Doomwatch
Doomwatch is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC, which ran on BBC 1 between 1970 and 1972. The series was set in the then present-day, and dealt with a scientific government agency led by Doctor Spencer Quist, responsible for investigating and combating various ecological and technological dangers. The series was followed by a film adaptation produced by Tigon British Film Productions and released in 1972, and a revival TV film was broadcast on Channel 5 in 1999.
Kit Pedler
Gerry Davis
Dennis Spooner
Terence Dudley
David Sullivan Proudfoot
Vere Lorrimer
Elwyn Jones
Frank Cox
Hugh David
Louis Marks
Roger Parkes
Brian Hayles
Lennie Mayne
Robert Holmes
Pennant Roberts
Casts & Crew
Robert Powell
John Paul
Also Directed by Terence Dudley
The series starred Thora Hird as crusading local councillor Sarah Danby and was set around the fictional borough of Furness in Lancashire. Capitalising on the popularity of its lead actress, The First Lady was a down-to-earth series exploring the inner workings of local government.
Softly, Softly is a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It centred around the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID officers based in the fictional region of Wyvern, supposedly in the Bristol area of England.
Secret Army, a series created by Gerard Glaister, chronicled the history of a Belgian resistance movement during the Second World War dedicated to returning Allied airmen back to their home country. The show was set in a Brussels café and later restaurant (Le Candide), where the owner Albert Foiret helps Lisa Colbert (code-named "Yvette") hide airmen and control the various members of the "Lifeline" organisation as they take the airmen across borders to safer neutral countries such as Spain. Their principal opponents were Ludwig Kessler, an officious officer in the SS, and the more laidback Luftwaffe officer Major Erwin Brandt.
Oil Strike North is a BBC television drama series produced in 1975. The series was created and produced by Gerard Glaister and dealt with life on Nelson One, a North Sea oil rig owned by the fictional company Triumph Oil. Eschewing the corporate power struggles of Mogul / The Troubleshooters and concentrating on more personal storylines, Oil Strike North was essentially a character study of how workers faced life on the rig and the impact it had on the lives of their families and loved ones. The scenario was later revived by the BBC for the mid-1990s drama Roughnecks. Oil Strike North lasted for one series of thirteen episodes. The leading cast members included Nigel Davenport, Glyn Owen, Barbara Shelley, Angela Douglas, Andrew Robertson, Richard Hurndall, Sean Caffrey and Maurice Roëves. Gerard Glaister later moved onto to produce the Second World War resistance drama Secret Army, the air freight series Buccaneer and then onto the boating soap serial Howards' Way. Two of the leading actors in Oil Strike North, Nigel Davenport and Glyn Owen, also later appeared in Howards' Way.
After barely surviving the trenches of World War I, an embittered young soldier takes a teaching post at Bamfylde, an elite boarding school in the uplands of West Devon. It is an unlikely job for a Welsh miner's son without a degree, but David Powlett-Jones (John Duttine) proves to be a rare schoolmaster, as passionate about learning as he is about teaching. Through two tumultuous decades, Powlett-Jones inspires his students with his courage and idealism, qualities that help prepare him to send another generation of young men off to fight yet another war.
Triangle was a BBC Television soap opera in the early 1980s, set aboard a North Sea ferry which sailed from Felixstowe to Gothenburg and Gothenburg to Amsterdam. A third imaginary leg existed between Amsterdam and Felixstowe to justify the programme title, but this was not operated by the ferry company. The show ran for three series before being cancelled, but is still generally remembered as "some of the most mockable British television ever produced". The scripts involved clichéd relationships and stilted dialogue, making the show the butt of several jokes - particularly on Terry Wogan's morning Radio 2 programme - which caused some embarrassment to the BBC. In 1992, the BBC screened TV Hell, an evening of programming devoted to the worst television had to offer, and the first episode of Triangle was broadcast as part of the line-up. The ferry used in the first series was the Tor Line's MS Tor Scandinavia. In the second and third series this was replaced by the DFDS vessel Dana Anglia probably because she had a less intensive schedule and the longer time she spent in port made on-board filming easier.
The Yorkshire-based Champion family and the dramas surrounding the family textiles firm, Champion Mills.
Z-Cars or Z Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.
