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Richard Beckinsale

Richard Beckinsale

Acting

Biography

Richard Beckinsale was an English actor, best known for his roles as Lennie Godber in the popular BBC sitcom Porridge and Alan Moore in the British ITV sitcom Rising Damp. He is the father of actresses Samantha Beckinsale and Kate Beckinsale. He died of a congenital heart defect at the age of just thirty one in 1979.

Known For

Play for Today
6.6

Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.

Play for Today

1970
ITV Playhouse
7.0

ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.

ITV Playhouse

1967
ITV Saturday Night Theatre
7.0

Anthology series of dramatic works.

ITV Saturday Night Theatre

1969
Justice
7.3

Justice is a British drama television series which originally aired on ITV in 39 hour-long episodes between 8 August 1971 and 16 October 1974. Margaret Lockwood stars as Harriet Peterson a female barrister in the North of England. It was made by Yorkshire Television and was based loosely on Justice Is a Woman, an episode of ITV Playhouse broadcast in 1969 in which Lockwood had previously also played a barrister. The theme music was Crown Imperial by William Walton.

Justice

1971
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes
7.5

An anthology series produced by Thames Television, comprised of short mystery, suspense or crime adaptations featuring, as the title suggests, detectives who were literary contemporaries of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes

1971
Porridge
8.1

Porridge is a British situation comedy broadcast on BBC1 from 1974 to 1977, running for three series, two Christmas specials and a feature film also titled Porridge. Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, it stars Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale as two inmates at the fictional HMP Slade in Cumberland. "Doing porridge" is British slang for serving a prison sentence, porridge once being the traditional breakfast in UK prisons. The series was followed by a 1978 sequel, Going Straight, which established that Fletcher would not be going back to prison again. Porridge was voted number seven in a 2004 BBC poll of the 100 greatest British sitcoms.

Porridge

1974
Rising Damp
7.5

Set in a seedy bedsit, the cowardly landlord Rigsby has his conceits debunked by his long suffering tenants.

Rising Damp

1974
Armchair Theatre
6.0

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

1956
Going Straight
7.7

Going Straight is a BBC sitcom which was a direct spin-off from Porridge, starring Ronnie Barker as Norman Stanley Fletcher, newly released from the fictional Slade Prison where the earlier series had been set. It sees Fletcher trying to become an honest member of society, having vowed to stay away from crime on his release. The title refers to his attempt, 'straight' being a slang term meaning being honest, in contrast to 'bent', i.e., dishonest. Also re-appearing was Richard Beckinsale as Lennie Godber, who was Fletcher's naïve young cellmate and was now in a relationship with his daughter Ingrid. Her brother Raymond was played by a teenage Nicholas Lyndhurst. Only one series, of six episodes, was made in 1978. It attracted an audience of over 15 million viewers and won a BAFTA award in March 1979, but hopes of a further series had already been dashed by Beckinsale's premature death earlier in the same month.

Going Straight

1978
Porridge
6.8

Times are hard for habitual guest of Her Majesty Norman Stanley Fletcher. The new prison officer, Beale, makes MacKay look soft and what's more, an escape plan is hatching from the cell of prison godfather Grouty and Fletcher wants no part of it.

Porridge

1979
Bloomers
6.0

Bloomers was a short-lived British sitcom starring Richard Beckinsale that was aired in 1979. It was in production in 1979 but only five episodes were made before Beckinsale died suddenly from a heart attack just before a planned rehearsal for the sixth and final episode of the first series. Bloomers was immediately shelved, though the five completed episodes were broadcast later in the same year.

Bloomers

1979
The Donati Conspiracy
8.0

Contemporary thriller series set in a parallel Britain where the country is ruled by a fascist dictatorship.

The Donati Conspiracy

1973
Three for All
3.3

A pop band and their girlfriends have fun in Spain

Three for All

1975
Bloody Kids
6.5

Two boys pull a Saturday night prank on the police in a seaside British town.

Bloody Kids

1980
Rentadick
4.2

Armitage runs a chemical company that is on the verge of producing a gas that causes temporary disability. Clearly the military want it but it is also sought by a group of Japanese. Both Armitage and Madam Greenfly hire different people in the same detective agency to guard the gas and steal it respectively... confusion, double crosses and hilarity ensue...

Rentadick

1972
No image
1.0

Set in a cemetery, the film tells the story of a young man whom a blind man wrongly imagines to be black, and explores the nature of human prejudice.

If There Weren't Any Blacks You'd Have to Invent Them

1974
The Lovers
6.4

The ups-and-downs of a young courting couple's relationship.

The Lovers

1970
The Lovers!
6.0

Reprising the television series roles which first made them household names, Richard Beckinsale and Paula Wilcox star as Geoffrey Scrimshaw and Beryl Battersby, a hesitant, inexperienced, young couple attempting to negotiate the sexual minefield of the ‘permissive’ society. This big-screen transfer of Jack Rosenthal’s hugely likeable sitcom sees old-fashioned girl Beryl continuing to slap down the advances of her frustrated boyfriend, whose clumsy attempts to initiate ‘Percy Filth’ suggest he’s not quite up to speed himself! Like everyone else, Geoffrey and Beryl want to fall in love – or they think they do; like everyone else, since Adam and Eve. But Adam and Eve didn’t live in Manchester in 1972…

The Lovers!

1973
Porridge: The Desperate Hours
N/A

Fletcher and Godber are in trouble for brewing liquor in the lead-up to Christmas, but are caught up in a hostage situation in the Governor's office.

Porridge: The Desperate Hours

1976
Detective Waiting
8.0

A cat and mouse game develops between a big man of crime and a young detective constable. But the big man doesn't realize, that this mouse roars.

Detective Waiting

1971