Thirty-Minute Theatre
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.
Herbert Wise
Christopher Barry
Mark Cullingham
Jack Gold
Alan Cooke
Piers Haggard
Gareth Davies
Dennis Potter
Mary Ridge
Bill Sellars
Philip Martin
James Ferman
Rudolph Cartier
Paddy Russell
Fay Weldon
Hugh Whitemore
Claude Whatham
Douglas Camfield
John Mortimer
Waris Hussein
Philip Saville
Ridley Scott
Oliver Horsbrugh
John Gorrie
Andrew Davies
Robert Knights
Michael Tuchner
David Rudkin
John Glenister
Alan Clarke
Alan Bridges
Michael Apted
Tom Stoppard
Gareth Davies
Hugh David
Bill Hays
Simon Langton
David Giles
Mike Newell
Gerald Blake
Henri Safran
Christopher Morahan
Richard Martin
Derrick Sherwin
Henry Livings
Michael Hayes
Also Directed by Herbert Wise
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
A junk dealer is caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between a woman, her husband and his mistress when they sell a piece of their furniture.
The story of a brutal crime in a high-rise estate; a girl walking home at night is raped and murdered, and the attitude of some is not always sympathetic.
"In Jan Carew’s explosive drama, Sammy Davis Jr gives a memorable performance as a proud but disillusioned revolutionary who aims to destroy the remnants of white colonial rule in a new African nation. The political themes explored remain incredibly prescient." - BFI
Van der Valk is a British television series that was produced by Thames Television for the ITV network. It starred Barry Foster in the title role as Dutch detective Commissaris "Piet" van der Valk. Based on the characters and atmosphere of the novels of Nicolas Freeling, the first series was shown in 1972.
The Siege of Manchester
Cadfael is the name given to the TV series of The Cadfael Chronicles adaptations produced by British television company ITV Central between 1994 and 1998. The series was broadcast on the ITV network in the UK, and starred Sir Derek Jacobi as the medieval detective.
World War II vets travel to England for a reunion at their old base. Stars Judi Trott, Barry Morse, Red Buttons, Deborah Kerr, Shane Rimmer, Robert Mitchum
When a friendless old widow dies in the seaside town of Crythin, a young solicitor is sent by his firm to settle the estate. The lawyer finds the townspeople reluctant to talk about or go near the woman's dreary home and no one will explain or even acknowledge the menacing woman in black he keeps seeing.
Also Directed by Christopher Barry
The Tripods is a television adaptation of John Christopher's The Tripods series of novels. It was jointly produced by the BBC in the United Kingdom and the Seven Network in Australia. The music soundtrack was written by Ken Freeman. Series one of The Tripods, broadcast in 1984, which had 13 half-hour episodes written by the well-known author of many radio plays Alick Rowe, covers the first book, The White Mountains; the 12-episode second series covers The City of Gold and Lead. Although a television script had been written for the third series, it never went into production. The first series was released on both VHS and DVD. The BBC released Tripods - The Complete Series 1 & 2 on DVD in March 2009. The series introduced several minor changes from the book, notably the shape of the Masters and Tripods, which have tentacles in the book, gravity inside the Golden City was increased artificially, which is not mentioned in the TV series; the introduction of "cognoscs", spiritual life-forms vastly superior to the Masters themselves; and more other main characters, including love interests for both Will and Beanpole. The original texts have few female characters. John Christopher was asked about this for an interview on Wordcandy, replying that at the time of writing the series, it was generally accepted that girls would read books with boy main characters, but not vice versa. He also stated that he felt the addition of an entire family of girls to the TV series was somewhat "over the top". The series is also notable for featuring non-humanoid aliens, which was uncommon at the time.
Trouble is brewing once again; Top Secret plans are being stolen with their guards killed. All evidence seems to point to the culprit being a sentient robot created by a Think Tank; however, his basic programming prevents him from killing, providing a contradiction to the clues. At the same time, the Doctor is recovering from his latest regeneration; can he regain his senses and help UNIT solve the case before time runs out?
The TARDIS has arrived on a far-distant and seemingly idyllic world. Yet the Doctor, Steven and Dodo learn it hides a terrible secret: the apparently civilised Elders maintain their advanced society by draining and transferring to themselves the life-force of the defenceless Savages.
Retired commander of the United Nations' Intelligence Taskforce, and long-time associate of the mysterious time traveler the Doctor, Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart faces the toughest battle of his military career when he is embroiled in a plot unwittingly set in motion by university chancellor Victoria Waterfield, herself a former companion of the Doctor, to take over the Earth by an evil alien entity called the Great Intelligence, aided by its ferocious robot Yeti cohorts. Can the Brigadier defeat this menace to the Earth without the Doctor's help?
The Master, posing as a rural vicar, summons a cloven-hoofed demon in a church crypt. Seeking to gain the ancient titan's demonic power, he gathers a cult and then corrupts or controls the residents of Devil's End to bow to his will. Dark elemental forces begin to disturb the village on the eve of May Day: unexplained murders, a stone gargoyle come to life, and a nigh-impenetrable infernal energy dome. With the Master fully prepared to destroy the Earth, the Doctor and UNIT - aided by a benevolent practitioner of witchcraft - battle the wicked rites of a secret science weilded by an alien from another world.
The Doctor and Romana receive a distress signal and arrive on Chloris. It is a lush and verdant world with only small quantities of metals, all of which are controlled by its ruler, Lady Adrasta. Adrasta keeps order with the aid of her Huntsman and his Wolfweeds - mobile balls of vegetation. A band of thieves, led by Torvin, organise raids on her palace to steal whatever metal they can. But in the mines of Chloris is something huge, a creature thrown into the pit to be forgotten... and the Doctor is about to join him
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.
All 16 episodes of the 1967 series based on the Alexandre Dumas novel 'Twenty Years After'. “The Further Adventures of the Musketeers” was a BBC drama series, based on Alexander Dumas' "Twenty Years After." The sixteen episodes were broadcast on BBC1, at 5:25 pm on Sundays. Michael Gothard is credited for appearances in ten of the sixteen episodes, and very briefly appears in another. He plays Mordaunt, formerly John Francis de Winter, the vengeful son of Milady de Winter. Milady was executed by the Musketeers in the previous series, "The Three Musketeers." This series, which features many stalwarts of British entertainment, had lain in the BBC archives for nearly 50 years, unseen by the public, but in May 2016 it was finally released on DVD by Simply Media.
Also Directed by Mark Cullingham
Two identical cars pull up to a restaurant, one belonging to a childless couple who are taking care of their niece and nephew while their parents are away, who are out on a Sunday drive. The other belonging to a guy who is on his way to meet his fiance and to begin working for her father. In his car is his dog, whom the couple mistake for the children, when they get into his car and drive. While he goes into their car and the children are under a blanket and he mistakenly assumes it's his dog. When they discover the mistake they are both so far away from each other that they don't know what to do.
An oppressed young woman finds happiness when she secretly attends the royal ball.
The Italian adventurer and libertine Giovanni Jacopo Casanova lived from 1725 to 1798, but in this six-part series Dennis Potter attempted to find a contemporary relevance through his central themes of sex and religion. He commented that Casanova "was concerned with religious and sexual freedom, and these are the things we have to address ourselves to now." Casanova was imprisoned in Venice in 1755, and Potter used that event as a central device, constantly inter-cutting to contrast Casanova's amorous escapades, radiant, joyful and brightly lit, with his oppressive solitary confinement in the gloom of a half-darkened cell.
An actress is persuaded by a charming man to join him in a scheme of revenge against his cousin.
