Ronald Pickup
A group of students are tormented by the lingering menace of Garth Stroman, an artist who had a disturbing vision fifty years prior. The pupils discover that true art can only be achieved through suffering and pain.
In 1895, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was the most famous writer in London, and Bosie Douglas, son of the notorious Marquess of Queensberry, was his lover. Accused and convicted of gross indecency, he was imprisoned for two years and subjected to hard labor. Once free, he abandons England to live in France, where he will spend his last years, haunted by memories of the past, poverty and immense sadness.
A thrilling and inspiring true story begins on the eve of World War II as, within days of becoming Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill must face one of his most turbulent and defining trials: exploring a negotiated peace treaty with Nazi Germany, or standing firm to fight for the ideals, liberty and freedom of a nation. As the unstoppable Nazi forces roll across Western Europe and the threat of invasion is imminent, and with an unprepared public, a skeptical King, and his own party plotting against him, Churchill must withstand his darkest hour, rally a nation, and attempt to change the course of world history.
A woman confronting a painful time in her life after she discovers the truth about a mysterious old man living across from her.
Determined to gatecrash her ex-lover's funeral on glamorous French hideaway Île de Ré, former Hollywood siren Helen escapes her London retirement home with help of repressed English housewife Priscilla and they hit the road together in a race to get to the funeral on time.
The year is 1940. As Hitler's forces storm across Europe, Winston Churchill is elected the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. His leadership is immediately tested as hundreds of thousands of British and Allied troops become trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk, with the Germans closing in. As the desperate battle for survival unfolds on land, air, and sea, Churchill must fight his own battles to launch a daring rescue effort across the English Channel. This fan edit combines the intense frontline action of Dunkirk with the backroom political intrigue of Darkest Hour, to create an epic supercut that tells the full story of the Dunkirk evacuation.
The thin line between happiness and disaster: Jakob cancels a business trip to New York City because he finds out his ex-girlfriend is coming to a party in Berlin on that day: 9/11/2001. His friend Hans goes to the US instead.
As the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has only a single remaining vacancy - posing a rooming predicament for two fresh arrivals - Sonny pursues his expansionist dream of opening a second hotel.
British retirees travel to India to take up residence in what they believe is a newly restored hotel. Less luxurious than its advertisements, the Marigold Hotel nevertheless slowly begins to charm in unexpected ways as the residents find new purpose in their old age.
A rogue prince reluctantly joins forces with a mysterious princess and together, they race against dark forces to safeguard an ancient dagger capable of releasing the Sands of Time – gift from the gods that can reverse time and allow its possessor to rule the world.
8 part series behind the scenes at the famous Theatre Royal, Haymarket, with a focus on a production Waiting for Godot featuring Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Ronald Pickup and Simon Callow. Also covers the early stages of Breakfast at Tiffany's starring Anna Friel and Joseph Cross.
A man emerges with his autistic daughter and three others from a hospital elevator to find themselves trapped in the building with devilish monsters.
When a broken hearted boy loses the treasured wooden nativity set that links him to his dead father, his worried mother persuades a lonely ill-tempered woodcarver to create a replacement, and to allow her son to watch him work on it.
This is the true story of a little dog that refused to leave his master's graveside in Edinburgh. The dog visited the grave for years.
Follows Tulse Luper as he is swept into the ill-fortuned tides of the 20th century and forced to spend his life in a succession of imprisonments.
Isabel and Clara are growing up in a time of terror. It is 1492, and Spain has decreed that all Jews must either convert to Catholicism, go into exile or face trial and execution. Although forcibly baptized, the sisters are chased through Christendom until they arrive in Venice. It is in this great maritime empire, where opulence rhymes with tolerance, that Isabel organizes secret passages for refugees fleeing the Inquisition while Clara falls in love with a Venetian noble, Paolo Zane. Isabel intends for her family to go to Istanbul, the only place where Jews can live freely, but Clara is reluctant to leave. She challenges Isabel's authority and is prepared to break her family ties and sacrifice her faith for love. Caught in this battle of wills is Clara's daughter, Victoria, who finds she is about to be married into the same faith that murdered her father.
Robert Nobel is the butt of classroom jokes and a victim of Niker the classroom bully. He is haunted by dreams that seem to tell the future as well as the past. His life changes when a storyteller invites some of his class to Mayfield House, a place Robert has already dreamed about. There he meets a spiky old lady called Edith Sorrel who chooses him as her partner. He embarks on a series of events that will change their lives forever.
