Timothy West
Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, 1832. Anne Lister attempts to revitalize her inherited home, Shibden Hall. Most notably for the time period, a part of her plan is to help the fate of her own family - by taking a wife.
Jack, on the run for attempted murder, hides in the house of a deaf and mute man. A power struggle forms between the two.
On 7 May, churches, school halls, and back rooms of community centres will be turned into polling stations, staffed by council workers and volunteers. A church polling station is the backdrop for a real-time play for theatre and TV, called The Vote, staged at the exact moment in which the action is set - the last 90 minutes before polls close.
Exile is a British psychological thriller television series dealing with the topic of Alzheimer's disease against a background of corruption. It stars John Simm and Jim Broadbent and was broadcast on BBC One. The series received varyingly positive reviews. John Simm received a BAFTA nomination for his role as Tom Ronstadt, as did the director John Alexander.
Poirot's friend Ariadne Oliver attends a children's Halloween party at Woodleigh Common. During the party, a young girl known for lies and overexaggerating says she has seen a murder once. Later on the girl is found dead. Mrs Oliver asks for Poirot's assistance on finding the murderer.
Catastrophe is the fruit of boredom when a man with too much time on his hands becomes involved in an unexpected surprise.
Moist von Lipwig is a con-man with a particular talent-- he is utterly unremarkable. When his execution is stayed in Terry Pratchett's remarkable Discworld, he must work off his debt to society as the land's head Postman. Things are not always as they seem, and soon Lipwig is delivering mail for his very life!
The time is the late '80s, a crucial period in the history of South Africa. President P.W. Botha is hanging on to power by a thread as the African National Congress (ANC) takes up arms against apartheid and the country tumbles toward insurrection. A British mining concern is convinced that their interests would be better served in a stable South Africa and they quietly dispatch Michael Young, their head of public affairs, to open an unofficial dialogue between the bitter rivals. Assembling a reluctant yet brilliant team to pave the way to reconciliation by confronting obstacles that initially seem insurmountable, Young places his trust in ANC leader Thabo Mbeki and Afrikaner philosophy professor Willie Esterhuyse. It is their empathy that will ultimately serve as the catalyst for change by proving more powerful than the terrorist bombs that threaten to disrupt the peaceful dialogue.
Lucy Honeychurch and her nervous chaperone embark on a grand tour of Italy. Alongside sweeping landscapes, Lucy encounters a suspect group of characters — socialist Mr. Emerson and his working-class son George, in particular — who both surprise and intrigue her. When piqued interest turns to potential romance, Lucy is whisked home to England, where her attention turns to Cecil Vyse. But now, with a well-developed appetite for adventure, will Lucy make the daring choice when it comes to love?
During World War II, the Germans converts the castle of Colditz into an escape-proof prison where recidivist escapees are imprisoned under one roof. The most accomplished escape artists are gathered there, brave soldiers who view escape not only as a challenge but as a duty, in order to harass and irritate German forces as much as they can.
Beyond Borders is an epic tale of the turbulent romance between two star-crossed lovers set against the backdrop of the world's most dangerous hot spots. Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie stars as Sarah Jordan, an American living in London in 1984. She is married to Henry Bauford son of a wealthy British industrialist, when she encounters Nick Callahan a renegade doctor, whose impassioned plea for help to support his relief efforts in war-torn Africa moves her deeply. As a result, Sarah embarks upon a journey of discovery that leads to danger, heartbreak and romance in the far corners of the world.
The sailor of legend is framed by the goddess Eris for the theft of the Book of Peace, and must travel to her realm at the end of the world to retrieve it and save the life of his childhood friend Prince Proteus.
In 1913, a young woman starts work as a maid in a seedy Parisian boarding house full of eccentrics. When she falls in love with one of the guests, she must choose between her son and her new romance.
Bedtime was a British comedy-drama written and directed by Andy Hamilton and broadcast by the BBC. It ran for three series for a total of fifteen episodes between August 2001 and December 2003. The first two series had six episodes each and the third series had three episodes. Series 1 and 2 were released on DVD.
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.
Workaholic reporter, Jack Elgin takes his family on a working trip to India, but their aircraft is hijacked in Cyprus by a previously-unknown terrorist movement, and his wife and daughter are among the slaughtered. With western governments suppressing key facts and unwilling to go after the terrorists, Jack uses his contacts and snooping skill to seek the truth himself.