Colditz is a British television series co-produced by the BBC and Universal Studios and screened between 1972 and 1974. The series deals with Allied prisoners of war imprisoned at the supposedly escape-proof Colditz Castle when designated Oflag IV-C during World War II, and their many attempts to escape captivity, as well as the relationships formed between the various nationalities and their German captors. Colditz was created by Brian Degas working with the producer Gerard Glaister, who went on to devise another successful BBC series dealing with the Second World War — Secret Army. Technical consultant for the series was Major Pat Reid, the real British Escape Officer at Colditz. One of the locations used in filming was Stirling Castle.
Also Directed by David Sullivan Proudfoot
The series starred Thora Hird as crusading local councillor Sarah Danby and was set around the fictional borough of Furness in Lancashire. Capitalising on the popularity of its lead actress, The First Lady was a down-to-earth series exploring the inner workings of local government.
The Mask of Janus is a British television series produced by the BBC in 1965. The series was set in the fictional European country of Amalia and dealt with the political interests of the British, American and Communist espionage communities within. Eschewing the action formula of its ITV contemporaries, the series dealt with more politically oriented plots such as defections to the west, awakening "sleeper" agents and the leaking of official secrets. As of 2009, 7 of the original episodes of this programme are still missing from BBC archives. A spin-off series called The Spies followed in 1966.
Softly, Softly is a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It centred around the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID officers based in the fictional region of Wyvern, supposedly in the Bristol area of England.
Oil Strike North is a BBC television drama series produced in 1975. The series was created and produced by Gerard Glaister and dealt with life on Nelson One, a North Sea oil rig owned by the fictional company Triumph Oil. Eschewing the corporate power struggles of Mogul / The Troubleshooters and concentrating on more personal storylines, Oil Strike North was essentially a character study of how workers faced life on the rig and the impact it had on the lives of their families and loved ones. The scenario was later revived by the BBC for the mid-1990s drama Roughnecks. Oil Strike North lasted for one series of thirteen episodes. The leading cast members included Nigel Davenport, Glyn Owen, Barbara Shelley, Angela Douglas, Andrew Robertson, Richard Hurndall, Sean Caffrey and Maurice Roëves. Gerard Glaister later moved onto to produce the Second World War resistance drama Secret Army, the air freight series Buccaneer and then onto the boating soap serial Howards' Way. Two of the leading actors in Oil Strike North, Nigel Davenport and Glyn Owen, also later appeared in Howards' Way.
Codename, which premiered in April 1970, was about the secretive MI17 Spy Organisation of the same name based in the residential hall of a Cambridge College. Eventually the series attained a more international flavour, although its base was always in Great Britain. Primarily Codename dealt with the themes of espionage and counter-espionage at the time of the Cold War of the sixties. Its cast contained many of Great Britain's most versatile and talented actors.
Warship was a popular British television drama series produced by the BBC between 1973 and 1977. The series dealt with life on board a Royal Navy warship, the fictional HMS Hero.
The Venturers is a British television series produced by the BBC in 1975. The series, created by Donald Bull, had started out as an edition of Drama Playhouse in 1972 before being commissioned as an ongoing series. The Venturers took place in the high pressure world of Prince's Merchant Bank and dealt with the intricacies of high finance amongst its millionaire clients. Geoffrey Keen starred as director Gerald Lang, in a virtual reprise of his role as oil executive Brian Stead in Mogul / The Troubleshooters. Other major cast members included James Kerry, David Buck, Cyril Luckham and William Squire. The Venturers lasted for a single series of ten episodes.
Also Directed by Vere Lorrimer
The Enigma Files is a British television detective drama that ran for one series of fifteen episodes in 1980.
Softly, Softly is a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It centred around the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID officers based in the fictional region of Wyvern, supposedly in the Bristol area of England.
Created by Ted Willis. Dixon of Dock Green was a BBC television series following the activities of police officers at a fictional Metropolitan Police station in the East End of London from 1955 to 1976. Some episodes were later remade as a BBC radio series in 2005 and 2006.