The Worst Week of My Life is a British comedy television series, first broadcast on BBC One between March and April 2004. A second series was aired between November and December 2005 and a three-part Christmas special, The Worst Christmas of My Life was shown during December 2006. It was written by Mark Bussell and Justin Sbresni.
The Tulse Luper Suitcases reconstructs the life of Tulse Luper, a professional writer and project-maker, caught up in a life of prisons. He was born in 1911 in Newport, South Wales and presumably last heard of in 1989. His life is reconstructed from the evidence of 92 suitcases found around the world - 92 being the atomic number of the element Uranium. The project includes three feature films, a TV series, 92 DVDs, CD-ROMs, and books.
Horatio Homblower, now promoted to Acting Lieutenant, captures the French ship Le Reve off the Spanish coast. The Captain of the French ship is furious that such a youngster has pulled off such a coup. But far more daunting is Hornblower's first taste of the high life, when he is invited to dine with the Governor of Gibraltar and his wife. The prospect of this is frightening enough, but an unexpected guest, the glamorous Duchess of Wharfedale, adds another spin to his evening.
The epic tale of the idealistic young knight Ivanhoe and his battle against the evil Templar Bois-Guilbert. Caught between the rivalries and religious struggles are Ivanhoe's betrothed Rowena and the brave, beautiful Jewess healer Rebecca, who wins Ivanhoe's heart with her courage. This grand six-part adaptation of Sir Walter Scott's rousing adventure of the Middle Ages is set against the historical backdrop of a Britain straining under the corrupt rule of Prince John while Richard the Lionhearted fights in the Crusades.
A two-part biography of the Irish writer Samuel Beckett. The first part covers the traumas of his formative years: his ill-fated love affair with his first cousin, the death of his father, and his decorated service with the French Resistance. He had settled in France before the Second World War, met fellow Irishman James Joyce, and begun writing. Patrick Magee's television performance of `Krapp's Last Tape' (1972) is interwoven with key landscapes and personalities from Beckett's life. The second part concludes the story of how Beckett finally began to connect with his audience, principally through `Waiting for Godot'. Includes an interview with the actress Billie Whitelaw, a celebrated interpreter of his work.
The Home Secretary has his eye on the Prime Minister's job. But an experiment in the way the prisons are run leads to embarrassment - and escaped murderers! The fore runner of Crossing The Floor
A version of Dennis Potter's play for television, remade shortly before his death as the original 1960s version had been wiped.
Stephen Milner is a solicitor, but he fits uneasily into the world of Lewis Strange and Partners, who are an upmarket firm of solicitors.The film follows Milner's fraught relationship with a lucrative client, Ron Jesson. When one of his offices goes up in flames, the press are convinced that Ron arranged the fire for insurance purposes.Milner also has to cope with an estranged wife, batty mother and debt ridden younger brother.
It is the late 1930s and some British households still eagerly await the arrival of electricity. When a pylon is erected in the garden, Morris's mother can't wait to show off her Swedish lumbago belt and toaster. But Morris is gripped by a deeper passion that will change his life - one that will not be illuminated for 50 years.
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.
The Riff Raff Element is a 1990's British comedy-drama series written by Debbie Horsfield and directed by Jeremy Ancock, who also directed Dressing for Breakfast and episodes of The Bill and Bergerac. It was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series in 1994.
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 ancient Aztec world inadvertantly welcomes its doom in the form of the Conquistadors.
A fifty something English Banker falls for and has an affair with a teenage Irish waif from the wrong side of the tracks causing him grief at work and at home.
Black comedy set in Soho, London, right after WW2. Half of the fun is seeing a slew of very familiar faces kick up their heels as gay men, lesbians, party-girls, drunks, and drag queens.
At the request of his old war time colleague Ailsa Brimley, George Smiley agrees to look into the murder of Stella Rode. Brimley had only just received a letter from her saying she feared for her life at her husband's hand. The husband, Stanley Rode teaches at Carne School, but Smiley is doubtful that he had anything to do with his wife's death. As Smiley investigates, he learns that Stella was a nosy busybody who loved to learn other's little secrets and then gossip about them - or possibly blackmail them. When a student is killed and Smiley unearths a secret, he has the evidence to name the killer.Based on John Le Carré's 1962 thriller (his first) in which George Smiley is brought out of spy retirement to solve a murder in a British public school. The setting is based on Le Carre"s own schooldays in Sherborne and his brief experience teaching at Eton.
