Production
Anthology series of dramatic works.
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.
Wilde Alliance is a 1978 British television programme created by Ian Mackintosh and produced by Yorkshire Television for l ITV. The light-hearted mystery series follows husband-and-wife amateur detectives Rupert and Amy Wilde.
New Scotland Yard is a police drama series produced by London Weekend Television for ITV from 1972 and 1974. It features the activities of two officers from the Criminal Investigations Department in the Metropolitan Police force headquarters at New Scotland Yard, as they dealt with the assorted villains of the day.
The Onedin Line is a BBC television drama series which ran from 1971 to 1980. The series was created by Cyril Abraham. The series is set in Liverpool from 1860 to 1886 and deals with the rise of a shipping line, the Onedin Line, named after its owner James Onedin. Around this central theme are the lives of his family, most notably his brother and partner, shop owner Robert, and his sister Elizabeth, giving insight into the lifestyle and customs at the time, not only at sea, but also ashore. The series also illustrates some of the changes in business and shipping, such as from wooden to steel ships and from sailing ships to steam ships. It shows the role that ships played in affairs like international politics, uprisings and the slave trade.
Raffles was a 1977 television adaptation of the A. J. Raffles stories by Ernest William Hornung. The series was produced by Yorkshire Television and written by Philip Mackie. The episodes were largely faithful adaptations of the stories in the books, though occasionally two stories would be merged to create one. In Victorian-era London, gentleman thief A. J. Raffles, a renowned cricketer, and his friend, the eager but naive Bunny Manders, test their skills in relieving the wealthy of their valuables whilst avoiding detection, especially from the persistent Inspector Mackenzie.
"Fall of Eagles" is a 13-part British television drama aired by the BBC in 1974. The series portrays historical events from 1848 to 1918, dealing with the collapse of the ruling dynasties of Austria-Hungary (the Habsburgs), Germany (the Hohenzollerns) and Russia (the Romanovs).
The Sandbaggers is a British television drama series about men and women on the front lines of the Cold War. Set contemporaneously with its original broadcast on ITV in 1978 and 1980, The Sandbaggers examines the effect of the espionage game on the personal and professional lives of British and American intelligence specialists.
A 13-episode miniseries from Yorkshire Television, about Charles Dickens, by now an internationally renowned novelist, during an 1869 tour of America, looking back over his life.
Anthology of self-contained dramas that aired from 1977 to 1978.
Follows the lives of British expatriates living on the island of Crete, where their secrets will soon rise to the surface.
Dramas about women who made the headlines of Victorian newspapers.
An anthology of six standalone plays presented relationships either beginning or ending in love – but the outcome was not always marriage (or happiness). A second series of five episodes aired in 1986.
Follows the private lives of seven British PMs who lived at Number 10 Downing Street between the 1780s and the 1920s: William Pitt the Younger, the Duke of Wellington (Arthur Wellesley), Benjamin Disraeli, William Ewart Gladstone, David Lloyd-George, Herbert Henry Asquith and James Ramsay MacDonald.
British undercover agent Harry Brown is sent to Northern Ireland to infiltrate the IRA to find (and terminate) the assassin of a British Cabinet Minister. Harry is alone, the army hasn't been told he is being put in place, his wife is fed up with him and his job, and his sole new friend, an Irish woman who falls for him, will be consumed by his relentless search for the assassin.
One Summer is a 1983 British television drama serial written by Willy Russell and directed by Gordon Flemyng. It stars David Morrissey and Spencer Leigh as two 16 year old Liverpool boys from broken homes who escape from their lives by running away to Wales one summer. It also starred James Hazeldine and Ian Hart. The series was shown in five 50-minute episodes on Channel 4 from 7 August to 4 September 1983. It was later repeated on ITV in April 1985.
Yorkshire Television's Celebrity Playhouse anthology series.
Trevor Chaplin teaches woodwork and likes to listen to jazz. Jill Swinburne teaches English and wants to help save the planet. Trevor tries to buy some jazz records but this leads to meeting a 'dazzlingly beautiful platinum blond'.
In early 20th-century England, young orphan Christina Parsons is sent to live with her Uncle Russell, who owns the country estate of Flambards, and has two sons. Mark, the elder, is a wastrel, a roue and, like his father, loves to hunt. The younger, William, lives to fly aeroplanes. Christina finds herself struggling with the ideas of classism as she falls in love with country life, the hunt, and one of her cousins. But after an impulsive marriage, when her husband is called away by the First World War, Christina must keep Flambards afloat by herself.
Adaptation of Elizabeth Jane Howard's novel about the family of a publisher, killed in World War II, who discover unwelcome truths about him twenty years later in the course of a weekend at his widow's home.