Princess Leia is captured and held hostage by the evil Imperial forces in their effort to take over the galactic Empire. Venturesome Luke Skywalker and dashing captain Han Solo team together with the loveable robot duo R2-D2 and C-3PO to rescue the beautiful princess and restore peace and justice in the Empire.
David Nau leads a band of modern day pirates who raid yachts and sail boats of people on vacation in the Caribbean. When reporter Blair Maynard and his son arrive to investigate the mystery of the disappearing boats, Nau and his band of raiders decide to induct them into their tribe.
Joseph K. awakes one morning, to find two strange men in his room, telling him he has been arrested. Joseph is not told what he is charged with, and despite being "arrested," is allowed to remain free and go to work. But despite the strange nature of his arrest, Joseph soon learns that his trial, however odd, is very real, and tries desperately to spare himself from the court's judgement.
After daring each other to a car race through the misty moorlands, a group of friends come upon a mansion that hides a terrible secret.
Ellen Carter's career is on the rocks. She hasn't written a worthy novel since her husband went missing and she was suspected by the police of murdering him. To top it all off, she has reason to believe that her new tenant Leslie Steckler is the serial killer responsible for a number of deaths in the region. But what she doesn't know is that, in the meantime, Steckler has discovered a little secret about her...
Hiding out in an industrial wasteland from the murderous wrath of a regional ruler, a woman, disguised as a boy, gives wooing lessons to the edgy lad who proclaims he loves her.
Gemma Jones stars as a woman suffering from hyperacusis, which affects the muscles of the ears. As a result she has become highly sensitive to noise, a condition that is only exacerbated by living in a crowded boarding house.
A young girl escapes her loneliness by retreating to The Magical World of Another Time, which can only be reached by using your imagination.
A tragi-comic boat movie in which Beauty and The Beast live out their own particular fairytales.
Private eye Philip Marlowe investigates a case of blackmail involving the two wild daughters of a rich general, a pornographer and a gangster.
When a local black politician is murdered an undercover police officer unveils a web of police corruption which puts lives at risk and threatens the whole community.
A computer wizard infiltrates a London sex club to get evidence for a shutdown, but falls for the proprietress.
In the year 2022, a ruthless prison warden has created the ultimate solution for his most troublesome and violent inmates: Absolom, a secret jungle island where prisoners are abandoned and left to die. But Marine Captain John Robbins, convicted of murdering a commanding officer, is determined to escape the island in order to reveal the truth behind his murderous actions and clear his name.
Tank is an investigative reporter and jailbird, framed on scant evidence supplied by the London mob. Helen is the sensuous call-girl who offers Tank ammunition and retribution. But, retaliation is swift and brutal, in the guise of Sir Robert Knights and his equally lethal lawyer, Dunboyne. A series of hideous murders follow as the devil protects his own. Only Malling and Helen can halt the onslaught. But, for how long, and at what price?
When the owner of a Yorkshire coal-mine decides to mechanize to increase profits, the mine's pit ponies are scheduled to be destroyed. So, three children plan to steal them to keep them safe. But when they're caught, it's up to the mine owners and the miners themselves to decide what's right.
Danton's Death is arguably the most dramatic and penetrating study of revolution ever written. Georg Büchner concentrates on that moment in 1794 when the Reign of Terror, already well established, spills over into a total blood-bath. The play, adapted by director Alan Clarke and Stuart Griffiths, both highly imaginative and closely documentary, shows how the great hero of the early phase of the Revolution, Danton, sickened by the excesses of the guillotine, which he helped to create, wants to call a halt. But Robespierre and Saint-Just, leaders of the Jacobins, with a ferocious puritanical zeal, spur on 'the wild horses of the Revolution'.
An English woman returns to her homeland after losing her fortune in America, and is stalked by a serial killer.
Set halfway through the 17th century, a church play is performed for the benefit of the young aristocrat Cosimo. In the play, a grotesque old woman gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. The child's older sister is quick to exploit the situation, selling blessings from the baby, and even claiming she's the true mother by virgin birth. However, when she attempts to seduce the bishop's son, the Church exacts a terrible revenge.
When a schoolboy's day-dream of a fantasy sports day includes events where acts of vandalism and trespass are required, dire consequences ensue. Originally created as an educational film, this somewhat surrealist short has a serious message at its core. This won't be a lesson you'll forget in a hurry.
Unexpected events occur when Pat, a glamorous British-born star of American soaps, returns home to plug her auto-biography on television and meets, for the first time since they were teenagers, Margaret her plain and frumpy younger sister. The meeting is painful for both women highlighting the vast differences in their lives and resurrecting painful memories of their unhappy childhood with an uncaring, errant mother. The tabloid press smell a juicy story and a race ensues to trace the whereabouts of the long lost parent.
The Peloponnesian Wars (Athens versus Sparta for twenty-seven years) told in the format of news broadcast-like monologues by Theucydides, Plato, and others.
A costume drama / satire about financial skull-duggery, and confidence tricksters in both the upper and lower classes in Victorian London. A working class man impersonates a lord who is supposedly very rich and a financial wizard. As such he is invited to all the best peoples' parties.
An account of how Lech Walesa and the "Solidarity" trade union confronted the might of Communist dictatorship in Poland.
Jules Maigret, a meticulous Parisian police detective, is a famous literary character. In this film adaptation of his stories, he's trying to solve a murder of a friend, a P.I. who was looking into an industrialist and his family.
A hard-nosed Chicago cop is sent to London to bring back an American mobster being held for extradition. Brannigan in his Irish-American way brings American law to the people of Scotland Yard but has to contend with a stuffy old London first.