The son of a besieged Shogun in war-torn 17th century Japan travels to Spain to buy weaponry from the king.
Not with a Bang was a short-lived British television sitcom produced by London Weekend Television in 1990. It ran for seven episodes, each 30 minutes long. The show was a dark science fiction comedy, focusing on the end of the human race on Earth. The title comes from the last line of T. S. Eliot's poem The Hollow Men "not with a bang, but a whimper".
Henry Jekyll is a troubled man. His wife died of pneumonia. He wants his sister-in-law, but her father forbids any contact. And his experiments into the dual nature of man have yielded a personality-splitting drug that he has tested on himself, changing him into an uninhibited brute who seeks violent and undignified pleasures. Jekyll quickly becomes addicted to the sordid freedom induced by the drug. He can commit the most enjoyably revolting deeds, then return to his laboratory and use an antidote to change back to his original form, so that his lofty persona remains untarnished.
Behaving Badly is a 1989 British television serial directed by David Tucker. The teleplay by Catherine Heath and Moira Williams is based on Heath's novel of the same name. It was initially broadcast by Channel 4. The series was released on DVD in 2005. The plot focuses on Bridget Mayor, a middle-aged housewife and part-time teacher who is forced to re-evaluate her life when her husband of twenty years abandons her for a younger woman.
During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.
Somewhere in England, in the Autumn of 1955, a widowed father and his son live an idyllic life together. Only their gas station happens to sit on a piece of land that a local developer wants to buy. And when he won't take no for an answer, and sets government inspectors and social works onto Danny and his father, Danny and his father decide to get even with Hazell and his pheasant- shooting friends in a manner in keeping with their own family tradition.
Plan Aurora, led by Kim Philby is a plan that breaches the top-secret Fourth Protocol and turns the fears that shaped it into a living nightmare. A crack Soviet agent, placed under cover in a quiet English country town, begins to assemble a nuclear bomb, whilst MI5 agent John Preston attempts to prevent it's detonation.
Fortunes of War is a 1987 BBC television adaptation of Olivia Manning's cycle of novels Fortunes of War. It stars Kenneth Branagh as Guy Pringle, lecturer in English Literature in Bucharest during the early part of the Second World War, and Emma Thompson as his wife Harriet. Other cast members included Ronald Pickup, Robert Stephens, Alan Bennett, Philip Madoc and Rupert Graves. The series stays relatively faithful to the original novels, with no notable departures from their plot.
When a Spanish Jesuit goes into the South American wilderness to build a mission in the hope of converting the Indians of the region, a slave hunter is converted and joins his mission. When Spain sells the colony to Portugal, they are forced to defend all they have built against the Portugese aggressors.
A tradition-bound gentlemen's club is thrown into chaos when women are allowed in during "ladies' night." One member resents the intrusion of women so much, he resorts to murder.
Bio-drama tracing the life and career of Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla from his days as a young activist in Poland to his rise and installation in 1978 as Pope of the Catholic world.
Nick is a writer in New York when he gets posted to a bureau in Greece. He has waited 30 years for this. He wants to know why his mother was killed in the civil war years earlier. In a parallel plot line we see Nick as a young boy and his family as they struggle to survive in the occupied Greek hillside. The plot lines converge as Nick's investigations bring him closer to the answers.
Camille is a courtesan in Paris. She falls deeply in love with a young man of promise, Armand Duval. When Armand's father begs her not to ruin his hope of a career and position by marrying Armand, she acquiesces and leaves her lover. However, when poverty and terminal illness overwhelm her, Camille discovers that Armand has not lost his love for her.
James Bond returns as the secret agent 007 one more time to battle the evil organization SPECTRE. Bond must defeat Largo, who has stolen two atomic warheads for nuclear blackmail. But Bond has an ally in Largo's girlfriend, the willowy Domino, who falls for Bond and seeks revenge. This is the last time for Sean Connery as Her Majesty's Secret Agent 007. Made outside of the traditional Broccoli production environment due to separate rights having been obtained for this specific Ian Fleming story.
A remote farmhouse on an isolated island. Strangers with English accents. Quarrels and a lonely child. The year is 1946. The man is George Orwell. The book he has come to write is Nineteen Eighty-four.
