France 1796: in the new Republic poverty is rife and crimes harshly punished. Jean Valjean is sentenced to five years at the gallery for stealing a loaf of bread. There the Inspector of Guards Javert takes an intense loathing to him - and every rebellion on Jean's part is met with strict punishment and a longer sentence. Jean eventually escapes. Five years later he is living a respectable life as a Mayor when fate intervenes and brings him face to face with his old enemy Javert. Victor Hugo's enduring classic is lavishly recreated and performed by an outstanding cast.
Simon Magus (1999): A magical tale from a vanished world... Simon is an outcast from his Jewish community because he claims that the devil talks to him and he has the ability to put curses on crops. When Dovid asks the 'Squire' to sell him some land so he can build a railway station a ruthless businessman from the neighbouring gentile community uses Simon to find out who wants to buy the land so he can 'persuade' him otherwise. The Nine Lives Of Tomas Katz (2000): London stands on the brink; a solar eclipse is going to darken the skies and madness begins to emerge in the populace. The odd Tomas Katz rises from the sewer and it soon becomes obvious that he is at the centre of the chaos to come. The only hope lies in a blind police commander who is deeply connected with the spirit world... An intensely strange surreal and funny series of scenes in which the absurdity of the modern world is shown to be unnervingly accurate...
Anazapta is a medieval thriller set in England during 1348. It is a tale of lust and revenge that unfolds beneath the shadow of the Black Death. Brought to a small English village as hostage an enigmatic French Nobleman turns out to be an impostor. With a deadly agenda the man embodies the most primal instincts and uses them to exact a merciless revenge on a village cursed for their nefarious past. At his command is the deadliest of weapons the Black Death.
Englands Summer of Cricket 2008
2000 Acres Of Sky continues with eight more episodes from this very popular Drama Series. Can a beautiful friendship turn to romance? In series two the charade is over between Abby and Kenny who posed as husband and wife for a new life on the beautiful scottish island of Ronansay. When Abby's releationship with the local fish farmer intensifies Kenny watches the woman he has spent a lifetime waiting for give her heart to someone else. However the friendship that has already s
A successful American banker faces all sorts of opposition after revealing his penchant for dressing in women's clothing...
a powerful drama set against the harsh and turbulent background of poverty and class distinction in Tyneside at the beginning of the century. A young docker John O'Brien falls deeply in love with Mary Llewellyn the daughter of a local shipbuilder. Their love unites them but the fifteen streets which separate poverty from wealth threaten to stand in their way.
When farmer Ben Singleton (Ian Holm) faces a strike by the Transport and General Workers Union he decides to walk his 500 plumped up gaggle of geese to the Christmas Smithfield Market in London just as they did in medieval times. He persuades his wife (Penelope Wilton) daughter and two loyal workers to undertake the one hundred-mile trek to the Capital which becomes fraught with peril and humour. However by the time Singleton is only halfway there he has become a national hero something he has neither sort nor desired thanks to a film crew who are more content on telling their own story rather than the truth. The screenplay by actor Brian Glover harks back affectionately to the Ealing Comedies of the 1940s and '50s with it's battle of the small man against the stupidity of the bureaucrats and the media.
Sometimes dismissed as a pale descendant of a great original, The New Avengers deserves a second look and is perhaps best considered as a largely successful attempt to re-imagine its predecessor for 1970s audiences. Patrick McNee was never the most convincing of action heroes, and the decision to make his John Steed the supervisor and mentor of two younger agents was a sensible one--Steed's virtues are style, wisdom and fortitude rather than physical prowess. Gareth Hunt's Gambit has an unattractively smug side, but has also a louche charm. Joanna Lumley's Purdey is one of the most attractive heroines of genre television, astonishingly leggy and beautiful. Those who only know her later incarnation as Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous will understand now why such a fuss is made over her. The script team overlaps heavily with that of the original series; the new show has the same quirkiness, only occasionally varying it with a rather darker leCarrésque complexity or sudden outbreaks of Hammer Horror. If it lacks some of the sheer style of the original, that is a reflection of its period--the 1970s were less visually imaginative than the 60s. Tightly plotted, imaginatively cast with interesting guest stars, it is only with The Avengers that The New Avengers suffers by comparison. --Roz Kaveney
Caroline Quentin stars as DCI Janine Lewis the hit police drama Blue Murder. Starring along side her are Ian Kelsey ( Casualty ) David Schofield ( Our Friends in the North ) and Nick Murchie.