Adaptation of the Helene Hanff memoir, presented as part of Play for Today.
Orson Welles' Great Mysteries was a British television series The series was an anthology of different tales. Each episode was introduced by Orson Welles, who was the only regular actor in the series. In the opening titles, Welles would be shown in silhouette as he walked through a hallway towards the camera, smoking a cigar and outfitted in a broad-brimmed hat and a huge cloak, the outfit itself being a nod to his having provided the voice of The Shadow in the radio program. When he actually appeared on-screen to introduce the episodes, his face would be all that would be shown, in extreme close-up and very low lighting.
Medea is in Corinth with Jason and their two young sons. King Kreon wants to reward Jason for his exploits: he gives the hand of his daughter, Glauce, to Jason.
Adolescent werewolf Walt Cribbens finds himself transforming into a wolf-boy form for two minutes at a time. He has no idea why he is a werewolf, so he decides to seek answers with the help of his best friend Cindy, who witnessed his very first transformation. This quest is complicated by a series of local robberies that throw suspicion on Walt.
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 Jack Gold
Detective Allan Pinkerton, working for the Union, becomes obsessed with Southern socialite Rose O'Neal Greenhow, a spy for the Confederacy.
Follow legendary news reporter/commentator from his radio broadcasts from the rooftops of London during the Blitz to his TV documentary series "See It Now" and his confrontations with the Senator from Wisconsin that helped put an end to the witch-hunts.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
The dynamic young headmaster of St Peter's Primary School decides to liven up a parents' fundraising social by hiring a Bavarian band.
In August 1913 a strike at a Cornish clay pit leads to Welsh police being sent to keep order. Having no other source of income, a striking miner is forced to take in one of the policemen as a lodger. They soon become friends, but escalating tension at the mine means that conflict will become inevitable.
Joe and Sarah Marriot are a pair of European campers who have pitched their tent for a little R & R at a campsite in France. The other families that have come to the site on holiday provide great comedy and plenty of people watching for the Marriots. Of course, you'd expect hilarity from characters dubbed the Fitness Family, Mr. and Mrs. Topless, Fatty Granada, and the In-the-Trades. But the Marriots' enjoyment of observing the outside world turns inward when the entrance of Early Bird, a free-spirited female, shakes up their little nest.
A coming of age story of an interracial relationship.
The rise to underworld eminence of the notorious Chicago gangster Artuto Ui - who bears a striking resemblance to Adolf Hitler.
A couple moves to a small Mexican town called Ibarra. They help open a local mine which brings new life to the town and the local ways help the two of them find peace they were missing.
Also Directed by Alan Cooke
TV-movie version of the Victor Hugo novel.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
Supernatural fantasy made by John Schlesinger and Alan Cooke as students.
A film of the National Theatre's presentation of the Shakespeare play.
Van der Valk is a British television series that was produced by Thames Television for the ITV network. It starred Barry Foster in the title role as Dutch detective Commissaris "Piet" van der Valk. Based on the characters and atmosphere of the novels of Nicolas Freeling, the first series was shown in 1972.
Luke Lorenz is an artist whose paintings don't sell. His imaginative wife Sandra reasons that sales of his works would increase tenfold if he were to die, so they fake his death.
Mike Kellin as Lear.
Scarecrow and Mrs. King is an American television series that aired from October 3, 1983, to May 28, 1987 on CBS. The show stars Kate Jackson and Bruce Boxleitner as divorced housewife Amanda King and top-level "Agency" operative Lee Stetson who begin a strange association, and eventual romance, after encountering one another in a train station.
Dick Foster is adopted as a child, but has grown into a youth who causes problems and upsets.
Len climbs Veronica and Percy’s fence intent on burglary, but what really happens next? The three acts of the play show the incident from each of the three perspectives.
Also Directed by Piers Haggard
A CIA agent infiltrates the research team of a scientist who seeks to capture the essence of a dying leukemia patient.
Doting parents (Maureen Lipman, David Ross, Tom Wilkinson) must adjust to life without their children as their offspring leave for college and form relationships. Sequel to Eskimo Day.
Influenced by the social and geopolitical situation of the early nineteen-seventies and the hippie youth movement of the late nineteen-sixties, Quatermass is set in a near future in which large numbers of young people are joining a cult, the “Planet People”, and gathering at ancient sites, believing they will be transported to a better life on another planet.
Fu Manchu's 168th birthday celebration is dampened when a hapless flunky spills Fu's age-regressing elixir vitae. Fu sends his lackeys to round up ingredients for a new batch of elixir, starting with the Star of Leningrad diamond, nabbed from a Soviet exhibition in Washington. The FBI sends agents Capone and Williams to England to confer with Nayland Smith, an expert on Fu.
TV movie directed by Piers Haggard.
A married couple have their preconceptions of life tested by their guest
An Englishwoman seeking to escape her marriage arrives at French hotel.
Play by Howard Brenton. Two expeditions meet, both lost in the Kalahari desert
'The Man' and 'The Woman' regularly meet for an extramarital affair whilst her husband works late. Professing love for both men creates paranoia in The Man who invents a fourth person - a mistres, Evelyn.
In 1965, at the age of 25, Alan Ackland is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a business associate. In 1971, Sylvia Barker, lonely and depressed after a failed marriage and with two young children to bring up alone, seeks a new direction in her life and applies to become a voluntary prison visitor. Several years later their paths cross.
Also Directed by Gareth Davies
Semi-autobiographical TV play by Dennis Potter, from the BBC's 'Wednesday Play' series. It deals with the experiences of Nigel Barton, a young man from a poor mining community who wins a scholarship to Oxford University. The villagers accuse him of snobbery, while the rich University students treat him like a peasant. Uncertain of which sphere he should be moving in, Nigel tries to reconcile himself with his proud but stubborn father, and also succeed at University, despite its pretentions which apall him.
Also Directed by Mary Ridge
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
The TARDIS attaches itself to a space liner after Turlough, still under the Black Guardian's influence, damages its controls. The Doctor and Nyssa meet two space pirates, Kari and Olvir, who have come on board the liner in search of plunder, while Tegan and Turlough get lost in the infrastructure. The liner docks with what appears to be a hulk floating in space. This is Terminus, which claims to offer a cure for Lazar's disease. It is crewed by armoured slave workers, the Vanir. The cure is administered by a huge, dog-like creature known as the Garm. Nyssa, who has contracted the disease from sufferers transported aboard the liner, discovers that the cure - involving exposure to radiation - does actually work.
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.
"By local custom, a man may turn from a wife who cannot give him more than one son. But Charles assures Maria that he is a 'modern educated man'. When war drives them back to their village, events force Maria to re-think their marriage." - Radio Times, 1976
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 Bill Sellars
The travellers arrive in a strange domain presided over by the Celestial Toymaker — an enigmatic, immortal entity who forces them to play a series of games, failure at which will render them his playthings for all eternity.
Also Directed by James Ferman
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
A prison visitor becomes involved with a convicted sex offender.
Jimmy Nicholson returns from working in the Middle East to visit his son at boarding school. He went to the same public school himself and is disturbed to find that things have changed and the traditions by which he has always lived and been guided now seem to be obsolete.
A small construction company's new year's eve party is taken over by a crook who has intricate knowledge of the men's private lives, forcing them into an incredible bank robbery plot.
Orson Welles' Great Mysteries was a British television series The series was an anthology of different tales. Each episode was introduced by Orson Welles, who was the only regular actor in the series. In the opening titles, Welles would be shown in silhouette as he walked through a hallway towards the camera, smoking a cigar and outfitted in a broad-brimmed hat and a huge cloak, the outfit itself being a nod to his having provided the voice of The Shadow in the radio program. When he actually appeared on-screen to introduce the episodes, his face would be all that would be shown, in extreme close-up and very low lighting.