The wife of a Malaysian planter kills an employee of her husband one night, but her motive begins to appear not entirely truthful.
This is a remake of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe, a worthy and noble knight, the champion of justice returns to England after the holy wars. He find England under the reign of Prince John and his henchmen and finds himself being involved in the power-struggle for the throne of England. Will justice prevail and will all fair ladies in distress be rescued?
The film suggests Nijinsky was driven into madness by both his consuming ambition and self-enforced heterosexuality, the latter prompted by his romantic involvement with Romola de Pulszky, a society girl who joins impresario Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes specifically to seduce Nijinsky. After a series of misunderstandings with Diaghilev, who is both his domineering mentor and possessive lover, Nijinsky succumbs to Romola's charms and marries her, after which his gradual decline from artistic moodiness to complete lunacy begins.
Henry is a proud monarch who flies in the face of the church in seeking to divorce Queen Katherine and marry Anne Bullen. As cardinal Wolsey, the powerful Lord Chancellor of England, attempts to bend Rome to the King's wishes, the court reverbates with political intrigue and accusations of treachery.
The year is 1914 and Richard Hannay, Mining Engineer who is visiting Britain for a short time before returning to South Africa, is shocked when one of his neighbours, Colonel Scudder, bursts into his rooms one night and tells him a story that Prussian 'sleeper' agents are planning to pre-start World War I by murdering a visiting foreign minister. However, Scudder is murdered and Hannay is framed for the death by the 'sleepers'. Fleeing to Scotland Hannay attempts to clear his name and to stop the agents with the aid of Alex Mackenzie but not only is he is chased by Chief Supt Lomas for Scudder's death but by the agents who are headed by Appleton who has managed to hide himself in a high-placed position in the British Government...
A female voice identifies a lone man in a room. The shots cut closer, revealing he is holding a cassette recorder, playing Beethoven's "Ghost" Piano Trio no. 5. The film repeats the imagery, and then shows what he has been reacting to.
The original play by Christopher Hampton, was adapted into this made-for-TV movie and it offers witty dialogue in the midst of remarkable conflict among its privileged characters.
The film begins on a train journey with Gustav Mahler (Robert Powell) and his wife Alma (Georgina Hale) confronting their failing marriage. The story is then recounted in a series of flashbacks (some of which are surrealistic and nightmarish), taking one through Mahler's childhood, his brother's suicide, his experience with anti-semitism, his conversion from Judaism to Catholicism, his marital problems, and the death of his young daughter. The film also contains a surreal fantasy sequence involving the anti-Semitic Cosima Wagner (Antonia Ellis), widow of Richard Wagner, whose objections to his taking control of the Court Opera were supposedly removed by his conversion to Catholicism. In the process, the film explores Mahler's music and its relationship to his life.
On the eve of an in-depth television interview, Edward Waite, former Labour cabinet minister, calls his family together for a birthday celebration that results in dramatic revelations.
An international assassin known as ‘The Jackal’ is employed by disgruntled French generals to kill President Charles de Gaulle, with a dedicated gendarme on the assassin’s trail.
On a day in the summer of 1912, the family of retired matinee idol James Tyrone grapples with the morphine addiction of Tyrone's wife Mary, the illness of their youngest son Edmund, and the alcoholism and debauchery of the older son Jamie. As day turns into night, guilt, anger, despair, and regret threaten to destroy the family.
A film of the National Theatre's presentation of the Shakespeare play.
The TARDIS materialises not far from Paris in 1794 — one of the bloodiest years following the French Revolution of 1789. The travellers become involved with an escape chain rescuing prisoners from the guillotine and get caught up in the machinations of an English undercover spy, James Stirling — alias Lemaitre, governor of the Conciergerie prison.
BBC TV miniseries of The Chronicles of Narnia - The Silver Chair made into a single DVD movie. Eustace is sent to a horrible school and finds a friend in Jill Pole, who's also running from the bullies and looking for a place to hide. The two of them are magically transported from the garden shed into the magical world of Narnia, where they are entrusted with a task by Aslan: to rescue the king's stolen son, Prince Rilian. Together with Puddleglum the Marshwiggle, they must travel north across the mountains, dodge giants, and journey down into the earth itself to rescue Rilian from the mysterious evil that holds him bound there.
