Advanced search

Two symbiotic sociopaths play obscurely deviant mind games with each other while engaging in perversely brutal acts of violence against victims apparently chosen at random.

Social satire on life on Cambridge College - from the headmaster to the students and even one memorable bedder...

A virtuous young woman is oppressed by her ambitious family and a rake who's becomes obsessed with her.

Nine-year-old Daisy wrote a novel in 1890 about an awkward gentleman meeting a young lady on a train. He invites her to his London home. She wants to meet high society, so he takes her to a lord's country estate.

Roman warrior Titus Andronicus finds himself trapped in a nightmarish cycle of vengeance, misery, and bloodshed.

Late in 1926 acclaimed mystery writer Agatha Christie disappears after marital problems and creates a media frenzy.

Richard of Gloucester uses murder and manipulation to claim England's throne.

Henry Bolingbroke has now been crowned King of England, but faces a rebellion headed by the embittered Earl of Northumberland and his son, (nicknamed "Hotspur"). Henry's son, Hal, the Prince of Wales, has thrown over life at court in favor of heavy drinking and petty theft in the company of a debauched elderly knight, Sir John Falstaff. Hal must extricate himself from some legal problems, regain his father's good opinions, and help suppress the uprising.

The adventures and the exploits of notorious English thief and prison-breaker Jack Sheppard in 1720s London.

In 1998, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet visits Britain for medical treatment. On being tipped off, Amnesty International seize the chance to bring to justice a man they insist is guilty of multiple human rights violations. The newly-elected Labour government is initially amenable, and soon Pinochet is under house arrest (albeit in a detached house in leafy suburbia) and awaiting extradition to Spain. However, Amnesty are up against the complexities of British law, the vacillations of Home Secretary Jack Straw, Pinochet's former ally Margaret Thatcher, and the Senator's own vast reserves of cunning.

A serious heart condition puts an end to Charlie King's job as a "street copper", but he refuses the offer of a desk job and a promotion. When a secret team of negotiators approaches him with the offer of a job, he's intrigued, but who is he dealing with?

Boyo lives with his brother Sid, his sister Gwenny and their elderly mother Marlene in an economically depressed area of South-West Wales. Their father has vanished when they were small children, apparently headed for America. The leather-jacketed, motorbike-riding Sid has grown up obsessed with American culture and dreams of joining his father in the States. When the brothers discover that an open-cast mine is opening nearby they join the scramble for jobs, but their mother is unaccountably against the idea. On the morning when they need to report for work, they find she has sabotaged Sid's bike, scuppering their chances of employment. Sid and Gwenny begin to spend more and more of their considerable spare time together, washing down medication they've obtained under their mother's name with pilfered booze. Marlene's increasingly eccentric behaviour leads to her being interred in a hospital, but Boyo is powerless to stop his brother and sister from drifting dangerously out of touch with reality.

This film presents scenes from the life of German composer George Frideric Handel in the style of a baroque opera. After the success of his London debut, Handel settles in England. He abandons aristocratic and royal patronage and throws himself on the mercy of the marketplace, having to deal with money worries and fickle audiences as well as fluctuating health. After the public rejects a string of his operas and a stroke nearly fells him, Handel embarks on a high-risk gamble for his 1742 oratorio "Messiah": he premieres the new work far from fashionable London and with a leading singer whose career is tainted by scandal.

George Phillips, a middle-aged Londoner, works as an estate agent for the firm of Frobisher, Rendell and Ross. His home life is soured by clashes with his wife over whether their teenage son's girlfriend should be allowed to sleep over at their house, a situation the timid, melancholic George dislikes but hasn't the guts to forbid. His professional life is dominated by his attempts to find a buyer for Sunley House, a once-fashionable 1960s office block which has lain unoccupied for over a year. When his wife leaves for Colchester to look after her elderly father, George avoids conflict with his son by sleeping over at Sunley House. Meanwhile, his workplace rival, a younger man called Rycroft, is also trying to find a buyer for Sunley House (and thereby usurp George's place in the firm). One morning George finds himself locked in and has to crash through a window to escape. When Rycroft finds the broken window, he sets out to find the culprit.

In 1963, flamboyant, eccentric English theatre critic Kenneth Tynan is made 'literary manager' of London's National Theatre. His views on censorship (can't stand it) and sexuality (as much of it onstage as possible) set him on a collision course with the NT's Chair, Sir Oliver Lyttelton. Tynan has a friend and ally in the Governor, Laurence Olivier, but cannot always count on the older, more conventional man's support. Demoted after becoming the first person to drop the F-bomb on British TV, Tynan struggles to stage his 'erotic entertainment' "Oh Calcutta" in the face of opposition from friends, family and colleagues, and in spite of his own deteriorating health.