Van Helsing (Dir. Stephen Sommers 2004): Hunted as a murderer by those who do not understand his calling Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) travels the globe as a fugitive. Accompanied only by Carl (David Wenham) a friar entrusted with providing Van Helsing's safety and a weapons arsenal to rival James Bond Van Helsing is despatched to the shadowy world of Transylvania. Home to the ravishing Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale) one of the last remaining descendents of a powerful royal family Van Helsing has been sent to terminate the evil and undefeatable Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) and his alluring bloodthirsty vampire brides. Herself a fearless hunter Anna joins forces with Van Helsing to confront her family's life long adversary and avenge the deaths of her predecessors. In a stunning showdown Van Helsing comes face to face with his mortal enemy but is also forced to confront his past... Bram Stoker's Dracula (Dir. Francis Ford Coppola 1992): Francis Ford Coppola returns to the original source of the Dracula to create a modern masterpiece. It follows the tortured journey of the devastatingly seductive Transylvanian Prince (Gary Oldman) as he moves from Eastern Europe to 19th century London in search of his long lost Elisabeta who is reincarnated as the beautiful Mina (Winona Ryder)... Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Dir. Kenneth Branagh 1994): It is the late 18th Century. After the death of his beloved mother young Victor Frankenstein leaves his father and Elizabeth the adopted sister he passionately loves to attend university. Here he becomes obsessed with the teachings of Professor Walman who believes that living creatures can actually be created from dead matter. One electrifying night Frankenstein's efforts are rewarded as his Creature struggles to life. Alone despised and driven by a rage of emotional agony it sets off to find its maker. And so begins the nightmare that will engulf Victor Frankenstein...
When Teddy (Jayston) brings his wife Ruth (Marchant) home to meet his family for the first time murky secrets are revealed and old wounds are reopened... The American Film Theatre production of Harold Pinter's play features direction from Peter Hall and showcases Ian Holm giving one of the finest performances of his career as vicious thug Lenny.
Toni Cocozza is a small-time Scottish Italian club singer obsessed with Frank Sinatra. In the hope of finding stardom he falls in with a group of gangsters and is soon betraying his true friends.
In this sequel to the box office smash the guys are all back home after their first year at various colleges. Not wanting to stay with their respective folks, the boys rent a beach house together for the summer, and catch up with some old friends.
Based freely on the classic novels by CS Forester, Hornblower is a series of TV films following the progress of a young officer through the ranks of the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars. The series' greatest asset is the handsome and charismatic Ioan Gruffudd in the lead role, surely a major star in the making. For television films the production values are very good, though as Titanic, Waterworld and The Perfect Storm demonstrated, filming an aquatic adventure is a very expensive business, and it is clear that the Hornblower dramas simply make the best of comparatively small budgets. No more faithful to Forester's books than the 1951 Gregory Peck classic Captain Horatio Hornblower, the real inspiration seems to have come from the success of Sharpe, starring Sean Bean, which likewise featured a British hero in the Napoleonic Wars. Nevertheless, while rather more easygoing than the real British navy of the time, the Hornblower saga delivers an entertaining adventure, greatly enhanced by the presence of such guest stars as Denis Lawson, Cheri Lunghi, Ronald Pickup and Anthony Sher. --Gary S Dalkin
An American with the help of an upper-class Englishman who's looking for adventure hopes to get rich via smuggling and land speculation in Africa. But they are forced to put aside the conflict and focus on more serious problems when they discover a group of Germans attempting to ready a grounded battleship for war.
U.S. Customs agent Victor (Stephen Baldwin) is a special operative who goes Deep Cover to bring down some of the worlds most notorious drugs lords he works under various aliases and he always brings these criminals to justice. He discovers that a group of financial drug smugglers have been using parachutes to skydive the drugs in at night. Gradually Caruso blurs the line that separates his mission from his new found passion having ultimately to choose between his duty and his lifestyle which he has come to obsess.
Based on the series of novels written by Dorothy L Sayers in the 1920s and 30s, Lord Peter Wimsey was dramatised for TV by the BBC between 1972-5. Ian Carmichael, veteran of British film comedy, played the genial, aristocratic sleuth; Glyn Houston was his manservant Bunter. The pair are similar to PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Bertie Wooster (whom Carmichael played in an earlier TV adaptation) though here the duo are equal in intelligence, breezing about the country together in Wimsey's Bentley and stumbling with morbid regularity upon baffling murder mysteries to test their wits. Those for whom this series forms hazy memories of childhood might be surprised at its somewhat stagy, lingering interior shots, the spartan paucity of music, the miserly attitude towards locations, especially foreign ones, and the rather genteel, leisurely pace of these programmes, besides which Inspector Morse seems like Quentin Tarantino in comparison. It seems that initially the BBC was reluctant to commission the series and ventured on production with a wary eye on the budget. The Britain depicted by Sayers is, by and large, populated by either the upper classes or heavily accented, rum-do-and-no-mistake lower orders, which some might find consoling. However, the acting is generally excellent and the murder mysteries are sophisticated parlour games, the televisual equivalent of a good, absorbing jigsaw puzzle. There were five feature-length adaptations in all. "Five Red Herrings" is the last and perhaps the least of the series, involving a trout fishing holiday interrupted by the death of a local artist. --David Stubbs
In a time before history, in a place named Middle-earth, a dark and powerful lord has brought together the forces of evil to destroy its cultures and enslave all life caught in his path.
Teenager Simone appears to be like any other fan of a rock band. But soon her fixation on the band's lead singer 'R' takes over her life. Simone walks out of school breaks off with her friends and parents and as if sleepwalking somehow finds herself waiting for her idol as he appears on a TV show. As she sees him for the first time she is speechless unable to even ask for his autograph. He notices her and reaches out to touch her. Simone wants nothing more than to love and be lov
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