Lisa Harrow

BBC Play of the Month

Ludmilla

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.

The Professionals

Geraldine Mather

The lives of Bodie and Doyle, top agents for Britain's CI5 (Criminal Intelligence 5), and their controller, George Cowley. The mandate of CI5 was to fight terrorism and similar high-profile crimes. Cowley, a hard ex-MI5 operative, hand-picked each of his men. Bodie is a cynical ex-SAS paratrooper and mercenary whose nature ran to controlled violence, while his partner, Doyle, comes to CI5 from the regular police force, and is more of an open minded liberal. Their relationship is often contentious, but they are the top men in their field, and the ones to whom Cowley always assigned to the toughest cases.

Inspector Morse

Thelma Radford

Inspector Morse is a detective drama based on Colin Dexter's series of Chief Inspector Morse novels. The series starred John Thaw as Chief Inspector Morse and Kevin Whately as Sergeant Lewis, as well as a large cast of notable actors and actresses.

Space: 1999

Anna Davis

The crew of Moonbase Alpha must struggle to survive when a massive explosion throws the Moon from orbit into deep space.

The Ruth Rendell Mysteries

Petra Summers

The Ruth Rendell mysteries is a British television series made by TVS and Meridian Television for ITV between 2 August 1987 and 11 October 2000.

The Expert

Anne Kyneston

The Expert is a British television series produced by the BBC between 1968 and 1976. The series starred Marius Goring as Dr. John Hardy, a pathologist working for the Home Office and was essentially a police procedural drama, with Hardy bringing his forensic knowledge to solve various cases. The Expert was created and produced by Gerard Glaister. The series was also one of the first BBC dramas to be made in colour, and throughout its four series had numerous high quality guest appearances by actors such as John Carson, Peter Copley, Rachel Kempson, Peter Vaughan, Clive Swift, Geoffrey Palmer, Peter Barkworth, Jean Marsh, Ray Brooks, George Sewell, Anthony Valentine, Bernard Lee, Lee Montague, Geoffrey Bayldon, Mike Pratt, Edward Fox, André Morell, Brian Blessed, Nigel Stock, Philip Madoc and Warren Clarke.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes

Beatrice Graham

An anthology series produced by Thames Television, comprised of short mystery, suspense or crime adaptations featuring, as the title suggests, detectives who were literary contemporaries of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

Kavanagh Q.C.

Lizzie Kavanagh

John Thaw dons the silks as barrister James Kavanagh Q.C., one of the most highly respected criminal advocates in London, commanding admiration from colleagues and opponents alike. However, all this has come at a price as his dedication to work has taken its toll on his private life… Going beyond traditional courtroom dramas, “Kavanagh Q.C.” uncovers the pressures of legal battles and the problems of defining the truth, providing a compelling representation of the euphoric ups and costly downs of success and failure in the legal world.

Churchill's People

Mrs Graham

Churchill's People is a British anthology series based on A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill's four-volume history of Britain and its former colonies. 26 episodes were produced by the BBC and initially broadcast from 30 December 1974 to 23 June 1975.

Hallmark Hall of Fame

Helen

Long-running anthology program sponsored by Hallmark Cards. Beginning in 1951 and continuing into 2019, the series received 80 Emmy Awards, 24 Christopher Awards, 11 Peabody Awards, 9 Golden Globes, and 4 Humanitas Prizes. Early seasons were a weekly live drama, eventually transitioning to videotaped and then filmed productions broadcast as occasional specials.

The Final Conflict

Kate Reynolds

Damien Thorn has helped rescue the world from a recession, appearing to be a benign corporate benefactor. When he then becomes U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Damien fulfills a terrifying biblical prophecy. He also faces his own potential demise as an astronomical event brings about the second coming of Christ.

Playing Shakespeare

John Barton holds a master class in how to play Shakespeare, using members of the RSC doing scenes, sonnets, and commentary as prime examples.

Star Maidens

Liz

Star Maidens is a British-German science-fiction television series created and written by Eric Paice. Utilising a 'battle of the sexes' and role reversal scenario, the planet Medusa, home to a highly evolved and technologically advanced humanoid race, was already ruled by its women when a rogue comet (as seen in the opening credits) knocked it out of its orbit around Proxima Centauri. Drifting through space, the orphan planet's surface became uninhabitable, with the inhabitants surviving in huge underground cities. Jointly produced by Portman Productions, Scottish Television, and Werbung im Rundfunk for ITV, filming took place at Bray Studios and on location in Windsor and Bracknell, Berkshire, and Black Park, Buckinghamshire. The series ran for 13 episodes from 1 September to 1 December 1976.

The Strauss Dynasty

Anna

A dramatization of two generations of the Viennese Strauss family, whose dance music and operettas dominated much of Europe and beyond for most of the 19th century.

1990

Lynn Blake

The series is set in a dystopian future in which Britain is under the grip of the Home Office's Department of Public Control (PCD), a tyrannically oppressive bureaucracy riding roughshod over the population's civil liberties. Edward Woodward plays Jim Kyle, a journalist on the last independent newspaper called The Star, who turns renegade and begins to fight the PCD covertly. The officials of the PCD, in turn, try to provide proof of Kyle's subversive activities.

Nancy Astor

Nancy Astor

Nancy Astor was the American-born socialite and politician who became the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons. This miniseries produced for BBC2 follows her journey from her early life in Virginia to her political career in Britain, including her marriage to Waldorf Astor and her struggles and triumphs as a Member of Parliament.

Step Dave

Marrion

Dave, a 24-year-old ordinary kiwi slacker, finds his life turned upside down when he meets the girl of his dreams Cara - and her three kids. Step Dave is a light-hearted, feel-good family drama which demonstrates one of the realities of modern life that families come in all different shapes and sizes.

Caterpillar

Huia

Three generations living under one leaky Wellington roof in 2003, all on the brink of transformation. Sixteen-year-old Cassie is all bravado and vulnerability, drifting into risky territory as she searches for validation in all the wrong places. Her mother Maxine, 52, a formidable single-mother filmmaker on the brink of a long-awaited breakthrough, is finally offered a greenlight - if she can just land a star. Holding everything together is Huia, Cassie’s grandmother, 80, whose life has been defined by quiet service to family and a private obsession with raising monarch caterpillars, dreaming of one day witnessing the legendary butterfly migration in Mexico. But when Huia’s mind begins to fail her, the family is thrust into chaos. Can the maternal line hold together while everything is throwing them apart?

Bedtime Stories

Marianne

An anthology of six plays, contemporary twists on well-loved tales with dark endings.

Rūrangi

Radio Host

After skipping town a decade ago, transgender activist Caz Davis returns to the remote, politically divided dairy community of Rurangi, hoping to reconnect with his estranged father, who hasn't heard from him since before Caz transitioned.