interesting conversation with HMQ.
Roald Dahl, that master of wicked humour, has created a ghastly menagerie of dirty beasts - all doing the most extraordinary and unmentionable things, in irreverent and absurdly comic verse. Including Crocky-Wock, the crocodile, who every Saturday has six young children for his lunch and how Miss Milky Daisy, the cow, punished a very rude man.
Adapted from the Beatrix Potter story tells the story of the pignap of Little Pig Robinson by Captain Barnabus Butcher who fools Robinson into believing he is being taken on a trip to visit the land of the Bong tree; the truth of the matter is more sinister.
Six of the best-loved nursery rhymes retold, with some extremely amusing twists, by the master of the comic and blood-curdling, Roald Dahl.
Guy Jones (Irons) moves to a small British town and joins the local amateur dramatics society as a way to meet people. However he soon finds the drama offstage far outweighs those onstage.
Adapted from a play written by two Monty Python vets, this toothy satire launches with a tragic accident at Chumley's chocolate factory when hapless manager Ian Littleton (Tyler Butterworth) accidentally knocks several employees into a huge chocolate vat. The tragic mishap at the chocolate factory results in candy lovers getting an unexpected 'extra' in their sweets.
Comedy thriller. Walter Bryce hires the professional services of the sinister Vincent to eliminate his rich, neurotic wife, Celia. All this to achieve a place in the sun with his secretary Angie. What seems to be a neat idea goes wrong when Vincent becomes involved on a personal level.
After Henry is a British sitcom that aired on ITV from 1988 to 1992. Starring Prunella Scales and Joan Sanderson, it had started on BBC Radio 4 in 1985, finishing in 1989. It was written by Simon Brett. After Henry was made for the ITV network by Thames Television. The BBC was reluctant to produce After Henry for television, so in 1988 after the third radio series Thames Television did so. The show was surprisingly popular, attracting over 14 million viewers. A second television series was shown during the same months as the fourth radio series with, in many cases, both radio and television episodes being broadcast on the same nights. The fourth television series was broadcast from July 1992, after the death of Joan Sanderson, who had died on 24 May.
A penniless middle-aged spinster scrapes by giving piano lessons in the Dublin of the 1950s. She makes a sad last bid for love with a fellow resident of her rundown boarding house, who imagines she has the money to bankroll the business he hopes to open.
White golliwogs, cross-dressing coppers, bellboy rapists, insanity, incest, and Winston Churchill’s giant member all play their part in this BBC production of Joe Orton’s farcical, bitingly satirical 1969 play, in which the head psychiatrist of a lunatic asylum, when trying to conceal the attempted molestation of his new secretary from his wife, only succeeds in making himself (and everyone else) look completely round the bend.
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.
The abused neglected wife of a loutish hotelier begins to suspect that her husband is the serial rapist that has been terrorizing the area.
Comedy, set during the 1930s, of social rivalry between two women in a small English town. New arrival Lucia (Geraldine McEwan, as Emmeline "Lucia" Lucas) creates challenges to the established local social dominance of Miss Elizabeth Mapp (Prunella Scales).
Caroline is to be wed to Sir Ralph and invites her sister Barbara to be her bridesmaid. Barbara seduces Ralph, however, and she becomes the new Lady, but despite her new wealthy situation, she gets bored and turns to highway robbery for thrills. While on the road she meets a famous highwayman, and they continue as a team, but some people begin suspecting her identity, and she risks death if she continues her nefarious activities.
The local social cricket team are up to bat and sometimes it seems they are one batsman short of of an eleven. There are good secrets and not so good secrets that come to light during the course of the day. Roger is the ultimate captain rallying his troops whilst ignoring his greatest strength, Miriam, who makes the 'fantastic' teas with or without the 'non-compulsory' help. The days builds to a climax where it seems that everything must change forever. But will it?
When Sir John Falstaff decides that he wants to have a little fun he writes two letters to a pair of Window wives: Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. When they put their heads together and compare missives, they plan a practical joke or two to teach the knight a lesson. But Mistress Ford's husband is a very jealous man and is pumping Falstaff for information of the affair. Meanwhile the Pages' daughter Anne is beseiged by suitors.
Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman discovers a sinister and bizarre plot to rekindle the Third Reich.
A series of pink forms has Doris and Doreen fearing for their cushy jobs.
Director Paul Morrissey applies a hefty dose of humor to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic detective story in this interpretation of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Comedian Peter Cook takes on the role of brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes, who's not so gifted here as he relegates much of the investigation of demonic dogs to his bumbling sidekick, Watson (Dudley Moore), while he spends time with his mother and searches for an assistant.
When the owner of a Yorkshire coal-mine decides to mechanize to increase profits, the mine's pit ponies are scheduled to be destroyed. So, three children plan to steal them to keep them safe. But when they're caught, it's up to the mine owners and the miners themselves to decide what's right
Shaw's comedy of ideologies looks forty years to the future at the impossibility of government as the British cabinet and monarchy face a day of "crisis" for the country. King Magnus is happy to engage a prime minister seeking to transform the nation into a constitutional monarchy, but who truly rules in this democracy: the king, the government or the businessmen? And do any of them care about the people?
Owner Basil Fawlty, his wife Sybil, a chambermaid Polly, and Spanish waiter Manuel attempt to run their hotel amidst farcical situations and an array of demanding guests.
This special edition marks the 30th Anniversary of one of the greatest situation comedies British television has ever seen. Every episode of the BAFTA winning sitcom has been fantastically remastered and for the first time ever John Cleese provides audio commentary onall 12 episodes
General Fitzhugh, an ageing Lothario has an over-active eye for a pretty woman. Despite a long and satisfying career as a seducer extraordinaire, something always seems to get in the way of his bedding the breathtakingly lovely Ghislaine, a more-than-willing town local.
Marriage Lines is a British television sitcom first broadcast from 1961 to 1966 which was made in black-and-white. The series gave Richard Briers and Prunella Scales, its lead stars, a significant boost in their careers. At first titled The Marriage Lines, the programme was written by Richard Waring, and was later adapted for radio.
Henry Hobson owns and tyrannically runs a successful Victorian boot maker’s shop in Salford, England. A stingy widower with a weakness for overindulging in the local Moonraker Public House, he exploits his three daughters as cheap labour. When he declares that there will be ‘no marriages’ to avoid the expense of marriage settlements at £500 each, his eldest daughter Maggie rebels.
Young couple Mark and Jane are forced to thrash out marital problems in a borrowed room in Jane’s parents’ tiny house. Meanwhile, Jane’s cousin, Jim - back from the war in Korea - and Mark’s involvement in left-wing politics place further strain on the relationship. Can grandfather help?
A starchy parliamentary delegation is sent to a remote Scottish Highlands community, where the residents are protesting the poor condition of their road by withholding their taxes, and spend a few days among the locals.
