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Private Notes
Drama charting how Winnie Mandela (Sophie Okonedo) went from innocent country girl to an apartheid fighter, and from a wife to a revolutionary.
Bold and passionate drama telling the story of Anne Lister, 1791-1840, a Yorkshire landowner, industrialist, traveller and diarist. She was a lesbian, who, despite needing to keep her orientation secret from society at large, in private defied the conventions of her times by living with her female lover.
It is 1981, Charles loves Di, Toxteth is rioting and Margaret Thatcher is trying to reform the economy. In a small Welsh village beginning to feel the negative effects of Thatcher's free market policies, the royal wedding of Charles and Di gives the community and the Caddock family a chance to forget their problems and unite.
Idealistic 15-year-old Tammy Caddock has organised a royal wedding street party but during the course of the celebrations, events unfold which change the lives of her family and the community forever.
Film version of director Rupert Goold's highly-acclaimed production of Macbeth, originally staged by Chichester Festival Theatre and later a sell-out hit in the West End and on Broadway. Shot on location in the mysterious underground world of Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire, the film is set in an undefined and threatening central European world. Immediate and visceral, this is a contemporary presentation of Shakespeare's intense, claustrophobic and bloody drama.
Adaptation of chef Nigel Slater's autobiography, providing a nostalgic trip through everything edible in 1960s Britain. After tragedy strikes food-obsessed young Nigel and his family, he is horrified when his father announces they are moving to the country. Taking solace in domestic science classes at the new school, Nigel's cooking soon becomes the key weapon in the battle for his father's affections. And when Nigel lands a job in the kitchen of his local pub, his eyes are opened to a world of opportunity.
6.53pm. December 9th 1960. Granada Studios, Manchester. With minutes to go until the live transmission of Episode One, creator Tony Warren is being sick in the toilets, actress Pat Phoenix is missing and so is the cat from the opening shot ....
The Road to Coronation Street is the epic story of one man's struggle to make a programme that no one wanted. Granada's formidable bosses Sidney Bernstein and his brother Cecil are not enthusiastic. But together with producer Harry Elton and director Derek Bennett, Tony takes up the battle. He wants cobbles, a pub, seven houses and a shop, but above all he wants northern actors. Led by casting director Margaret Morris and her young assistant Josie Scott, the hunt begins for the legendary cast - Doris Speed, Pat Phoenix, Violet Carson and William Roache. With a last minute change of title, Coronation Street is born.
A funny and emotionally powerful drama which exposes the realities and struggles that some inner-city schools face today.
Ian, a newly qualified teacher, comes up against Mark, a troubled and disruptive pupil who teachers want to see excluded from school.
Against the odds, Ian makes a connection with the boy, but will he put his career on the line to save him?
Feature-length dramatisation following the story of how Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof and promoter Harvey Goldsmith put together Live Aid, the global charity music event. Set between the winter of 1984 and the summer of 1985, it focuses on the extraordinary relationship between Geldof and Goldsmith as they created the concert to 'feed the world'.
A dramatisation of Christopher Reid's narrative poem, telling the story of a book editor who, 15 years after their break-up, meets his former love for a nostalgic lunch at the Soho restaurant they used to frequent. As the wine flows, the couple rake over their failed relationship.
Drama-documentary presented by Alan Yentob, with Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead role as Van Gogh.
Every word spoken by the actors in this film is sourced from the letters that Van Gogh sent to his younger brother Theo, and of those around him. What emerges is a complex portrait of a sophisticated, civilised and yet tormented man.
The film won a Rockie for Best Arts Documentary at the Banff World Media Festival in 2011, receiving critical acclaim for its fascinating insight into the life of the artist and its unique approach to storytelling.
In 1969 the Apollo moon landing is to be televised internationally but at a country fair in England a small boy named Jim meets the 90-year-old Julius Bedford who tells him that,in 1909,as a struggling writer,he met eccentric Professor Cavor,inventor of Cavorite,a gravity-defying substance which they used to build a sphere,which took them to the Moon. Captured by ant-like Selenites,Bedford was anxious to make his escape but Cavor was happy to stay and communicate with the Moon-dwellers. Back on Earth Bedford hears via wireless that Cavor was forced to kill himself and the Moon-dwellers to prevent them from invading Earth. As Jim watches the Apollo landing with his parents back in the present he sees a Selenite,hiding behind a lunar rock,peering at the astronauts.
Christopher Eccleston is John Lennon in a drama which charts his transition from Beatle John to enduring and enigmatic icon.
Writer Robert Jones articulates the burden of genius, as well as issues of fatherhood and fame, covering a period of wildly fluctuating fortunes for Lennon from 1967-71. When the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein died unexpectedly in 1967 it was a turning point in Lennon's life and the film focuses on the turbulent and intense period of change that followed, and how John was haunted by his troubled childhood.
It also reveals the impact of re-establishing contact with his long-lost father and the events that led Lennon to shed everything both personally and creatively, including calling time on the Beatles. Meeting Yoko Ono was the catalyst for this new era and the film explores the development of their extraordinary relationship, their growing disillusionment with Britain and what caused Lennon to abandon the UK to start a new life in America - a process which ultimately led Lennon to record arguably the most powerful solo work of his career.
In 1963 an unknown housewife and teacher from the Midlands, Mary Whitehouse, embarked on a mission to clean up British television. Her crusade led her into battle with the man she held responsible for a tide of 'filth' - Sir Hugh Carleton-Greene, Director-General of the BBC.
With Julie Walters starring as Mary Whitehouse and Hugh Bonneville as her arch enemy, this is a drama inspired by real events that brings life to the battle for Britain's morals.
A chilling new single drama, Whistle and I'll Come to You is the thoroughly modern re-working of the evocative Edwardian ghost story Oh, Whistle and I'll come to You, My Lad by MR James, adapted for BBC Two by Neil Cross. Cross's adaptation delves into themes of ageing, hubris and the supernatural, with a horrifying psychological twist in the tale.
James Parkin has just left his wife in the care of a nursing home. Pensive and emotional, he travels to their old favourite destination for rambling, an off-season British seaside town. There he encounters an apparition on a desolate beach, which begins to haunt him - with terrifying consequences.
Powerful drama based on the true story of Sandra Laing, a black woman who - due to a rare genetic irregularity - was born to white Afrikaner parents in 1950s South Africa and ostracised from white society as a result of the apartheid regime.
Thrown into the crucible of the most violent air war ever seen, a boy barely out of school is determined to fight for survival. However, the price of victory will be more than he can bear. Seventy years later, that same boy is still yearning to be free.
Drama set in 1930s Germany. A professor is reluctant to become involved with the Nazi Party when they offer to advance his career.