When Len Shelton retires from a life of work in the coal mines, he turns to his first love - pigeons, which become a symbol of hope for him.
Zodiac was a six-part series transmitted by ITV in 1974. Starring Anton Rogers and Anouska Hempel as a cynical detective, David Gradley and Esther Jones, his astrologer assistant, the unusual astrological premise set this show apart from the humdrum detective dramas of the time. Little seen since its original transmission, the series has garnered something of a cult status Written by erstwhile Avengers scribe Roger Marshall, who was also behind the excellent but low-key Public Eye, this series has an unusual, almost claustrophobic feel to it. The action rarely ventures outdoors. The studio based ‘back yard' seems a little too false to be taken seriously, though as with many programmes of this vintage, you forgive the production values and concentrate on the stories being told. On the whole, the stories are intriguing in their complexity and have a good sense of pace. Each episode title makes reference to a specific star sign. A shame then, they only made six shows as twelve would have given them the full zodiac of titles.
Peter Barkham hero-worships his distinguished father. However, this is threatened by the intrusion of events and people from his father's wartime past.
Edward G is nothing like a film star; his life has been ordinary - until now. But he's just had a shattering experience.
Play with the subject of baby battering. NSPCC social worker Margaret Ashdown is given the case of investigating into the Gosse family, when the young mother, Sheila, is unable to explain her baby's fractured skull at the hospital. She discovers the family live in poverty and ignorance, and have a tradition of instability.
Also Directed by Rudolph Cartier
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
A British schoolteacher moves to Jamaica to teach after a tumultuous divorce and meets an exciting new woman.
An idealistic young television producer is approached by the representative of a clandestine agency offering an unusual job: creating the news - before it happens. And a refusal, it seems, is not an option.
The plot revolves around an oil swindle in a South American country.
Adaptation from Tolstoy's novel.
Also Directed by Paddy Russell
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 cursed island of Fang Rock off the south coast of England is a place of rumour and tales of beasts from the sea. Three lighthouse men at the turn of the century face their fears when something comes from the sea to bring death to all it touches.
The Third Doctor and Sarah arrive in 1970s London to find it has been evacuated because dinosaurs have appeared mysteriously. It turns out the dinosaurs are being brought to London via a time machine to further a plan to revert London to a pre-technological level.
The Omega Factor is a British television series produced by BBC Scotland in 1979. It was created by Jack Gerson and produced by George Gallaccio, and transmitted in ten weekly episodes between 13 June and 15 August.
Quick Before They Catch Us was a 1966 British action/adventure children's television series. It starred then child actors Pamela Franklin, Teddy Green and David Griffin as three teenagers who become amateur detectives in Swinging London during the mid-1960s. Although the series was short-lived, all three stars went on to have long and successful television careers in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Its theme song, written and performed by Brian Epstein's Paddy, Klaus and Gibson, later became a popular tune and one of the group's first hits after releasing it as a single.
The TARDIS materialises in Paris in the year 1572 and the Doctor decides to visit the famous apothecary Charles Preslin. Steven, meanwhile, is befriended by a group of Huguenots from the household of the Protestant Admiral de Coligny. Having rescued a young serving girl, Anne Chaplet, from some pursuing guards, the Huguenots gain their first inkling of a heinous plan being hatched at the command of the Catholic Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici.
British adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel.
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.
Adaptation of the classic novel. A priceless jewel, originally plundered from a Hindu shrine, is presented to Rachel Verinder on her 18th birthday. The jewel goes missing and suspicion falls over the household, threatening to destroy someone close to Rachel's heart.
In a Victorian Gothic mansion, strange things are afoot. The master of the house, away in Egypt, has been replaced by a sinister Egyptian. Cloth-wrapped Mummies roam the grounds, killing people. Beneath a pyramid, the last of the Osirans — Sutekh the Destroyer — waits to be freed, to at long last bring his gift of death to all who live.
Also Directed by Claude Whatham
On holiday with their mother in the Lake District in 1929 four children are allowed to sail over to the nearby island in their boat Swallow and set up camp for a few days. They soon realise this has been the territory of two other girls who sail the Amazon, and the scene is set for serious rivalry.
James Herriot is a vet in Yorkshire, England, during the 1940's. He is assigned to the practice of Siegfried Farnon, who (together with his mischievous brother Tristan) already have a successful business. James undergoes a variety of adventures during his work, which are just as often caused by the characters of the county (including the Farnon brothers) as the animals in his care.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
The wife of a drug salesman discovers he is having an affair with a lady doctor.
Raucous satire from NF Simpson, the famous absurdist author of One Way Pendulum et al. Featuring Ralph Bates, Stanley ‘Howard Hughes’ Lebor and Joanna ‘Duty Free’ van Gysegham.
William McClusky (Sam Waterston) is a dashing and eccentric Scotsman whose charms rapidly overwhelm the sweet and naive Ann Walton (Jenny Agutter), but she nearly as quickly begins to comprehend that her new beau is anything but a one-woman man. In addition to his two ex-wives, with whom he remains remarkably close, William exhibits a disturbing attraction for nearly any female who crosses his path -- Ann's friends among them.
Disraeli is a British four part serial about the great statesman and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Benjamin Disraeli.
Britain, 1958. Restless at school and bored with his life, Jim leaves home to take a series of low-level jobs at a seaside amusement park, where he discovers a world of cheap sex and petty crime. But when that world comes to a shockingly brutal end, Jim returns home. As the local music scene explodes, Jim must decide between a life of adult responsibility or a new phenomenon called rock & roll.
Play by Arthur Hopcraft about Christmas in a Northern town, and the relationship within a family.
Play about a student, taken from his point of view, and his reactions to the pressures and vacuums of student life.
Also Directed by Douglas Camfield
A documentary filmmaker’s latest work attracts the attentions of African secret agents - but what is it they want from the film?
Inferno is a top-secret project that involves drilling down into the crust of the Earth to unleash a new energy source. However, the Doctor, along with his assistant Liz Shaw, is concerned that this drilling will have disastrous consequences for the whole world.
Van der Valk is a British television series that was produced by Thames Television for the ITV network. It starred Barry Foster in the title role as Dutch detective Commissaris "Piet" van der Valk. Based on the characters and atmosphere of the novels of Nicolas Freeling, the first series was shown in 1972.
The Lotus Eaters is a BBC television drama made between 1972 and 1973. The series, written by Michael J. Bird, dealt with the lives of various British expats living on the island of Crete and their reasons for being there. The central characters were a married couple, Erik and Ann Shepherd who ran a tavern called "Shepherd's Bar". In the first episode, Ann was revealed to be a "sleeper agent" of British Intelligence with Erik having been a broken down drunk whom she was made to marry as part of her cover story. A clash with Soviet and Chinese agents resulted in both of them having to leave Crete. In the final scene on a plane leaving Heraklion airport, they have a partial reconciliation, since each is the only person the other can trust. The Lotus Eaters was filmed in the Cretan resort of Aghios Nikolaos and derived its title from the Lotus Eaters of Greek mythology, where those who ate the fruit of the Lotus tree lost the desire to return home. The series was also the first of the Mediterranean based dramas written by Michael J. Bird for the BBC. The others included Who Pays the Ferryman?, also set in Crete, The Aphrodite Inheritance set in Cyprus and The Dark Side of the Sun set in Rhodes.