Counterstrike is a British science fiction television series produced by the BBC in 1969. The series starred Jon Finch as an alien living on Earth as a human named Simon King. He was assigned to live there to prevent an alien invasion of the planet. The programme lasted for one series of ten episodes, but only nine episodes were actually transmitted. The screening of the sixth episode, "Out of Mind", was canceled on the day it was due to be shown due to a late schedule change, being replaced by a documentary on the Kray brothers who had been refused leave to appeal against their prison sentences on that same day. For reasons that will probably never be known, "Out of Mind" was never rescheduled; it was subsequently wiped from the BBC Archives and has never been screened – thus making it possibly one of the rarest pieces of British science fiction television. The first four episodes – "King's Gambit", "Joker's One", "On Ice" and "Nocturne" – still exist in the BBC Archives as 16mm Black & White Film telerecordings, while the remaining five transmitted instalments – "Monolith", "The Lemming Syndrome", "Backlash", "All That Glisters" and "The Mutant" – are listed as missing by the Lost Shows website.
Z-Cars or Z Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.
Compact was a British television soap opera shown by the BBC between 1962 and 1965. The series was created by Hazel Adair and Peter Ling, who together went on to devise Crossroads. In contrast to the kitchen sink realism of Coronation Street, Compact was a distinctly middle-class serial, set in the more "sophisticated" arena of magazine publishing. An early "avarice" soap, it took the viewer into the business workplace, and aligned the professional lives of the characters with more personal storylines. The show was scheduled for broadcast on Tuesdays and Thursdays, thus avoiding a clash with ITV's Coronation Street on Mondays and Wednesdays. When Compact began, the editor was a woman, Joanne Minster, yet it was not long before she was replaced by Ian Harmon, the son of the magazine's owner. Despite being largely criticised by reviewers, Compact was popular with the general public, and in 1964 a regular omnibus edition was introduced, broadcast on Sundays. Morris Barry, a some-time actor and BBC director – he directed several Doctor Who stories in the 1960s – took over as producer and was given a brief to spice the series up in view of the criticism it had received from the national press. But the BBC, never comfortable with the concept of soap opera, quietly dropped the series in 1965.
The Befrienders is a British television series produced by the BBC in 1972. The series dealt with the work of the Samaritans organisation, and the individual cases its staff came across. The leading cast members were Megs Jenkins and Michael Culver. The Befrienders was first aired as a single play as part of the Drama Playhouse strand in 1970, which was followed by one series of eleven episodes.
The Mackinnons was a BBC Scotland drama series, which started in 1977. It starred Bill Simpson as the head of the Mackinnon family, a vet in the fictional Argyll town of Inverglen. It was seen as inhabiting similar terrain to Dr. Finlay's Casebook and Sutherland's Law, but was less successful.
Also Directed by Frank Cox
The series starred Thora Hird as crusading local councillor Sarah Danby and was set around the fictional borough of Furness in Lancashire. Capitalising on the popularity of its lead actress, The First Lady was a down-to-earth series exploring the inner workings of local government.
Softly, Softly is a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It centred around the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID officers based in the fictional region of Wyvern, supposedly in the Bristol area of England.
As they slowly recover from the shock of being thrown to the TARDIS floor, the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara all seem to be acting strangely. It gradually dawns on the travellers that what they have been experiencing is an attempt by the TARDIS itself to warn them of something. The Doctor finally realises the fast return switch he used when leaving Skaro has stuck, and the ship has been plunging back to the beginning of time and its own destruction.
The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan arrive in the TARDIS on board a spaceship. Their initial concern is for the ship's human crew, who are suffering from telepathic interference from the Sensorites, but Susan communicates with the Sensorites and finds the aliens fear an attack by the humans and are just defending themselves. Travelling to the Sense Sphere (the Sensorites' planet) the Doctor seeks to cure an illness to which the Sensorites and Ian have succumbed, but finds it has been caused by deliberate poisoning. The political manoeuvring of the Sensorite City Administrator poses another threat to the TARDIS crew as he seeks to discredit and implicate them.
Sutherland's Law is a television series m The series had originated as a stand alone edition of the portmanteau programme Drama Playhouse in 1972 in which Derek Francis played Sutherland and was then commissioned as an ongoing series. Sutherland's Law dealt with the duties of the Procurator Fiscal in a small Scottish town.
