Directing
The lives of several families in the Yorkshire Dales revolve around a farm and the nearby village. With murders, affairs, lies, deceit, laughter and tears, it's all there in the village.
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.
Children's drama series following the lives of students and teachers at Grange Hill comprehensive school.
Dramarama is the name of a British children's anthology series broadcast on ITV between 1983 and 1989. It tended to feature drama of a science fiction or supernatural bent. The series was created by Anna Home, then head of children's and youth programming at TVS, however production responsibilities were divided amongst most of the regional ITV franchise holders. Thus, each episode was in practice a one-off production with its own cast and crew, up to and including the executive producer. Dramarama was largely a place for new talent to prove themselves and was a launching pad for the likes of Anthony Horowitz, Paul Abbott, Kay Mellor, Janice Hally, Tony Kearney, David Tennant and Ann Marie Di Mambro. It was one of Dennis Spooner's last credits. One of Dramarama's episodes, "Dodger, Bonzo And The Rest", gained so much popularity that it was turned in to its own series the following year. It starred Lee Ross and was based around a large foster home. The episode "Blackbird Singing In The Dead of Night" was developed by Granada into the TV series Children's Ward. It was also repeated for the first time since its original broadcast on 5 January 2013, during CITV's 30th anniversary Old Skool Weekend. The Series 7 episode "Back To Front" – notable for featuring a mirror image of the Yorkshire Television logo card at the end – was repeated on 6 January 2013, again as part of CITV's 30th anniversary Old Skool Weekend.
No 73, later re-titled 7T3, was a British 1980s children's TV show produced by Television South for the ITV network. It was broadcast live on Saturday mornings and ran from 1982 to 1988. The show starred, amongst others, Sandi Toksvig, Neil Buchanan, Andrea Arnold, Kim Goody and Richard Waites. When Television South won the contract to provide ITV coverage for the South of England in 1980, the first thing they set up was a children's department. A team put together with a background in theatre and drama, soon decided to produce a Saturday morning show that differed from the usual Tiswas and Saturday Superstore formula: This show would feature actors in character as hosts, performing their own comedic storyline around the usual guests, music videos, competitions and cartoons. Much of the show was improvised, and a whole week of rehearsals plus an extensive dress rehearsal on Friday preceded each live broadcast on Saturday morning.
Allsorts is British children's television series that was produced by Granada Television for nine series, which aired from 8 January 1986 to 12 December 1995 on CITV.
Children's Ward is a British children's television drama series produced by Granada Television and broadcast on the ITV network as part of its Children's ITV strand on weekday afternoons. The programme was set – as the title suggests – in Ward B1, the children's ward of the fictitious South Park Hospital, and told the stories of the young patients and the staff present there. Aimed at older children and teenagers, Children's Ward was a long-lived series for a children's drama, starting life in 1988 as a contribution to the Dramarama anthology strand, "Blackbird Singing In The Dead of Night", then first broadcast as a series 1989 and running from then until 2000. The series was conceived by Granada staff writers Paul Abbott and Kay Mellor, both of whom went on to enjoy successful careers as award-winning writers of adult television drama. At the time, they were both working on the soap opera Coronation Street, and had recently collaborated on a script for Dramarama. Abbott, who had been through a troubled childhood himself, had initially wanted to set the series in a children's care home rather than a hospital, but this was vetoed by Granada executives. During the course of its run, however, Children's Ward won many plaudits for covering difficult issues such as cancer, alcoholism, drug addiction and child abuse in a sensitive manner. The programme won many awards, including in 1996 a BAFTA Children's Award for Best Drama, won by an episode in which a serial killer lures children to him via the internet and is – highly unusually for children's television – not eventually caught.
Absolutely is a popular UK television comedy sketch show shown on Channel 4 between 1989 and 1993. The cast and crew were mainly Scottish; the principal writers and performers were Moray Hunter, Jack Docherty, Peter Baikie, Gordon Kennedy, Morwenna Banks and John Sparkes. It was directed by Phil Chilvers, Alan Nixon, Alistair Clark, and Graham C Williams. The show's producers were Alan Nixon, and David Tyler
A situation comedy about divorcee James Shepherd, a charismatic vet, who struggles to run both a successful surgery and a home for his two teenage children.
Zzzap was a British children's television comedy programme. The concept of the show was a giant 18ft comic that has been brought to life. The show ran from 8 January 1993 until 21 September 2001, and was produced by The Media Merchants and Meridian Broadcasting. A spin-off titled 'Cuthbert's Diary' was also produced as part of "Gogglewatch", a CITV show produced by LWT.
Kappatoo was a CITV show based on a book by Ben Steed, starring Denise Van Outen. In the show, Kappatoo travels back in time to the present to swap places with his identical "time twin" Simon Cashmere in order to cheat in a futuristic sports contest. Kappatoo lives in the past whilst Simon lives in the far off future. The show premiered on CITV in 1990, with a follow-up series, Kappatoo II, broadcast in 1992. the show was made by Worldwide International TV for Tyne Tees Television. Filming took place at Heaton Manor School in High Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne with characters and extras using authentic school uniform from Heaton Manor School. The creative team behind Kappatoo did not do much about effects, and a short scene from the first episode which has Kappa freeze time had some extras moving around.
Comedy series about an Indiana Jones-style adventurer.
Phil Cool was a British sketch comedy and impressionist television series starring English comedian Phil Cool, released in the UK on August 1, 1992. Produced by Central Independent Television for ITV, the 30-minute show consisted of five episodes and was the comedian's final self-titled series before his eventual retirement from touring in 2013.
Paz is an American television show produced by Telescreen BV, Egmont Imagination, King Rollo Films, Open Mind Productions, Discovery Kids, and DreamWorks Classics. The series runs as 80 eight-minute shows, each of which combines both a five-minute animation with live action before and after. The show integrates the live action with the animation so that the story flows and continues throughout. In the US it airs on Discovery Kids and on TLC on Ready Set Learn between shows. The title theme was composed by Art Labriola and all the incidental music was written by Lester Barnes. Children's TV producer Jonathan Meath supervised and produced numerous episodes of the show Paz the Penguin. Paz is based on the books by Mary Murphy. The show focuses on a five-year-old penguin named Paz and his mother, Big Penguin. It first aired in 2003. In Europe and many other countries, Paz runs only as a five-minute cartoon without the live action sections.
A dissident Czechoslovakian playwright awaits trial for his activities against the current political regime.
Play by Carol Bunyan. Two very different ladies share an office, a common enemy and a sense of humour. Sorry follows them through a day and their very different, and in one case, traumatic, lunch hour.