A unique 16th century woman, Danielle possesses a love of books, and can easily quote from Sir Thomas More’s UTOPIA. An intriguing mix of tomboyish athleticism and physical beauty, she has more than enough charm to capture the heart of a prince ... after beaning him with an apple.
It was one of the last unexplored places on Earth; a terrifyingly deep gully in the heart of the Borneo jungle. It was the ultimate challenge – to climb down into it and explore what the locals call, "The Place of the Dead." Based on a true story that made headlines around the world, this adventure drama is the tale of men pushed to their limits and beyond, battling against forces that they could not comprehend.
Over Here is a 2-part television miniseries made in 1996 by the BBC chronicling the lives of US Army Air Corps B-17 Flying Fortress bomber crews on a Royal Air Force Spitfire base during World War II. Conflict arose when American soldiers must share their barracks. Samuel West starred as the RAF pilot Archie Bunting. Martin Clunes starred as Group Captain Barker; a man with an inability to say the word "Luftwaffe".
A curtain raiser for the 1995-6 football season and a state of the Premiership comedy drama about the corrupt world of football. Sir Bob is a football club chairman and megalomaniac. As the season draws to a climax his club are staring into the abyss of relegation. Can new manager Ted save City from the drop?
Lawrence Jackson and Eddie Myers could not be more different. Jackson is an ambitious young police officer saddled with the responsibilities of a wife and children. Myers is an escaped criminal turned informer, presumed dead. But as Jackson discovers whilst holidaying in Spain, Myers is very much alive. He has reinvented himself as Phillip von Joel, handsome, dangerously charismatic and very wealthy. Extradited back to England after a nerve-wracking Scotland Yard Operation, von Joel agrees to a deal with the Police, He'll tell what he knows - but only if Jackson is his interrogator. So begins a deadly game of cat and mouse between the master criminal and his determined minder. Which comes first - duty or temptation?
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.
Molly Cowper is a wilful 80-year-old widow who firmly believes the world is there for her convenience. Her mild-mannered son Geoffrey does his best to help her keep her independence, but Molly keeps trampling on people.
Six of the best-loved nursery rhymes retold, with some extremely amusing twists, by the master of the comic and blood-curdling, Roald Dahl.
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.
A dramatic story, based on actual events, about the friendship between two men struggling against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. Donald Woods is a white liberal journalist in South Africa who begins to follow the activities of Stephen Biko, a courageous and outspoken black anti-apartheid activist.
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.
In 1956, the ultra-respectable seaside resort of Eastbourne was shocked when a local doctor, John Bodkin Adams, was arrested for murdering one of his elderly patients.
The Monocled Mutineer TV series follows the rebellion that took place at the notorious Etaples Training Camp in northern France on the eve of "The Battle of Passchendaele" in 1917. After the mutiny, the dashing Percy Toplis takes flight, dressed as a British officer, soon to embark on a love affair with beautiful young widow, Dorothy. A solder in the First World War, the real Percy Toplis was a rake, rogue and master of disguise who became the most wanted man in Britain. This controversial, acclaimed 1986 four-part BBC dramatisation of high romance, hilarious impudence and savage retribution was adapted by Alan Bleasdale from the book by William Allison and John Fairley.
When a handful of grain is found in the pocket of a murdered businessman, Miss Marple seeks a murderer with a penchant for nursery rhymes.
This is the fact-based story of an aristocratic woman who defies Victorian society to reform hospital sanitation and to define the nursing profession as it is known today. After volunteering to travel to Scutari to care for the wounded soldiers, who are victims of the Crimean war, she finds herself very unwelcome and faces great opposition for her new way of thinking. However through her selfless acts of caring, she quickly becomes known as 'The Lady with the Lamp', the caring nurse whose shadow soldiers kiss.
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.
Brass is a British comedy-drama series made by Granada Television for ITV and eventually Channel 4. Set mostly in Utterley, a fictional Lancashire mining town in the 1930s, Brass was a comedy satirising the working-class period dramas of the 1970s and the American supersoaps such as Dallas and Dynasty. Unusually for ITV comedies of the time, there was no laughter track and the humour deliberately kept extremely dry, using convoluted wordplay and subtle commentary on popular culture. Brass is northern English slang for "money" as well as for "effrontery". The series also gleefully parodied the 1977 Granada TV dramatisation of Dickens' Hard Times, which also starred Timothy West. The series, created by John Stevenson and Julian Roach, was set around two feuding families—the wealthy Hardacres and the poor, working-class Fairchilds, who lived in a small terraced house rented from the Hardacre empire. The Hardacre family was headed by the ruthless self-made businessman Bradley, who espoused Thatcherite rhetoric while coming up with various harebrained schemes to make his businesses more efficient so he could sack workers, and his alcoholic aristocratic wife Lady Patience. The head of the Fairchilds was the stern "Red" Agnes, who spread militant socialist rhetoric around the Hardacre mine, mill and munitions factory, and her doltish, forelock-tugging husband George, who is dominated by his wife and his boss. In a twist, Agnes was also Bradley Hardacre's mistress.