"That order to scatter was as good as a death sentence to those merchant ships. And there isn't one officer or rating who doesn't agree with me." A British Allied convoy designated for the Soviet Union comes under attack from German forces during World War II.
The View from Daniel Pike was a Scottish TV drama series in the early 1970s. It starred Roddy McMillan as Daniel Pike, a hard-boiled private detective based in Glasgow, and was written by Edward Boyd. A few of the stories were adapted into book form.
Take the High Road was a British soap opera produced by Scottish Television, set in the fictional village of Glendarroch, which started in February 1980 as an ITV daytime soap opera, and was dropped by the network in 1993, although various members of the ITV Network continued to screen the programme, while others had no interest in doing so. The programme has developed a cult following.
Barlow at Large is a British television programme broadcast in the 1970s, starring Stratford Johns in the title role. Johns had previously played Barlow in the Z-Cars, Softly, Softly and Softly, Softly: Taskforce series on BBC television during the 1960s and early 1970s. Barlow at Large began as a three-part self-contained spin-off from Softly, Softly: Taskforce in 1971 with Barlow co-opted by the home office to investigate police corruption in Wales. Johns left Softly, Softly for good in 1972, but returned for a further series of Barlow at Large in the following year, Barlow having gone on full-time secondment to the Home Office. This second series, rather than telling one story in serial form, as the 1971 series had, was instead ten 50-minute episodes, each with a self-contained story. In this series, Barlow was supported by Norman Comer as Detective Sergeant Rees, who had been helpful to him during the first series. He also had to deal with the political machinations of the senior civil servant Fenton. In 1974 the series was renamed Barlow and a further two series of eight episodes each followed, introducing the character of Detective Inspector Tucker, played by Derek Newark. The final episode was transmitted in February 1975. The Barlow character was seen again in the series Second Verdict in which he, along with his former colleague John Watt, looked into unsolved cases and unsafe convictions from history.
Also Directed by Hugh David
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.
The time travellers arrive in Scotland just after the Battle of Culloden. The Second Doctor gains the trust of a small band of fleeing Jacobites by offering to tend to their wounded Laird, Colin McLaren. While Polly and the Laird's daughter, Kirsty, are away fetching water, he and the others are all captured by Redcoat troops commanded by Lieutenant Algernon Ffinch.
Death hits close to home when Lord Peter’s future brother-in-law is murdered. Complicating matters is the man who stands accused: Gerald Wimsey, Lord Peter’s brother.
Z-Cars or Z Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.
Historical comedy, showing what happened to Helen of Troy after the Trojan War.
When the TARDIS lands in the sea off the eastern coast of England, the Second Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria investigate a nearby beach, which seems to have an improbably large amount of sea foam as well as a major gas pipe marked “Euro Sea Gas” What is really happening at "Euro Sea Gas." Can the Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria survive "The Fury from the Deep"!
Also Directed by Lennie Mayne
Softly, Softly is a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It centred around the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID officers based in the fictional region of Wyvern, supposedly in the Bristol area of England.
The Doctor returns to Peladon fifty years after his last visit, to find Queen Thalira, daughter of the late King Peladon, on the throne. A tense labour dispute between Pel nobility and miners is worsened when apparitions of their deity Aggedor attack and kill several miners. The Galactic Federation desperately needs trisilicate for its war against Galaxy 5 and sends in brutal Ice Warrior troopers to ensure production. The Doctor discovers a devious plot at the heart of Aggedor's appearances.
Time itself is in peril! The Time Lords find themselves besieged by a mysterious enemy. Vital cosmic energy is draining into a black hole and the Doctor is their only hope. Trapped in the TARDIS however, he's powerless. The only way out is to break the First Law of Time to let the Doctor help himself — literally...
The planet Peladon has applied to join the Galactic Federation, and The Doctor is mistaken for the chairman of the committee sent to assess its application, while Jo is taken for an Earth princess, with the mythical curse of Aggedor apparently striking chancellor Torbis dead, The Doctor must discover who is desperate to stop Peladon joining, but soon he is sentenced to death and his only Allies seem to be Jo and the Ice Warrior Delegates.