Morgan, a sensitive 12-year-old, growing up in richness and royalty, finds a true friend in Julien, a young man hired to tutor him.

Innocent, optimistic Candide grows up in the secluded paradise of a German castle, illegitimate nephew of a wealthy baron. His tutor Dr Pangloss instils in him the doctrine that 'All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds': anything, however apparently terrible, is part of the benevolent Creator's plan. But Candide is expelled from the family after falling in love with the baron's daughter, and what he experiences as he travels across Europe and America (war, bigotry, slavery, natural disaster) puts Pangloss's teachings very much to the test. Leonard Bernstein's musical version of the famous satire by Voltaire went through multiple rewrites over the decades. This BBC broadcast is the world premiere of the 1988 Scottish Opera version, with the composer himself as a guest of honour in the audience.

George and Betty, a middle-class English couple, have just moved into a big Edwardian house in London and are throwing a party to celebrate. Unfortunately, after ten days none of their furniture has arrived, having been sent to Carlisle by mistake, three of the four toilets don't work and cracks are starting to appear in the ceiling. However, nothing can dent their determination to have a good time.

In the spring of 1913, Parisian businessman Gabriel Astruc opens a new theater on the Champs Elysées. The first performance is the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's 'The Rite of Spring', danced by the Ballet Russes. The rehearsal process is extremely fraught: the orchestra dislike Stravinsky's harsh, atonal music; the dancers dislike the 'ugly' choreography of Vaslav Nijinsky. The volatile, bisexual Nijinsky is in a strained relationship with the much older Sergei Diaghilev, the Ballet Russes' charismatic but manipulative impresario. Public expectation is extremely high after Nijinsky's success in 'L'apres-midi d'un faune'. Finally, 'The Rite of Spring' premieres to a gossip-loving, febrile, fashion-conscious Parisian audience sharply divided as to its merits.

After WWII, as Poland rebuilds, a woman claims to have letters from Chopin to her ancestor, his lover, challenging the nation's desire for an idealized portrayal of the composer.

Mr and Mrs Cooper are staying at a boarding-house in the seaside resort of Morecambe with their small children, Colin and Jennifer. Mr Cooper has just been made redundant, but the family are trying to keep this a secret from the other guests. Also staying at the hotel are Keith and Jo, a young couple on their honeymoon, and an older couple, Mr and Mrs Thornton. Waking early one morning, Colin amuses himself by dangling one of his sister's sandals out of the window on a piece of string. The sandal accidentally lands on a flat roof just outside the window of the honeymooning couple, and his father's now straitened financial circumstances mean Colin has to get it back, by fair means or foul.

Whitechapel works as a slave on a Virginia plantation; he has been given the name of his owner, Mr Whitechapel. The plantation's overseer is the violent and hard-drinking Sanders, embittered by the death of his wife. When Whitechapel's beautiful young bride attracts Sanders's attention, the stage is set for a tragedy that spans generations.

On February 17 2001, Welsh punk rock band the Manic Street Preachers played at the Karl Marx Theatre, Havana, becoming the first Western rock act to play in Communist Cuba. This film documents their concert, their interviews with the local media and their two meetings with Cuban head-of-state Fidel Castro.

When Denis Midgley's father is rushed to hospital, Midgley drops everything to be by his side. They've never really got on, so Midgley wants to be sure he's there if his father ever regains consciousness. As he hates his job as a schoolteacher, and his home-life with his wife, her senile mother and their insolent teenage son, he has no qualms about lingering around the hospital. But as days turn into weeks, his father obstinately refuses to 'slip away', and Denis' motivation for staying by his father's bedside has more and more to do with Valery, a young nurse.

Mr Wyman is an elderly man whose increasingly unreliable memory has landed him in a geriatric ward. Here he is visited by his daughters Val and Molly, and Molly's husband Harold. Another elderly man on the ward, the foul-mouthed Mr Riscoe, makes repeated attempts to escape but is always intercepted by one of the ward's two male nurses, Vic and Donald. Vic and Donald are in competition for a promotion. Donald needs the money as he and his girlfriend are trying to buy a house but are having difficulty arranging a mortgage. From the window at which he sits, Mr Wyman can see a wall. He repeatedly pesters Donald with questions about what is on the other side. Donald constructs a fantasy of the future he dreams of with his girlfriend: a house and garden inhabited by a married couple. As Donald works at night and his girlfriend during the day, almost the only time they have to be together comes when she sneaks into the ward at night. While they are having furtive sex, Mr Wyman seizes the chance to make an escape bid of his own.