When the Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry arrive in Scotland, having received an urgent request for assistance from the Brigadier, they discover that the mysterious force which has destroyed three oil rigs has left giant teeth marks on the wreckage. The mystery deepens, leading them to the shores of Loch Ness where they find that the legendary monster really does exist – and is the murderous tool of the Zygons, aliens intent on overpowering the planet. The Doctor, his companions and UNIT must find a way to defeat the deadly Loch Ness Monster and its controllers, but the Zygons have the terrifying power to change shape. The Doctor's life has never been in more danger, as the line between allies and enemies is tested to the very limit...
The Doctor, Vicki, and new companion Steven Taylor arrive in Saxon Northumbria on the eve of the Viking and Norman invasions. It is 1066, a pivotal moment in British history. The hand of a mysterious Monk is at work in the nearby monastery, intending that history takes a different course.
In the year 4000, the Daleks conspire to conquer the Solar System. Their scheme involves treachery at the highest levels and a weapon capable of destroying the very fabric of time. Only the Doctor and his friends can prevent catastrophe — and there is no guarantee they will escape with their lives...
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 TARDIS arrives in 12th century Palestine where a holy war is in progress between the forces of King Richard the Lionheart and the Saracen ruler Saladin. Barbara is abducted in a Saracen ambush and the Doctor, Ian and Vicki make their way to King Richard's palace in the city of Jaffa.
The TARDIS narrowly avoids becoming engulfed in a cobwebby substance in space. It arrives in the London Underground railway system, the tunnels of which are being overrun by the web and by the Great Intelligence's robot Yeti. The time travellers learn this crisis was precipitated when Professor Travers, whom they first met in the Himalayas some thirty years earlier, accidentally caused one of the Yeti to be reactivated, opening the way for the Intelligence to invade again.
Also Directed by Waris Hussein
A family discovers their youngest daughter has cancer. But the real struggle has yet to start.
True story about two friends become involved in murder when the wife of one of them begins cheating on her spouse.
Told mostly in flashbacks, the film tells the story of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman, one of the greatest and probably most famous courtesans of the twentieth century. While not showing her childhood, first marriage to Winston Churchill's son, or most of her affairs, we do get to see her affair and eventual marriage to Broadway producer Leland Hayward, and then her marriage to politician Averell Harriman, with whom she had an affair while both were married to others in World War II. We also see her as ambassador to France during her last years, and her death in 1997. While some (mostly her lovers) adored her, others (mostly her son and her husbands' children) hated her.
Based on the book by Caroline B. Cooney, a girl happens to look down at a milk carton one day and she sees herself on the back! Could her parents really have kidnapped her?
Lonnie and Rick seem to be complete opposites, at first glance. A survivor of suicide, Lonnie is introverted and ill at ease around her parents, Lois and Harvey. Rick, meanwhile, is sunny and charismatic. But appearances can be deceiving, as their families learn when the teens begin a romance. Upset about Lonnie's influence on Rick, his parents forbid the pair to see each other -- with tragic consequences.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
A young man becomes infatuated with the exotic Lady Pitts - whose much older husband is not pleased.
The TARDIS crew lands in the Himalayas of Cathay in 1289, their ship badly damaged, and are picked up by Marco Polo's caravan on its way along the fabled Silk Road to see the Emperor Kublai Khan. The story concerns the Doctor and his companions' attempts to thwart the machinations of Tegana, who attempts to sabotage the caravan along its travels through the Pamir Plateau and across the treacherous Gobi Desert, and ultimately to assassinate Kublai Khan in Peking, at the height of his imperial power.
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.
Would you betray your best friend for your own happiness? This is the moral dilemma one woman faces after she is called upon to help save her best friend's marriage, and the unthinkable happens. She and the husband find themselves falling in love.
Also Directed by Philip Saville
A personal take on working with Harold Pinter via intimate conversations with actors, directors and writers who share their experiences of the man and his work.
The wife of a public school head becomes gradually aware that her husband has been physically abusing his pupils, causing the death of one and brain damage and double vision in another (recreated by simply sticking mirrors beside the camera lens).Written by the master of late-middle-age morality plays, William Trevor.
The first Play for Today
A woman's unfulfilling marriage leads her into a passionate affair with a wealthy extramarital lover.
The Anthony Newley/Leslie Bricusse London and Broadway musical hit Stop the World, I Want to Get Off is given literal treatment in this filmization. Newley stars as Littlechap, whose allegorical rise to success is countered by the instability of his private life. Like the play, the film is staged impressionistically, with Newley decked out in mime makeup and periodically stopping the action to address the audience, and with all the women in his life -- German, American and "Typically English" -- played by a single actress (Millicent Martin, taking over from the stage version's Anna Quayle). In Wizard of Oz fashion, the play itself is lensed in color, while the brief prologue, showing the actors preparing for their performance, is in black-and-white. The production includes such standards (and perennial audition pieces) as What Kind of Fool Am I? and Gonna Build a Mountain.
In the Golden Age of Hollywood, two men had it all; one was a top screenwriter, the other a film idol. But when the witch hunts of McCarthyism swept into Tinseltown, it drove one out of the country and the other to suicide.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
Based on the fact-based novel by Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal based on his 1962 prosecution of the head of a German factory whom he learns was a murderous labour camp commandant. To be able to take him to justice, he must find witnesses who can help him. This leads him to Max Rosenberg, a still tormented individual who lost his wife, Helen, in the camps. Initially Max refuses to cooperate, but gradually his story unfolds beginning before the Holocaust.
TV play by Bernard Kops. Moss is a miser who only love is his grandson. Then tragedy strikes and Moss is "reborn".
Drama based on the true story of Deacon Brodie one of Scotland's most notorious criminals. In 1788 Deacon Brodie a master cabinet maker and town councillor is a rogue and a hedonist. He steals money but gives it back. He attempts to steal a fortune from the city's Customs and Excise office but the attempt fails and he is caught. There is a widely-publicised trial and he is sentenced to death to be hanged on the gallows he designed.
Also Directed by Ridley Scott
The CIA’s hunt is on for the mastermind of a wave of terrorist attacks. Roger Ferris is the agency’s man on the ground, moving from place to place, scrambling to stay ahead of ever-shifting events. An eye in the sky – a satellite link – watches Ferris. At the other end of that real-time link is the CIA’s Ed Hoffman, strategizing events from thousands of miles away. And as Ferris nears the target, he discovers trust can be just as dangerous as it is necessary for survival.
In 1960, a hardy group of prep school students boards an old-fashioned sailing ship. With Capt. Christopher Sheldon (Jeff Bridges) at the helm, the oceangoing voyage is intended to teach the boys fortitude and discipline. But the youthful crew are about to get some unexpected instruction in survival when they get caught in the clutches of a white squall storm.
A program of short films from some of the cinema's greatest diectors. Curated by Emir Kusturica and Stephen Frears. - George Lucas "1.42.08 to Qualify" (1966) - Ridley Scott "A Boy and a Bicycle" (1965) - Robert Zemeckis "The Lift" (1972) - Tony Scott "One of the Missing" (1969) - Emir Kusturica "Guernica" (1978) - Luc Besson "L'avant dernier" (1981) - Lars von Trier "Nocturne" (1980) - Terry Gilliam "Storytime" (1968) - Paul Verhoeven "A Lizzard Too Much" (1960) - Roman Polanski "Le gros et le maigre" (1960) - Jane Campion "Peel" (1982) - Stephen Frears "The Burning" (1967)
A blade runner must pursue and terminate four replicants who stole a ship in space, and have returned to Earth to find their creator.
