Robert Knights
Period drama Black Velvet Band takes us back to Victorian times when a gang of petty crooks find themselves sentenced to transportation to Australia, their ship, however, docks in South Africa and the gang manage to make their escape. The film starred Nick Berry, Chris McHallem and Todd Carty, who had all previously appeared in EastEnders together. The initial idea came from McHallem, whilst Nick Berry, thanks to being the darling of ITV at the time because of his hit show Heartbeat, had the clout to get it made.
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.
Helen Hewitt is first woman put in charge of Barfield, a maximum security prison that had been nearly destroyed by a disastrous riot. Despite being greeted with open hostility by inmates and little enthusiasm by prison staff, she is determined to clean up the place.
Set in working class Newcastle, the Stott family fight their private battles against the backdrop of the conflict of World War II. Helen Stott, over thirty and with a limp, is resigned to being left on the shelf until she meets and falls in love with Norman, a serviceman from London. In contrast, her younger sister Joyce has quite a way with men, and finds herself a little too popular with the troops, especially when her husband pops up on leave from his regiment.
A young woman in her late teens is caught up in the political unrest of Southern Ireland in the 1920s in this drama that features an excellent cast. Nancy (Rebecca Pidgeon) befriends the pistol packing stranger she dubs Cassius (Anthony Hopkins) while he hides in a beach hut. He talks the naive Nancy into delivering a message to Dublin. There she meets Joe Mulhare (Mark O'Regan) and befriends the recipient of the message. Only when she witnesses the shooting deaths of 12 British officers does she realize the content of the lethal message. After the shootings, Nancy rushes to try and warn Cassius about the military police who are closing in on him. Trevor Howard is the old army officer and grandfather in his last screen role, with Jean Simmons as Aunt Mary. Watch for Hugh Grant as Harry, the stuffed shirt on whom Nancy has a huge crush.
In late-'80s Britain, Porterhouse College Cambridge is an anachronism, its students uniformly male and (in the vast number of cases) privately educated. When the incumbent Master dies (from a stroke brought on by overeating) the government revenges itself on Porterhouse by appointing as his successor an old graduate, the politician Sir Godber Evans. One of the tiny minority of state-school students the college has had forced on it over the years, Evans returns to his alma mater determined to drag this bastion of privilege into the twentieth century. The elderly academic staff cease their bickering and close ranks against him, but the new Master finds his most implacable and unscrupulous opponent in Skullion, the college porter.
Dennis Potter adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel about how the rich languoring on the Riviera in the 1920s are slowly drawn into the coming depression is once again filmed with Peter Strauss, Mary Steenburgen, and John Heard in the leads.
A brash young artist invades the secluded retirement of an elderly painter and finds that the great man lives with two young women in a tantalizingly ambiguous relationship.
The daily lives of the men and women at Sun Hill Police Station as they fight crime on the streets of London. From bomb threats to armed robbery and drug raids to the routine demands of policing this ground-breaking series focuses as much on crime as it does on the personal lives of its characters.
A workaholic persuades a lonely unmarried lady to pose as his wife. Soon she starts wondering about his past, and things start to go downhill.
Adaptation of Malcolm Bradbury's satirical novel about 1970s greybrick campus life.
"This could be a bit special, Maggie. This could be the first case of an office block falling down during the topping-out party." A self-made man finds his building firm in trouble as a new office block nears completion.
In 1956 Britain staggers through crises in Suez and Cyprus while Leslie Potter pursues and marries Monica Dobbs. Twenty years later the nation has still not recovered. Neither has Leslie.
Roy and Martyn want to write the next Irish winner for the Eurovision Song Contest. So who thinks they are working for British Army Intelligence? And why has someone sent them two bullets through the post?
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.
Vice-Chancellor Bartley Humbolt has problems. His young university is almost bankrupt, his wife is threatening to leave him, his protege professor from industry is threatening to overshadow him, and his prestigious professor of history is threatening to resign. But Bartley is a born manipulator. And when he gives a dinner party, he has something very special in mind - for afters.
Playwright Christopher Hudson finds his medical problem hinders his writing. He employs secretary Sandra George and dictates his new play to her, but tensions soon develop between the two. As Hudson creates, scenes from his play are dramatized and interpolated. The play being created is Dennis Potter's Angels Are So Few, seen with a totally different cast from the 1970 BBC production.
Dean has a rare talent. He can be made happy. He exudes happiness and confidence like a rare blossom. Both Sarah in the past, and Julia now, could do this for him. But where are they now that he is alone in Battersea Park with two suitcases and no memory?
It was a time when England was a nation on the cusp of change, an evolving landscape tht lay between Victorian England and the First World War. 'The Edwardians' explores the lives of and events in the lives of many who helped define the era, the "Belle Epoque".
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.
1983 play. In a 1920s middle-class guest house, a young girl observes life around her.
