Rupert Davies

Writer and Director Mike Leigh discusses the techniques used to create his plays.

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.

This is the inspiring, epic journey of a noble warrior's quest to prove his worth, his might, and his destined fate to become the next ruler of Britain.

6.1/10

In 1957, Dorothy and Edmund Yates (Keith and Rupert Davies) were committed to an institution for the criminally insane, she for acts of murder and cannibalism and he for covering up her crimes. Fifteen years later, they are pronounced fit for society and released. However, in Dorothy's case the doctors may have jumped the gun a bit. Edmund and eldest daughter, Jackie (Deborah Fairfax), try to discover just how far Mother's bloodlust has taken her. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Debbie (Kim Butcher) begins to explore the crazy roots of her family tree as fully as possible.

6.3/10

The classic BBC dramatisation of Tolstoy's epic story of love and loss set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars. Anthony Hopkins heads the cast as Pierre Bezuhov (a role for which he won the 1972 Best Actor BAFTA); Morag Hood is the impulsive and beautiful Natasha Rostova; Alan Dobie is the dour but heroic Andrei Bolkonsky; and David Swift is Napoleon, whose decision to invade Russia in 1812 has far-reaching consequences for Pierre and the Rostov and Bolkonsky families. The twenty-part serial was the vision of producer David Conroy whose principle aim was to transfer the rich characterisation and incident from Tolstoy's greatest novel to a television drama. Scripted by Jack Pulman and directed by John Davies, Conroy's War And Peace boasts superb acting, award-winning design (1972 Best Design BAFTA) and breathtaking battle sequences which were filmed in former Yugoslavia.

8.2/10

Insurance investigator must find out who is setting fires. Along the way he meets and works with a beautiful newspaper reporter and falls in love.

6/10

An insane Swedish farmer escapes from an asylum to get revenge on his sister, her husband and others.

6.6/10
1.3%

The outbreak of World War I places Scots officer Geoffrey Richter-Douglas in an uncomfortable position. Although his allegiance is to Britain, his mother was from an aristocratic Bavarian family, and he spent his summers in Germany as a child. When Geoffrey is approached by a German spy who offers him a chance to defect, he reports the incident to his superiors, but instead of arresting the spy they suggest that he accept her offer--and become an Allied agent. In Germany, among old friends, Geoffrey discovers that loyalty is more complicated than he expected, especially when he finds himself aboard the maiden voyage of a powerful new prototype Zeppelin, headed for Scotland on a secret mission that could decide the outcome of the war.

6.2/10

After defeating France and imprisoning Napoleon on Elba, ending two decades of war, Europe is shocked to find Napoleon has escaped and has caused the French Army to defect from the King back to him. The best of the British generals, the Duke of Wellington, beat Napolean's best generals in Spain and Portugal, but now must beat Napoleon himself with an Anglo Allied army.

7.3/10
2.7%

After losing a submarine and fifty crew in a battle with a German ship during WWII, a Royal Navy officer gets a second chance in a daring raid with midget subs.

5.3/10

Aristocrat Julian Markham keeps his disfigured brother, Sir Edward, locked in a tower of his house. Occasionaly Sir Edward escapes and causes havoc around the town.

6/10
5.7%

Joe 90 is a 1960s British science-fiction television series following the adventures of a nine-year-old child, Joe McClaine, who starts a double life as a schoolboy-turned-spy when his scientist father invents a device capable of duplicating and transferring expert knowledge and experience from one human brain to another. Equipped with the skills of the foremost academic and military minds, Joe is recruited by the World Intelligence Network and, becoming its "Most Special Agent", pursues the ideal of world peace and saving human life. Created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and filmed by Century 21 Productions, the 30-episode series followed the earlier Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. First broadcast in the UK between September 1968 and April 1969 on the ATV network, Joe 90 was the sixth and final of the Andersons' productions to be made exclusively using the form of marionette puppetry termed "Supermarionation". Their final puppet series, The Secret Service, used this process only in combination with extensive live-action filming. As in the case of its antecedent, Captain Scarlet, the puppets of Joe 90 are of natural proportions as opposed to the more caricatured design of the characters of Thunderbirds.