Special Ops agent is on the run of assassinating a powerful figure in Eastern Europe.
In 1800, as Napoleon Bonaparte rises to power in France, a rivalry erupts between Armand and Gabriel, two lieutenants in the French Army, over a perceived insult. For over a decade, they engage in a series of duels amidst larger conflicts, including the failed French invasion of Russia in 1812, and shifts in the political and social systems of Europe.
A teenage boy plays truant from school, and spends the day riding around the town and the deserted beach on his bicycle, letting his mind wander as he imagines he is the only person in the world...
The story of the kidnapping of 16-year-old John Paul Getty III and the desperate attempt by his devoted mother to convince his billionaire grandfather Jean Paul Getty to pay the ransom.
Seven short films - each one focused on the plight of a different child protagonist.
The defiant leader Moses rises up against the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses, setting 400,000 slaves on a monumental journey of escape from Egypt and its terrifying cycle of deadly plagues.
Also Directed by Oliver Horsbrugh
Bergerac is a British television show set on Jersey. Produced by the BBC in association with the Seven Network, and first screened on BBC1, it stars John Nettles as the title character Detective Sergeant Jim Bergerac, a detective in Le Bureau des Étrangers, part of the States of Jersey Police.
Strangers is a UK police drama that appeared on ITV between 1978 and 1982. After the success of the TV series The XYY Man, adapted from books by Kenneth Royce, Granada TV devised a new series to feature the regular characters of Detective Sergeant George Bulman and his assistant Detective Constable Derek Willis. The result was Strangers. The series began as a fairly standard police drama series with Bulman as its eccentric lead. Its premise was that a group of police officers have been brought together from different parts of the country to the north of England. There, the fact that they are not known locally gives them the opportunity to infiltrate where a more familiar local detective could not. Initially, the team consisted of Bulman, Willis and Linda Doran. Their local liaison was provided by Detective Sergeant David Singer; their superior was Chief Inspector Rainbow. Despite being based around a comparatively small team of detectives, a regular feature of the programme in its early years was that few episodes featured the entire team, with most using just two or three of the regulars in any major role.
Cribb is a television police drama, Adapted from Peter Lovesey's Sergeant Cribb novels and set in Victorian London around the time of the Jack the Ripper murders in 1888, Alan Dobie starred as the tough Detective Sergeant who worked for the newly formed Criminal Investigation Department, determined to remove crime from the streets of London using the latest detection methods.
Also Directed by John Gorrie
When Mrs Hinch, the sinister charlady, decides to move in, General Suffolk fights his last battle.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
TV play set in an experimental self-rehabilitations unit at a British Prison, where six lifers participate in group therapy.
Adaptation of the Henry James novel.
The Ruth Rendell mysteries is a British television series made by TVS and Meridian Television for ITV between 2 August 1987 and 11 October 2000.
Boysie discovers he has 'second sight' but neither his girlfriend Gloria nor his work-mate Brian will accept his 'gift'. He sets out on a spiritual voyage that leads to Adler, a 'sensitive', and finally to the devil himself.
In Victorian England, handsome Dorian Gray (Peter Firth) makes a Faustian deal that his portrait painted by Basil Hallward (Jeremy Brett) will age while he remains young. But his vain bargain eventually leads to murder and destroys Gray's life. This 1976 installment of the BBC's long-running "Play of the Month" television series co-stars Gwen Ffrangcon Davies, Judi Bowker and John Gielgud as Lord Henry Wotton.
Also Directed by Robert Knights
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?
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.
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.
Adaptation of Malcolm Bradbury's satirical novel about 1970s greybrick campus life.
1982 play. A teenage girl takes care of a former soldier suffering from the effects of being gassed in the First World War.
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.
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.
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.
1983 play. In a 1920s middle-class guest house, a young girl observes life around her.
Also Directed by Michael Tuchner
Based on the actual events of the 1991 brush fires that swept across Northern California which left countless people without homes. A rookie fire chief who just started his new job must deal with the raging fires.
A skilled police detective in a case involving the strange, sadistic murder of a young prostitute who has been killed in exactly the same fashion as a young nightclub singer in Saigon during the Vietnam War. At the same time, the detective attempts to ferret out corruption in the police ranks.
With the destruction of their previous neighbourhood has inevitably come the destruction of the lads’ favoured watering hole The Fat Ox. Again, it’s Bob rather than Terry who is visibly distressed by this. Upset and much the worse for free alcohol, Bob then storms into the library to seek sympathy from Thelma - who is, predictably, unimpressed. So when Thelma finds out that Terry has been getting semi-serious with glamorous Finnish shop assistant Chris, she takes it upon herself to try and pair them off for good via planning first a dinner party and then that mainstay of 70s comedy, a camping expedition. Of course, things don’t go quite according to plan and before you can say ‘I can see the way this is going’ we are set up for japes, larks and embarrassing incidents aplenty, which culminate in the lads getting rather fed up with their partners’ attempts to inflict the rugged outdoor lifestyle upon them and trying to hitch up and drive off with the girls still asleep in the caravan.
The story of murder among a trio of teenagers after a boy breaks up with a girl and she runs into the arms of his vulnerable best friend.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
Patty Bergen is a teenager in a Jewish family living in the American South during World War II. Patty feels like an outcast even in her own family and is unable to understand why her father can't seem to love her. Her town eventually becomes host to a prisoner of war camp. A young german soldier escapes from this camp, and Patty finds him hiding in her secret places in the woods outside of town. After getting to know him she ends up harboring him from his captors, and, in the way of many adolescents, falls in love with him. Patty knows what she is risking to help him, but in his company she feels important, special, and respected as she has never been. In the end, his regard lifts her self-esteem and helps her to face the heartbreaking events to come.
Richard Beymer stars in this futuristic story of the United States at the turn of the century and a sport called combat hockey. With Marta DuBois, Drake Hogestyn, Hannah Cutrona, Cristina Raines, Priscilla Pointer.
A mother forces her son to kill her father, based upon a true event in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1978.
This entry in the long-running romance of Jonathan and Jennifer Hart picks up following the death of their beloved friend Max when the Harts go to Montreal for the reading of his will. While there, they learn of a clock Max has left for them with his niece, Marie, which is stolen before they can receive it. Meanwhile, Marie’s partner in their antique shop, Vivienne, meets with Ronnie, her secret lover and the husband of the Harts’ friend Lady Camilla Ashley, and is subsequently killed. The clock seems to be at the center of a mystery which includes kidnapping and murder, and the Harts will have to unravel it if they want to get their gift from Max back.
Also Directed by John Glenister
Adaptation of the play by Bernard Shaw.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
Champagne dialogue alleviates nervousness of sleeping together.
Drama about a small-time gangster Thomas Gynn (Dennis Waterman) from London who discovers a new life up north in Yorkshire. Helping widowed, self-sufficient businesswoman Sally Hardcastle (Jan Francis) when her car breaks down on the motorway, Thomas reluctantly accepts an offer of a lift to Leeds. Over the coming months, the two become involved in a series of misadventures that soon find them being drawn closer together.
The Italian adventurer and libertine Giovanni Jacopo Casanova lived from 1725 to 1798, but in this six-part series Dennis Potter attempted to find a contemporary relevance through his central themes of sex and religion. He commented that Casanova "was concerned with religious and sexual freedom, and these are the things we have to address ourselves to now." Casanova was imprisoned in Venice in 1755, and Potter used that event as a central device, constantly inter-cutting to contrast Casanova's amorous escapades, radiant, joyful and brightly lit, with his oppressive solitary confinement in the gloom of a half-darkened cell.