The classic Dickens tale of an orphan boy who escapes the horrors of the orphanage only to be taken in by a band of thieves and pickpockets.
American computer whiz Luke Williams meets elderly Lavinia Fullerton on a London-bound train. She reveals she's discovered the identity of a serial killer in her village and is going to report it to Scotland Yard. When she's murdered after disembarking the train. Williams vows to pursue the case himself
The complicated relationship between Winston Churchill and the leaders of the British army during World War II.
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.
A three-part adaptation of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, where a young student commits a murder and is forced into incriminating himself.
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 dying priest is commissioned to investigate the deeds of Giacomo Nerone, a dead wartime partisan, and find out if he truly is worthy of being canonized.
Thomas Gradgrind devotes his life to a philosophy of rationalism, self-interest and hard fact. His raising of his children to this way of thinking creates opportunity and tradegy.
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.
Edward the Seventh is a 1975 television drama series, made by ATV in 13 episodes. Based on the biography of Edward VII by Philip Magnus, it starred Timothy West as the elder Edward VII and Simon Gipps-Kent and Charles Sturridge as Edward in his youth, Annette Crosbie as Queen Victoria, Deborah Grant and Helen Ryan as Queen Alexandra, Robert Hardy as the Prince Consort, Alison Leggatt as the Duchess of Kent, and Felicity Kendal as Princess Vicky. It was directed by John Gorrie, who wrote episodes 7-10 with David Butler writing the remainder of the series. The series also featured John Gielgud as Benjamin Disraeli, Michael Hordern as William Ewart Gladstone, Harry Andrews as young Edward's tutor Colonel Bruce, Jane Lapotaire as Empress Marie of Russia, Christopher Neame as Kaiser Wilhelm II and, in one of his earliest roles, Charles Dance as Edward's eldest son Eddy, who died at the age of 28. Gielgud previously played Disraeli in the 1941 film The Prime Minister. The actresses playing Edward's mistresses include Moira Redmond as Alice Keppel and Carolyn Seymour as Daisy Greville. Francesca Annis was featured in two episodes as Lillie Langtry which led to Butler writing a full series about Mrs Langtry's life for Annis to star in, Lillie.
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.
Alan Clarke's standalone film first appeared as an episode of the BBC series "The Edwardians" and concerns notorious bon vivant, swindler, MP, public speaker, founder of the Financial Times and publisher of John Bull magazine, Horatio Bottomley.
Tsar Nicholas II, the inept last monarch of Russia, insensitive to the needs of his people, is overthrown and exiled to Siberia with his family.
The Tragedy of King Richard II, by William Shakespeare. The actions and repercussions of a proud King, whose vanity and selfishness lead to his downfall.
From the John le Carre novel about a British spy who sends a Polish defector to East Germany to verify missile sites.
Witch Hunt was a 1967 British supernatural television drama series shown on BBC2. Starring Patrick Kavanagh, and unfolding over 5 episodes, the plot involves a man, Rex Fordham, who moves to the Gloucestershire countryside and uncovers a secret witchcraft cult. Written by Jon Manchip White, directed by Peter Duguid, and produced by Alan Bromly. No episodes are known to exist in the archives as of 2009.
Persuasion is a 1960 British television mini-series adaptation of the Jane Austen novel of the same name. It was produced by the BBC and was directed by Campbell Logan. Daphne Slater stars as Anne Elliot, and Paul Daneman as Captain Frederick Wentworth. The mini-series has four episodes, each about an hour in length. According to shmoop.com, this mini-series was possibly destroyed in the BBC clean-out of the 1970s.
During a village's Hallowe'en party, a young girl boasts of having witnessed a murder from years before. No one believes her tale until her body is found later on in the evening, drowned in the apple-bobbing bucket.
An elderly man with dementia continues to speak with his late wife to keep her alive. When his daughter sees his decline she tries her best to make him comfortable and the memories they share embolden their relationship. An exploration of the highs-and-lows of memories fading through illness and natural inclinations.