6.7/10

In the shadow of Castle Dracula, the Prince of Darkness is revived by blood trickling from the head-wound of an unconscious priest attempting exorcism. And once more fear and terror strikes Transylvania as the undead Prince of Darkness stalks the village of Keineneburg to ensnare victims and satisfy his evil thirst.

6.6/10
8%

When his brother disappears, Robert Manning pays a visit to the remote country house he was last heard from. While his host is outwardly welcoming - and his niece more demonstrably so - Manning detects a feeling of menace in the air with the legend of Lavinia Morley, Black Witch of Greymarsh, hanging over everything.

5.6/10

England, 1645. The cruel civil war between Royalists and Parliamentarians that is ravaging the country causes an era of chaos and legal arbitrariness that allows unscrupulous men to profit by exploiting the absurd superstitions of the peasants; like Matthew Hopkins, a monster disguised as a man who wanders from town to town offering his services as a witch hunter.

6.8/10
8.8%

While travelling through Hong Kong, Bob Mitchell accidentally stumbles into the middle of criminal negotiations between a mean gang, the Five Golden Dragons and the local mobsters.

5/10

A secret agent is charged with preventing a crime syndicate's plot to assassinate a young heiress.

5.9/10

This time Fu Manchu and his army of henchmen are kidnaping the daughters of prominent scientists and taking them to his remote island headquarters. Instead of asking for ransom, Fu demands that the fathers help him to build a death ray, which he intends to use to take over the world. But Fu's archenemy, Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard, is determined not to let that happen.

5.5/10

Murder mystery featuring Maigret.

British agent Alec Leamas refuses to come in from the Cold War during the 1960s, choosing to face another mission, which may prove to be his final one.

7.6/10
8.7%

Gus is a seven-year-old uncle who struggles with the responsibility placed upon him when his nephew Tom comes to spend the summer holidays with his family.

6.8/10

BBC series based on the novels by Georges Simenon which starred Rupert Davies as Inspector Maigret, a French police detective who preferred to watch and listen in order to solve crimes. The series ran from 1960-63 on British television.

7.6/10

When a robbery at a racetrack goes wrong ex-con Johnny Bannion is caught and sent back to prison. He won't tell the rest of the gang where he has stashed the loot leading to violent consequences.

6.9/10
8.6%

A woman with extra-sensory perception has a vision of a murder.

5.9/10

The bio-epic about the infamous John Paul Jones.

6.5/10

Two Scotland Yard detectives (Nigel Patrick and Michael Craig) investigate the murder of a young woman of mixed race who had been passing for white. As they interview a spate of suspects -- including the girl's white boyfriend and his disapproving parents -- the investigators wade through a stubbornly entrenched sludge of racism and bigotry. Director Basil Dearden won a British Academy Award for his deft, sensitive hand at the helm.

7.1/10

A local government official leads a double life when organising a breakout from a prison.

6.7/10

Douglas Baines, a wartime army deserter, is lying low in a shabby flat with his girlfriend Daisy and the couple's small son, Jiffy. Returning home with a toy for Jiffy's second birthday, he learns that Daisy has had the boy adopted. When she refuses to tell him where the boy is, he strangles Daisy and goes on the run.

6.7/10

The police, with the help of a baker, try to find the owner a loaf of bread accidentally poisoned with potassium cyanide.

7/10

Life in Emergency Ward 10 is a 1959 film directed by Robert Day. It stars Michael Craig and Wilfrid Hyde-White. It was based on the television series Emergency – Ward 10

6.3/10

The captain of a tugboat harboured off a Spanish village is lured into a romantic involvement with a young girl at the behest of her father, in the hope of getting his hands on the vessel. Meanwhile, a handsome English sailor, signs on to the boat and before long he and the girl fall for one another. Meanwhile a sinking freighter carrying explosive cargo has to be salvaged....

6/10

In wartime England, circa 1941, poorly-armed tugs are sent into "U-Boat Alley" to rescue damaged Allied ships. An American named David Ross arrives to captain one of these tugs. He's given a key by a fellow tugboat-man -- a key to an apartment and its pretty female resident. Should something happen to the friend, Ross can use the key.

6.6/10