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.
BBC mini-series with Jane Lapotaire in the title role. The programme chronicles the work of scientific pioneer Marie Curie as she conducts her research into radioactivity, makes the famous discovery of Radium and wins Nobel Prizes for both Physics and Chemistry. The programme also looks at key events that affected the soon-to-be famous revolutionary including the devastating death of her husband (Nigel Hawthorne) and her subsequent controversial affairs.
Adaptation of Noel Coward's stage play sequence.
Frank Stubbs (Timothy Spall) is a down-at-heel ticket tout with grand ideas. He has an ambition to become a 'high class' promoter of famous and talented performers. In reality, his ambitions tend to outstrip his capabilities.
A bored Rumpole, living in Florida retirement, uses an inquiry from Phyllida as a pretext to re-establish himself back in chambers.
Also Directed by Alan Clarke
This is the hard and shocking story of life in a British Borstal for young offenders. The brutal regime made no attempt to reform or improve the inmates and actively encouraged a power struggle between the 'tough' new inmate and the 'old hands'. This film is a re-make, by the same director and writer, of a 1977 BBC teleplay banned before broadcast [see Scum (1991)].
Through a series of real and imagined encounters with angels, demons, and England's pagan past, a pastor's son begins to question his religion and politics, and comes to terms with his sexuality.
A depiction of a series of violent killings in Northern Ireland.
Play for Today about Russian dissidents.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
A film by Alan Clarke for the 'Sunday Night Theatre' anthology series.
Documentary about the work of South African intelligence agencies in Britain, with an interview with Information Secretary in the South African government, Eschel Rhoodie, and former agents.
Visiting unemployed brothers Clack and Ged, social security inspector Mr. Hicks finds few reasons for sympathy. However, the tables are turned on the investigator: Clack defends Ged as 'a paying member of the welfare state' rather than a case for charity, and events take a sinister turn.
The story concerns Susie, a transgender bartender, dealing with four patrons who stumble into her place of work. Susie grows wary of the two men and the two women, the latter of which are underage, and tension begins to mount and escalate between all of the characters.
Tough cop Detective Chief Superintendent Cradock is assigned to track down & bring to justice the criminals behind the daring theft of five and half million pounds worth of gold bullion from an airfield in the South of England.
Also Directed by Alan Bridges
1913, shortly before the outbreak of WWI. A group of aristocrats gathers at the estate of Sir Randolph Nettleby for a weekend shoot. As the terminal decrepitude of a dying class is reflected in the social interactions and hypocrisy of its members, only world weary Sir Randolph seems to realise that the sun is setting.
Another of Dennis Potter's "visitation dramas": Adultery by John disturbs Janet, so she flirts with the simple, mistreated Billy during the middle of giving him a reading lesson. Unfortunately, it triggers aggressive behavior in Billy which he directs toward John.
A psychologist comes to believe that the acutely autistic 17-year-old girl that he has been attempting to treat is gifted with telepathic powers, and begins to exhaustively test her capabilities, enlisting the aid of a psychiatric colleague to impartially observe.
A dangerous psychological game plays out between a man and the husband of the lover who spurned him.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
An old surgeon falls in love with an intellectual underage girl. An ageing surgeon falls in love with a thirteen-year-old girl.
The play by William Shakespeare.
Displaced Person is a 1985 Emmy award winning drama based on a short story by Kurt Vonnegut. It was directed by Alan Bridges and adapted by Fred Barron from a story in the Welcome to the Monkey House collection.
TV play by David Mercer. First in a trilogy concerning Marxist novelist Robert Kelvin. The occasion is a dinner party, Kelvin is concerned with a summation of his life, addressed in his head to his lover, Emma.
The horrors of World War I have robbed returning veteran Chris Baldry of his memory. The traumatized soldier doesn't even recognize his own wife, Kitty, or remember their years together. While Baldry attempts to cope with the unfamiliar surroundings of his own home, he seeks out the company of an old flame from his childhood, Margaret Grey. His amnesia also makes him a ready target for the affections of his older cousin, Jenny.
Also Directed by Michael Apted
Six intertwining stories showcase the social impact of football across the world.
On June 26, 1975, during a period of high tensions on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, two FBI agents were killed in a shootout with a group of Indians. Although several men were charged with killing the agents, only one, Leonard Peltier, was found guilty. This film describes the events surrounding the shootout and suggests that Peltier was unjustly convicted.
The true story of William Wilberforce and his courageous quest to end the British slave trade. Along the way, Wilberforce meets intense opposition, but his minister urges him to see the cause through.
Greed, revenge, world dominance and high-tech terrorism – it's all in a day's work for Bond, who's on a mission to protect a beautiful oil heiress from a notorious terrorist. In a race against time that culminates in a dramatic submarine showdown, Bond works to defuse the international power struggle that has the world's oil supply hanging in the balance.
The story of the WWII project to crack the code behind the Enigma machine, used by the Germans to encrypt messages sent to their submarines.
When a cross-section of seven-year-olds were interviewed for 7 Up in 1964 it was immediately evident that their social backgrounds influenced their attitudes towards life. While the upper class children were confident and self-assured, those from middle and working class backgrounds were resigned to a challenging life of hard work. This premise was put to the test every seven years when the same group were interviewed about the progression of their lives. 49 years in the making, the changes that occurred to the original 14 make for fascinating television and are in many ways the stories of all our lives. From success and disappointment, marriage and childbirth, to poverty and illness, nearly every facet of life has been captured on film. Now, at the age of 56, the group are once more brought together and, with the benefit of hindsight, assess whether their lives have been ruled by circumstance or self-determination.
Guy Luthan, a British doctor working at a hospital in New York, starts making unwelcome enquiries when the body of a man who died in his emergency room disappears. After the trail leads Luthan to the door of an eminent surgeon at the hospital, Luthan soon finds himself in extreme danger people who want the hospital's secret to remain undiscovered.
Biography of Loretta Lynn, a country and western singer that came from poverty to fame.
After her husband is captured during WWII, homesteader Alice is forced to maintain their land herself. One day, a wandering soldier named Barton stops by the farm and the pair begin a relationship. When the military police pass through the area looking for deserters, Barton is forced to disguise himself as a woman to stay with Alice. But he soon catches the eye of a sergeant posted nearby.
Because he's the oldest, Jake has been the man of the house, since his parents divorce. When Mom starts seeing Sam, who always seems to be trying some new way to get rich quick, and declares he's the man of the house now, Jake puts up with it. Until he discovers Sam's illegal activities.
Also Directed by Gareth Davies
British crime drama based on the "Dalziel and Pascoe" series of books by Reginald Hill, set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Wetherton. The unlikely duo of politically incorrect elephant-in-a-china-shop-copper Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel (pronounced Dee-ell) and his more sensitive and university educated sidekick Detective Sargent, later Detective Inspector, Peter Pascoe is always on hand to solve the classic murder mystery, while maintaining a down to earth wit and humour.
Ibsen wrote An Enemy of the People as a direct response to the public's outcry over his earlier play Ghosts. Channeling his feelings into on Dr. Stockman, whose single voice of reason is drowned out by those with paranoid and ulterior interests, Ibsen had no qualms remarking on the irrational nature of the masses and the corrupt political systems which encourage them.
Candidate Nigel Barton goes from idealism to cynicism as he becomes disillusioned and suspicious of hollow campaign promises.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
Dennis Potter's controversial reading of the life of Christ, with Jesus portrayed as a hearty, fiery, well-meaning carpenter who believes that people should try to love their enemies rather than fight all the time, but who is racked by self doubt as to whether or not he is the popularly anticipated Messiah.