Explorer Walter Snetterton and his party travel to the Andes to prove his theory that frogs are able to climb mountains. Due to the Cup Final the only person willing to act as guide is an elderly - but extremely agile - old lady and as Snetterton prepares to strike camp all his men desert him for the charms of the local ladies. Snetterton is never found but the frogs manage to escape and make it to Mexico City, thus proving his theory to be right.
Jailed for his reckless driving, rambunctious Mr. Toad has to escape from prison when his beloved Toad Hall comes under threat from the wily weasels, who plan to build a dog food factory on the very meadow sold to them by Toad himself.
The Doctor and Mel go for a holiday trip to Shangri-La aboard a Nostalgia Tours bus, only to get dragged into the battle against genocide of their fellow passenger Delta, a Chimeron Queen fleeing from the Bannermen who wish to make her species extinct.
An account of Baron Munchausen's supposed travels and fantastical experiences with his band of misfits.
More than 30 years have now passed since a certain time traveling police box first materialized on our television screens, and the exploits of its various crews have enthralled audiences ever since. Here is the story of Britain's Number 1 Science Fiction programme told in order of the various actors who have played the Doctor.
A young Russian countess escapes the 1917 revolution and, despite hardship, makes a new life for herself in America.
During World War II a young city boy is evacuated to the country.
Rough, tough and politically incorrect in the way that only the best 70's dramas can be, Regan was a pilot film for The Sweeney - one of the major television successes of the last fifty years. Featuring John Thaw as the irascible Detective Inspector Regan and Dennis Waterman as his loyal 'oppo' Detective Sergeant Carter, Regan was an immediate critical and ratings hit, resulting in four series of The Sweeney and two successful feature films. Jack Regan is a good copper, but his tough, intuitive style is becoming unfashionable in a Scotland Yard seeking a new image. When a policeman is mysteriously murdered, Regan breaks all the rules to find the killer - but he finds there are men in the Flying Squad prepared to break him.
Christopher Columbus believes he can find an alternative route to the far East and persuades the King and Queen of Spain to finance his expedition...
Cocky cockney snooker player Billy Kid accepts the challenge of a grudge match from Maxwell Randall (the Green Baize Vampire), six times world champion; the loser will never play professional snooker again.
David Callan, secret agent, is called back to the service after his retirement, to handle the assassination of a german businessman, but Callan refuses to co-operate until he finds out why this man is marked for death.
On August the 15th, 1945, after the official surrender of the Empire of Japan, Admiral Matome Ugaki led the last Special Attack Force pilots across the Pacific, to crash into American ships. Thirty-five years later, the men who serviced the aeroplanes are still meeting up for their annual dinner. Now settled into civilian jobs - dentist, baker, taxi-driver, insurance salesman - and with children and grandchildren, they bemoan the decay of traditional Japanese values. Hard liquor is imbibed, toasts raised to the memory of the heroic dead, and old rivalries resurface. The survivors' dissatisfaction with post-war life comes to a head when, in a moment of drunken inspiration, Tokkotai the airline pilot decides on a symbolic gesture to show that the kamikaze spirit lives on.
Bess Throckmorton, a farmer's daughter from Devon, encounters an ancient relative who soon reveals himself to be the ghost of Sir Walter Raleigh, determined to escape the Tower of London once and for all and return to Devon. When Sir Raleigh learns that a pair of dastardly brothers have designs on his ancestors' farm, he devises a plan to thwart them.
A luxury liner carries Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany in a desperate fight for survival.
Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle, he meets the woman from his daydream, and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.
A photographer hired to shoot photos of "futuristic Americana" starts having visions of an alternate reality that looks like the covers of pulp science fiction novels. An adaption of William Gibson's short story 'The Gernsback Continuum' for Channel 4.
Mathieu is called on by the French government to investigate murders in the Asian community of Paris. With Chinese and Vietnamese engaged in a bloody slaughterfest, the key to the mystery lies with the orphan girl who Mathieu helped to escape during the fall of Saigon in 1975. Now a beautiful young woman, Mathieu is reunited ten years later with the refugee, and together they attempt to solve the case. He uncovers a CIA plot that has carried over from the last days of the Vietnam War and that is related to the Paris murders.
Two stories about school. Gotcha by Barrie Keeffe: On his last day at school, a 'no hope' 16-year-old pupil holds his teachers hostage using a motor-bike petrol tank as a bomb. Campion's Interview by Brian Clark: A headmaster takes on the Education Authorities on behalf on his pupils, exposing the political pressures behind the creation of a comprehensive school.
An Alcoholics Anonymous meeting
Tom Canty is a poor English boy who bears a remarkable resemblance to Edward, Prince of Wales and son of King Henry VIII. The two boys meet and decide to play a joke on the court by dressing in each other's clothes, but the plan goes awry when they're separated and each must live the other's life.
Goff and Lytton have a dream - a canal boat of their own on which to cruise the inland waterways: The reality is the boatyard of Josh Adkins and a rusting hulk called Atlantis.
Sophie is snatched from her orphanage early one morning by the BFG (Big Friendly Giant), whom she witnesses engaged in mysterious activities. She is soon put at ease, as she learns that BFG's job is to collect, catalog and deliver pleasant dreams to children. She joins him that night, but a mean giants follow them, planning to eat the children of the world.
A criminal psychologist invites three psychology students to his English countryside home to view some of his research on the criminal mind. Unbeknownst to the students, they are actually guinea pigs in a mind-control experiment he is conducting and the servants of the house are not what they appear to be.
A comedy about injustice set in St Petersburg in 1839. The Tsar has tightened up security and mounted a round-the-clock guard at his palace - the Peter and Paul Fortress. Unfortunately for Private Postnikov, he hears the cries of a drowning man and goes to his rescue. The rest follows.