Arnold Yarrow
Acting
Biography
Arnold Yarrow was an actor, screenwriter and script editor. As a writer he wrote for series such as EastEnders, Crown Court, Softly, Softly, and Barlow at Large, the latter two he also served as script editor on. As an actor, his screen credits included the films Mahler and The Son of Pink Panther, though he was perhaps best known for playing Ethel Skinner's love interest Benny Bloom in EastEnders from 1988 to 1989. Three years after leaving the soap, the seventy-two year old Yarrow returned to the series as a writer, penning several episodes between 1992 and 1994. With this writing credit and his final on screen acting credits in the Screen Two film Genghis Cohen and London’s Burning in 1993, he subsequently retired from the industry altogether around the mid 90s. Yarrow also played Bellal in the 1974 Doctor Who serial Death to the Daleks and, following the death of Earl Cameron in 2020, was the show's oldest surviving cast member until his death, at the age of 104, in Herne Bay on 9th December 2024.
Known For
The adventures of The Doctor, a time-traveling humanoid alien known as a Time Lord. He explores the universe in his TARDIS, a sentient time-traveling spaceship. Its exterior appears as a blue British police box, which was a common sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired. Along with a succession of companions, The Doctor faces a variety of foes while working to save civilizations, help ordinary people, and right many wrongs.
Doctor Who
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.
Softly, Softly
An anthology of single plays offering up adaptations of either of prominent stage plays or novels.
Festival
Barlow at Large is a British television programme created by Troy Kennedy Martin and Elwyn Jones. It broadcast from September 1971 to February 1975, with a total of 29 episodes across four series. Stratford Johns reprises his role of DCI Charles Barlow from Z-Cars, Softly, Softly, and Softly, Softly: Taskforce. Barlow at Large originated as a three-part self-contained spin-off from Softly, Softly in 1971 with Barlow co-opted by the home office to investigate police corruption in Wales. Johns departed 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. In 1974, the series was rebranded Barlow and two further series of eight episodes each followed, introducing DI Tucker. After the finale's transmission in February 1975, Barlow was next seen in the programme Second Verdict in which he, alongside a former colleague, investigates unsolved cases and unsafe historical convictions.
Barlow
The adventures of Richard Crane, cafe owner & part-time smuggler, around the coast of Morocco, aided (and sometimes abetted) by his ex-Foreign Legion sidekick Orlando, waitress Halina, and local cop Colonel Mahmoud.
Crane
Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television from mid-1968.
Armchair Theatre
Cold Warrior is a 1984 BBC One television series written by Arden Winch, based around the character of Captain Aubrey Percival (Michael Denison), first introduced in the 1981 thriller serial Blood Money. Moving away from the serial format of Blood Money and Skorpion, Cold Warrior consists of eight standalone episodes, which sees Percival dealing with various threats to national security.
Cold Warrior
The illegitimate son of Inspector Clouseau is on the case of the kidnapped Princess Yasmin.
Son of the Pink Panther
Second Verdict is a six-part 1976 BBC television series, a dramatised documentaries of classic criminal cases and unsolved crimes from history re-appraised by fictional police officers. Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor reprised for a final time their double-act as Detective Chief Superintendents Barlow and Watt, hugely popular with TV audiences from the long-running series Z-Cars; Softly, Softly; and Barlow at Large.
Second Verdict
Famed composer Gustav Mahler reflects on the tragedies of his life and failing marriage while traveling by train.
Mahler
In the midst of World War II, Nazi officer Otto Schatz declares the execution of Jewish music-hall comedian Genghis Cohn. Many years later, Otto is comfortably retired into the life of a highly respected police commissioner, and is investigating a series of murders when he encounters the ghost of Genghis Cohn. The haunting turns into a taunting, and before he knows it, Schatz is slowly driven mad as he is lured into a trap.
Genghis Cohn
An energy drain traps the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith on the planet Exxilon with its hostile natives, causing the travellers to make an uneasy alliance with a Marine Space Corps expedition and a squadron of Daleks. The key to escape for all of them lies at the heart of a powerful and mysterious lost city, but only after a series of deadly traps.