Drama set in a men's hospital ward, written by Dennis Potter. Characters include a cunning bronchitic Londoner, a strapped-up Pole and a dying man who just wants a cup of tea.
Malcolm and Jo are eagerly anticipating a quiet retirement but find that their adult children are in no hurry to leave the family home.
Oliver Twist is a 1985 BBC TV serial. It was directed by Gareth Davies, and adapted by Alexander Baron from the novel by Charles Dickens. It follows the book more closely than any of the other film adaptions.
Adaptation of the Balzac novel. A poor and homely spinster, who feels she's been walked on all her life, teams up with a scheming courtesan to wreak elaborate revenge on her rich and handsome relatives.
Also Directed by Hugh David
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.
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 Bill Hays
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.
Dr. Finlay's Casebook is a television series that was broadcast on the BBC from 1962 until 1971. Based on A. J. Cronin's novella entitled Country Doctor, the storylines centred on a general medical practice in the fictional Scottish town of Tannochbrae during the late 1920s. Cronin was the primary writer for the show between 1962 and 1964.
The adventures of the eponymous Lovejoy, a likeable but roguish antiques dealer based in East Anglia. Within the trade, he has a reputation as a “divvie”, a person with an almost supernatural powers for recognising exceptional items as well as distinguishing genuine antique from clever fakes or forgeries.
The Ruth Rendell mysteries is a British television series made by TVS and Meridian Television for ITV between 2 August 1987 and 11 October 2000.
'Oh I was naughty. And I'm still naughty so take care.' And so Leda was, all those years ago when she was the childhood friend of Jasper and his three sisters April, May and June. Now she returns to add a little spice to life in their crumbling Irish country house.
Boon is a British television drama and modern-day western series starring Michael Elphick, David Daker, and later Neil Morrissey. It was created by Jim Hill and Bill Stair and filmed by Central Television for ITV. It revolved around the life of a modern-day Lone Ranger and ex-firefighter, Ken Boon.
Thriller is a British television series, originally broadcast in the UK from 1973 to 1976. It is an anthology series: each episode has a self-contained story and its own cast. As the title suggests, each story is a thriller of some variety, from tales of the supernatural to down-to-earth whodunits.
A middle-aged couple give a dinner party to their friends. In the room is a photograph of another group of people, taken in a garden in May.
Simon Simpson runs an entertainment agency in Liverpool. At one of his regular auditions in The Bootle Railway Club he sees an aggressive young man fresh from the dole queue who dreams of becoming a professional comedian. Simpson believes the boy has talent and starts to groom him for 'stardom'.
Also Directed by Simon Langton
Tom Shepard returns to his home town of Laguna Beach to escape his turbulent past. But the tranquility is shattered when he gets involved in the investigation of a series of grisly and bizarre murders.
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.
Vice Adm. Horatio Nelson's remarkable naval career and troubled personal affairs are brought to life in this miniseries, which tells his famous story through the narratives of those who knew him best.
In order to be together, lovers Therese and Laurent plot to kill Therese's husband, Camille, but find themselves haunted by their deeds and Madame Raquin's silent judgment.
Unable to show her dentist husband Cyril the fur coat her lover has given her Mrs. Bixby pawns it and pretends that she found the ticket. She gives it to Cyril to redeem on her behalf but is taught that two can play at her game when he comes home with rather less than she expected, and she sees that his dental assistant will be warm for the winter.
Dr. Finlay's Casebook is a television series that was broadcast on the BBC from 1962 until 1971. Based on A. J. Cronin's novella entitled Country Doctor, the storylines centred on a general medical practice in the fictional Scottish town of Tannochbrae during the late 1920s. Cronin was the primary writer for the show between 1962 and 1964.
In a heroic journey of epic proportions, English everyman Charlie McFell (Lloyd Owen) wrestles with his demons -- including a coldhearted wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), economic hardship, the horror of the world's first Great War and a painful secret he'd rather forget. But Charlie eventually comes out on top in this emotional, made-for-television miniseries based on Catherine Cookson's best-selling novel.
Also Directed by David Giles
Richard II, who ascended the throne as a child, is a regal and stately monarch. He believes he is the rightful ruler of England, ordained by God, yet he is a weak and ineffective king - wasteful in his spending habits, unwise in his choise of chansellors, and detached from his country and its people. When he seizes the land of his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, both the commoners and the barons decide that their king has gone too far...
An egocentric artillery captain and his venomous wife engage in savage unremitting battles in their isolated island fortress of the coast of Sweden at the turn of the century. Alice, a former actress who sacrificed her career for secluded military life with Edgar, reveals on the occasion of their 25th wedding anniversary, the veritable hell their marriage has been. Edgar, an aging schizoid who refuses to acknowledge his severe illness, struggles to sustain his ferocity and arrogance with an animal disregard for other people.
The term at Osborne Naval College is not yet over. Why, therefore, has cadet Ronnie Winslow returned home? And why, moreover, is he hiding in the garden in the rain?
A dramatization of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel in five parts by Rex Tucker.
Adaptation of the Jane Austen novel.
The life of King Henry the Fifth.
The reign of England's King John is threatened by Philip of France who demands that John's nephew Arthur be placed on the throne. Pragmatic and decisive, King John moves to plactate the French, but there are others who seek disputre his authority.
Forever Green is a television programme originally broadcast on ITV in the United Kingdom from 1989 to 1992. It was made for London Weekend Television by Picture Partnership Productions, now named Carnival Films.
The death of King Henry the Fourth and the coronation of King Henry the Fifth.
Also Directed by Mike Newell
Liverpool. 1947. A star-struck young girl learns about the grown-up world of the theater.
A top-secret mission for French Intelligence brings Indy to Istanbul during the First World War. Exploring the city's dark and dangerous streets, he is thrust into a web of betrayal and murder when he discovers a vile Turkish plot to assassinate French espionage agents. Evil of a more enduring kind awaits him in Transylvania where he engages in mortal combat with bloodthirsty Vlad the Impaler and his horrific army of the living dead. With his very life at stake, Indy must garner all his strength and wits in order to defeat the fiend and save mankind.
Henry Jones Sr. takes his wife, son and the boy's tutor to the world's first psycho-analytical conference in Viena, Austria in November 1908. Young Indy meets Princess Sophie of Austia, daughter of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and develops deep feelings for her. He even asks Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Alfred Adler for love advice. On their next stop in Florance, Anna Jones becomes the object of affection for the persuasive opera composer Giacomo Puccini. With her husband away in Rome, Anna is torn between her feelings for her husband and the impulsive Italian.
The story of Louis XIV of France and his attempts to keep his identical twin brother Philippe imprisoned away from sight and knowledge of the public, and Philippe's rescue by the aging Musketeers, led by D'Artagnan.
Mr Mockler and Mrs Acland have never met, but gradually Mrs Acland 's ghosts begin to take over Mr Mockler 's life.
Miss Havisham, a wealthy spinster who wears an old wedding dress and lives in the dilapidated Satis House, asks Pip's "Uncle Pumblechook" (who is actually Joe's uncle) to find a boy to play with her adopted daughter Estella. Pip begins to visit Miss Havisham and Estella, with whom he falls in love,then Pip a humble orphan suddenly becomes a gentleman with the help of an unknown benefactor.
The story of Katherine Ann Watson, a feminist teacher who studied at UCLA graduate school and in 1953 left her boyfriend behind in Los Angeles, California to teach at Wellesley College, a conservative women's private liberal arts college in Massachusetts, United States.