When the TARDIS lands in a quarry on Earth, the Doctor and Sarah are caught in a mining explosion. Sarah is found clutching what appears to be a fossilised hand, buried in one-hundred-fifty-million-year-old strata. Analysis shows the hand to be silicon-based and inert, but when Sarah begins to act as if possessed, the Doctor suspects that it may still be alive...
Z-Cars or Z Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.
Also Directed by Pennant Roberts
The story revolves around the lost planet Shada, on which the Time Lords built a prison for defeated would-be conquerors of the universe. Skagra, one such inmate, needs the help of one of the prison's inmates. He finds nobody knows where Shada is anymore except one aged Time Lord who has retired to Earth, where he is a professor at St. Cedd's College, Cambridge. Luckily for the universe, Skagra's attempt to force the information out of Professor Chronotis coincides with a visit by the professor's old friend, the Fourth Doctor.
Based on real-life experiences, Tenko remains one of the most fondly remembered and acclaimed BBC dramas of the early 1980s. It follows a group of women, formerly comfortably well-off ex-pats living in Singapore, as they are captured by the Japanese during World War II.
Softly, Softly is a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It centred around the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID officers based in the fictional region of Wyvern, supposedly in the Bristol area of England.
Oil Strike North is a BBC television drama series produced in 1975. The series was created and produced by Gerard Glaister and dealt with life on Nelson One, a North Sea oil rig owned by the fictional company Triumph Oil. Eschewing the corporate power struggles of Mogul / The Troubleshooters and concentrating on more personal storylines, Oil Strike North was essentially a character study of how workers faced life on the rig and the impact it had on the lives of their families and loved ones. The scenario was later revived by the BBC for the mid-1990s drama Roughnecks. Oil Strike North lasted for one series of thirteen episodes. The leading cast members included Nigel Davenport, Glyn Owen, Barbara Shelley, Angela Douglas, Andrew Robertson, Richard Hurndall, Sean Caffrey and Maurice Roëves. Gerard Glaister later moved onto to produce the Second World War resistance drama Secret Army, the air freight series Buccaneer and then onto the boating soap serial Howards' Way. Two of the leading actors in Oil Strike North, Nigel Davenport and Glyn Owen, also later appeared in Howards' Way.
On the planet Karfel and in 1885 Scotland, the Sixth Doctor and Peri, together with a young man named Herbert, become entangled with the machinations of the despotic Borad.
Sutherland's Law is a television series m The series had originated as a stand alone edition of the portmanteau programme Drama Playhouse in 1972 in which Derek Francis played Sutherland and was then commissioned as an ongoing series. Sutherland's Law dealt with the duties of the Procurator Fiscal in a small Scottish town.
Juliet Bravo was a drama that focused on two female police inspectors, neither of whom were called Juliet Bravo! These two inspectors worked in the small fictional town of Hartley, Lancashire. Jean Darblay was on the scene first and had trouble with her sexist colleagues. However she soon managed to gain their trust and prove a woman could be a successful police officer and housewife. Jean's call sign was Juliet Bravo. When she was promoted and moved on she was replaced by Kate Longton who not only took over the patch but also the headaches that went with it.
Gwyn can feel danger coming in the wind. Somehow he knows the warnings have to do with the broken toy horse that holds the evil spirit of a prince who lived long ago. When Gwyn discovers that the prince's dark soul has escaped from the horse and is seeking revenge Gwyn, Emlyn, and Nia have to figure out how to save the mysterious soldier who claims to be Nia's distant cousin. With the help of the Snow Spider, can they recapture the prince's soul without hurting the Chestnut soldier?
Far in the distant future, Earth has become uninhabitable, forcing Mankind to colonise first Mars and then Pluto. No longer the coldest planet in the solar system, Pluto is now warmed by artificial suns. The Doctor, Leela and K9 arrive to discover the exploitation of the Megropolis people by the ruling elite, lead by the Collector. Deep in the Undercity, a small group of revolutionaries plot to overthrow the company and the Doctor is forced to fight the oppression of the people using Fire against Fire...
The Mackinnons was a BBC Scotland drama series, which started in 1977. It starred Bill Simpson as the head of the Mackinnon family, a vet in the fictional Argyll town of Inverglen. It was seen as inhabiting similar terrain to Dr. Finlay's Casebook and Sutherland's Law, but was less successful.