Denis Holmes

BBC Play of the Month

Peacey

A BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983.

Bergerac

Colonel Foster-Biggs

Jim Bergerac is a detective sergeant in The Foreigners Office who likes to do things his own way. While dealing with his own personal demons Bergerac has a knack of finding trouble, and sometimes causing it.

Maigret

Inspector Bergsma

BBC series based on the novels by Georges Simenon which starred Rupert Davies as Inspector Maigret, a French police detective who preferred to watch and listen in order to solve crimes. The series ran from 1960-63 on British television.

Secret Army

Paul Frenay

World War II drama about covert organisation Lifeline helping allied airmen escape after being shot down in occupied Europe, working with the Resistance and hiding from the Gestapo.

Poldark

Captain Bray

Poldark is a television drama based on Winston Graham's novels of the same title. It was first transmitted on BBC Two across two seasons between 1975 and 1977. The adaptation covered all seven novels (of the eventual twelve) published up to the time. In late 18th-century Cornwall, Ross Poldark loses his fiancée, well-bred beauty Elizabeth, to his cousin Francis. He ends up marrying his servant, Demelza Carne, but his passion for Elizabeth simmers on for years. Meanwhile, he strives to make his derelict copper mines a success. Life is hard, smuggling is rife, and Ross finds himself taking the side of the underclass against the ruthless behaviour of his enemies, the greedy Warleggan clan.

Reilly: Ace of Spies

Admiral Fisher

Reilly, Ace of Spies is a 1983 television miniseries dramatising the life of Sidney Reilly, a Russian Jew who became one of the greatest spies ever to work for the British. Among his exploits, in the early 20th-century, were the infiltration of the German General Staff in 1917 and a near-overthrow of the Bolsheviks in 1918. His reputation with women was as legendary as his genius for espionage.

Sabrina

Butler

After her return from school in Paris, a playboy finally takes notice of his family's chauffeur's daughter Sabrina, who's long had a crush on him, but he questions his more serious brother's motives when he warns against getting involved with her.

Beasts

Ashwell

Beasts is a series of six television plays by Manx writer Nigel Kneale, unconnected but for a bestial horror theme, made by ATV for ITV in the United Kingdom and broadcast in 1976.

Beasts: Buddyboy

Ashwell

When a nightclub owner buys a derelict dolphinarium, he and a young woman seem to be haunted by the ghost of Buddy Boy, the star attraction. Created as an episode of Nigel Kneale's "Beasts" horror anthology miniseries.

The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission

General Pierre Fontaine

Major Reisman is "volunteered" to lead another mission using convicted army soldiers, sentenced to either death or long prison terms. This time their mission is to kill a Nazi general who plans to assassinate Hitler.

The Brides of Fu Manchu

Constable

This time Fu Manchu and his army of henchmen are kidnaping the daughters of prominent scientists and taking them to his remote island headquarters. Instead of asking for ransom, Fu demands that the fathers help him to build a death ray, which he intends to use to take over the world. But Fu's archenemy, Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard, is determined not to let that happen.

Moonlighting

Neighbor

A Polish contractor, Nowak, leads a group of workmen to London so they can provide cheap labor for a government official based there. Nowak has to manage the project and the men as they encounter the tempations of the West and loneliness and separation from their families. Nowak is the only one of the group who speaks English, and he uses this as a tool over his team. When the unrest in Poland leads to a military takeover, Nowak is faced with a much more difficult situation than he expected.

The Scarlet Blade

Chaplain

A cruel Roundhead Colonel is on the trail of royalist sympathizers, but unaware of his daughters royalist sympathies. When she falls into a love triangle with Cavalier Edward Beverly and Roundhead officer Captain Sylvester the stage is set for double crossing and derring-do.

Cover Girl Killer

Actor

A madman is on the loose... killing fashion models that appear on the cover of magazines. The police start a manhunt in an attempt to capture the killer.

Murder in the Cathedral

Murder in the Cathedral is a story about Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, and his struggles against temptation and personal vanity prior to his murder in the great Cathedral.

The Return of Mr. Moto

Chapel the fake Halliday

Mr. Moto goes undercover to find out who has been blowing up oil wells and trying to gain total control of all the oil leases from a petroleum-rich Middle Eastern country.

Return of a Stranger

Craston

An obsessed man returns to claim the woman he loves.

Love on a Gunboat

Mr. Potter

In 1956 Britain staggers through crises in Suez and Cyprus while Leslie Potter pursues and marries Monica Dobbs. Twenty years later the nation has still not recovered. Neither has Leslie.

Echo of Diana

Security Officer

When a woman begins to investigate her husband's mysterious death in a plane accident she discovers the involvement of a woman known simply as Diana.

Speed for Thespians

Luka

Three actors and a director perform Chekhov's The Bear on a New York City bus (actually, a succession of buses, as they keep getting thrown off). The other riders on the final bus get progressively more interested.