In Colombia just after the Great War, an old man falls from a ladder; dying, he professes great love for his wife. After the funeral, a man calls on the widow - she dismisses him angrily. Flash back more than 50 years to the day Florentino Ariza, a telegraph boy, falls in love with Fermina Daza, the daughter of a mule trader.
During World War 2, a farmer in New Zealand murders seven people. The police, along with local Maori trackers, hunt him in the bush country.
Directed by Mike Newell.
Also Directed by Gerald Blake
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.
"What's a lock-out, my son? A lock-out is engraved in the history of the class struggle. A lock-out is our Glencoe. It's where they try and drive a stake into our underbelly." A factory's workforce is dwindling as divisions between the workers and management widen.
The Omega Factor is a British television series produced by BBC Scotland in 1979. It was created by Jack Gerson and produced by George Gallaccio, and transmitted in ten weekly episodes between 13 June and 15 August.
Dr. Finlay's Casebook is a television series that was broadcast on the BBC from 1962 until 1971. Based on A. J. Cronin's novella entitled Country Doctor, the storylines centred on a general medical practice in the fictional Scottish town of Tannochbrae during the late 1920s. Cronin was the primary writer for the show between 1962 and 1964.
Mysterious forces are at work in 1930s Tibet. The once gentle Yeti have turned savage and besieged a Buddhist monastery. The Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive expecting a friendly welcome from the abbot, but soon become ensnared in the plans of the extradimensional being known as the Great Intelligence.
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".
It is the mid-1980s. The economy has not improved. For 17 years Professor Frank Merrick has been ensconced in a research lab of a provincial university working on a cure for the common cold. He is very near success. Can he avoid becoming yet another victim of the eternal cutbacks?
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.
Mr Palfrey of Westminster was a British television drama produced by Thames Television, which ran in 1984–85.
Also Directed by Henri Safran
Mike is a lonely Australian boy living in a coastal wilderness with his reclusive father. In search of friendship he encounters an Aboriginal native loner and the two form a bond in the care of orphaned pelicans.
A Sydney derelict lies drunk in an alley and is beaten up by thugs. A friend helps him find refuge in a night shelter. As he lies dying he has a vision of himself flying about the room. The man dies and after the cremation of his corpse, his spirit returns to the footpath.
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.
At eight years old, an impoverished Bert Facey was forced to start the backbreaking, dawn-to-dusk life of a farm labourer. Unschooled, his father dead, abandoned by his mother, by the age of twenty he had survived the rigours of pioneering the harsh Australian bush and the slaughter of the bloody WWI campaign at Gallipoli.
Tarzán was a half-hour syndicated series that aired 1991–1994. In this version of the show, Tarzan was portrayed as a blond environmentalist, with Jane turned into a French ecologist. Ron Ely, famous for playing Tarzan in the original series, played a character named Gorden Shaw in the first season episode “Tarzan the Hunted”.
Starhunter is a Canadian science fiction television
The Wild Duck is a 1983 Australian film adapted from the play by Ibsen
A teenage boy falls hopelessly in love with his new sister-in-law. When she gets pregnant, someone raises the question that he might be the father--a notion he does nothing to discourage.
In the Australian outback a family struggles to keep its farm from foreclosure. Their only hope is that their horse, Prince, will win money in a New Year's race. But when Prince is stolen the children embark on a dangerous and exciting adventure to get him back.
Also Directed by Christopher Morahan
The Common Pursuit is a play by Simon Gray which follows the lives of six characters who first meet as undergraduates at Cambridge University when they are involved in setting up a literary magazine called The Common Pursuit.
In Great Britain a reversal of African apartheid comes into place, and the country is governed by black people with whites as the subservients.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
Four thieves try to steal the Imperial Jewels of Russia
Early adaption of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as part of the Theatre 625 series.
A small comedy drama about the life and sex adventures of an amorous window cleaner, in the hip and swingin' London of the '60s.
Real life husband and wife Judi Dench and Michael Williams star in this Screen One film as the parents of teenage boy diagnosed with schizophrenia
Harold Pinter play televised on the BBC.
A family gather together for the funeral and cremation of the head of the family.
Ellis Cripper has lost his money and his memory; in different ways he tries to make sense of his situation.
Also Directed by Richard Martin
When D.E.A. agent Mike Ryan undertakes the huge task of avenging the brutal murder of the partner John Grogan, he find he must fight both sides; the murderer and his double crossing police buddies. Now with the unexpected help of the lovely Jade, he must confront the new generation Chinese underworld want-to-be kingpin and fight like and out-of-place "White Tiger"
Josh and Buddy move from basketball to American football in this first of several sequels to the original Air Bud.
Even though a devastating murder took place during a small town's horror film festival two years earlier, townspeople want another festival.
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.
A popular TV sitcom actress struggles with her drug and alcohol-addled private life while her manager does "damage control" for her own protection from the press, which is becoming increasingly difficult.
After a grizzly-bear poacher named Hanaghan kills her fiance and fellow Fish & Wildlife Deptartment officer, Julie Clayton sets out to track the killer down and discover why the FBI is keeping its case secret from her. She is joined in her quest by Rollins, a police detective fresh out of alcohol-dependency rehabilitation.
Declan Dunn has a fascination with mystical phenomena that began when he was buried under an avalanche and given up for dead. After he miraculously survived, he committed his life to investigating miracles and the absolute proof of their existence. Now a professor of Anthropology at a leading Oregon university, Declan has the training, support staff and the opportunity to study the uncanny, inexplicable phenomena people call "miracles". With the help of Peggy, a skeptical psychiatrist, and Miranda, a research student, the three embark on a quest to explain what science cannot.
A nature documentary about the life and habits of the Bengal tiger.
Get ready for a rough-and-tumble comedy that knows how to kick some serious puck!
Quick Before They Catch Us was a 1966 British action/adventure children's television series. It starred then child actors Pamela Franklin, Teddy Green and David Griffin as three teenagers who become amateur detectives in Swinging London during the mid-1960s. Although the series was short-lived, all three stars went on to have long and successful television careers in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Its theme song, written and performed by Brian Epstein's Paddy, Klaus and Gibson, later became a popular tune and one of the group's first hits after releasing it as a single.
Also Directed by Michael Hayes
A 1965 BBC adaptation of William Shakespeare's first historical tetralogy (1 Henry VI, 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI and Richard III), which deals with the conflict between the House of Lancaster and the House of York over the throne of England, a conflict known as the Wars of the Roses. It was based on the 1963 theatre adaptation by John Barton, and directed by Peter Hall for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Opera version of the classic Dickens tale.
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 final segment of the Key to Time is at the heart of a devastating war between neighbouring planets Atrios and Zeos. The Fourth Doctor discovers that a sinister entity is manipulating events and the cost of obtaining the final segment may be more personal than he imagined.
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.
A naïve and "nice" West Indian's descent into postcolonial cynicism is depicted in a twenty minute monologue from writer Farrukh Dhondy.
Gabrielle, formerly member of a terrorist cell, flees to England after an attempt on her life. Fearing that Gabrielle may betray it to the authorities, the cell sends the hitman Constant Delangre after her. Will Delangre find Gabrielle before the local police can defend her?
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.
While taking in the sights of Paris in 1979, the Fourth Doctor and Romana sense that someone is tampering with time. Who is the mysterious Count Scarlioni? Why does he seem to have counterparts scattered through time? And just how many copies of the Mona Lisa did Leonardo da Vinci paint?
Set in Leningrad. Follows the lives of three young Russians from the terror of the German siege of Leningrad through the uncertainty of the postwar years to the space age.