Charles Pemberton
Actor · 1939 – 2007 · Leyland, Lancashire, U.K.
Character actor Charles Pemberton had a long career in television but found theatrical fame with his one man entertainment, WS Gilbert - A Disagreeable Man? which he toured throughout the UK and Europe. The two hour show, from a script by Brian Jones, traced the life of the 19th century popular composer and martinet. Pemberton was born on September 19, 1939 in Leyland, Lancashire. He trained for the stage at the Rose Bruford Drama School and graduated with distinction in 1963. He joined the Bristol Old Vic Theatre Company where he remained for two years before appearing in repertory at the Library Theatre, Manchester, Harrogate and Derby. He made his television debut in 1964 as a detective sergeant in the soap Crossroads and went on to play a succession of policemen, military types and officials in countless dramas and sitcoms such as Callan, The Professionals, Minder, Juliet Bravo and Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective. He was in two storylines of Doctor Who, The Tomb of the Cybermen and The War Games and he played Johnny Mann in Coronation Street (1973). He also had cameos in the award-winning drama The Naked Civil Servant (1975), John Le Carre's A Perfect Spy (1987), Great Expectations (1989) (as Mr Philbean 1989), Victoria Wood's Pat & Margaret (1994) and Foyle's War (2004). On the West End stage he appeared with Ingrid Bergman in Sir John Gielgud's revival of The Constant Wife (Albery Theatre 1973) and he played Ormonroyd in Priestley's When We Are Married (Whitehall Theatre). He also starred in several commercials including the award-winning series of John Smith's Yorkshire Bitter adverts. He later recorded his one man show on CD. Pemberton was an accomplished magician and held the Inner Magic Circle Silver Star. He was vice president of the Catholic Stage Guild and a much revered member of the CAA. He had recently been elected to the Savage Club where he had performed his own man show to much acclaim. A genial and kind man with a self effacing sense of humour he was a familiar figure in London's theatreland with his bewhiskered looks and jaunty smile. He will be much missed by his many colleagues in the profession. Friend Barbara Angell said, "We were friends through thick and thin - we were sometimes rich together but mostly poor, at least financially. We shared a lot of laughs. Pemberton had been suffering from cancer and died on May 13, 2007. He was survived by his mother.
Series24
TV8.2CrimeDramaFrom England to Egypt, accompanied by his elegant and trustworthy sidekicks, the intelligent yet eccentrically-refined Belgian detective Hercule Poirot pits his wits against a collection of first class deceptions.
Agatha Christie's Poirot
1989 · 584 votes
TV7.1ComedyDramaRoguish comedy drama following the misadventures of small-time crook Arthur Daley.
Minder
1979 · 30 votes
TV7.1DramaSeries of single made-for-television dramas.
Screen Two
1985 · 7 votes
TV7.9MysteryDramaAs WW2 rages around the world, DCS Foyle fights his own war on the home-front as he investigates crimes on the south coast of England. Foyle's War opens in southern England in the year 1940. Later series sees the retired detective working as an MI5 agent operating in the aftermath of the war.
Foyle's War
2002 · 111 votes
TV7.6Action & AdventureCrimeThe 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.
The Professionals
1977 · 47 votes
TV7.8ComedyDramaThe trials and misadventures of the staff at a country veterinary office in Yorkshire. James Herriot, a young animal surgeon, moves to a small Yorkshire town to begin his first job.
All Creatures Great and Small
1978 · 49 votes
TV7.0Action & AdventureFollow the swashbuckling exploits of Simon Templar, a modern-day Robin Hood of sorts.
Return of the Saint
1978 · 10 votes
TV7.2ComedyThe Upper Hand is a British television sitcom, produced by Central Independent Television and Columbia Pictures Television and broadcast by ITV from 1990 to 1996. The programme was adapted from the American sitcom Who's the Boss?. As in the former series, an affluent single woman, raising a son with the help of her mother, hires a housekeeper only to have a man apply for the job.
The Upper Hand
1990 · 6 votes
TV7.0DramaAnthology series of half hour plays produced in BBC's Television Centre's studios.
Centre Play
1973 · 1 votes
TV7.7CrimeDramaShoestring is a BBC detective drana set in Bristol and starring Trevor Eve as private detective Eddie Shoestring, who operatee his own show on Radio West, the local radio station. The programme ran between 30 September 1979 and 21 December 1980, in two series with 21 hour-long episodes. Eve opted not to return after two series, as he wanted to diversify into theatre, so the production team changed the setting to Jersey and created Bergerac, also following a detective returning to work after a bad period in his life.
Shoestring
1979 · 6 votes
TV7.1MysteryDramaEach self-contained episode features a different kind of horror, varying from witches, werewolves, ghosts, devil worship and voodoo, but also includes non-supernatural themes such as cannibalism, confinement and serial killers.
Hammer House of Horror
1980 · 73 votes
TV7.0ComedyBread is a British television sitcom, written by Carla Lane, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC1 from 1 May 1986 to 3 November 1991. The series focused on the devoutly-Catholic and extended Boswell family of Liverpool, in the district of Dingle, led by its matriarch Nellie through a number of ups and downs as they tried to make their way through life in Thatcher's Britain with no visible means of support. The street shown at the start of each programme is Elswick Street. A family called Boswell had also featured in Lane's earlier sitcom The Liver Birds and Lane admitted in interviews that the two families were probably related. Nellie's feckless and estranged husband, Freddie, left her for another woman known as 'Lilo Lill'. Her children Joey, Jack, Adrian, Aveline and Billy continued to live in the family home in Kelsall Street and contributed money to the central family fund, largely through benefit fraud and the sale of stolen goods.
Bread
1986 · 25 votes
TV6.5ComedyMiddle-aged Terry and June Medford are beginning to find the trials of life more difficult as they try to succeed in their daily lives. The couple have just moved to Purley, south-east London... Aunt Lucy and the mynah bird have disappeared, as had the occasionally visiting daughters. Terry and June now mixed with friendly next door neighbour Beattie; Terry's chatty work colleague, Malcolm; and their gruff boss Sir Dennis Hodge. Otherwise, things were much as before, with Terry's pigheaded childishness causing no end of problems, usually thwarting June's attempts at leading a cosy life.
Terry and June
1979 · 13 votes
TV6.8Sci-Fi & FantasyFamilyAfter his death, Fred Mumford wants a second chance at achieving the success that eluded him in life. Coming back to Earth as a spirit, he recruits a Victorian gent and a medieval jester to set up 'Rentaghost', a supernatural service for wanted hauntings.
Rentaghost
1976 · 8 votes
TV6.2DramaCrimeFocuses on brothers Frank and Danny Kane. Their mother is the matriarch of a South London criminal gang, assisted by Danny. Frank has become a priest but leaves the church; he inherits The Paradise Club following the death of their mother and returns to London to try and steer Danny away from crime.
The Paradise Club
1989 · 5 votes
TV5.8ComedyDramaAll Quiet on the Preston Front (or the shortened Preston Front as it became known for series two and three) was a BBC comedy drama about a group of friends in the fictional Lancashire town of Roker Bridge, and their links to the local Territorial Army infantry platoon. It was created by Tim Firth and ran from 1994 to 1997.
(All Quiet on the) Preston Front
1994 · 4 votes
TV8.0DramaDanger UXB is a 1979 British television series developed by John Hawkesworth and starring Anthony Andrews as Lieutenant Brian Ash, an officer in the Royal Engineers. The programme is titled and partly based on the memoirs of Major A. B. Hartley, M.B.E, RE, Unexploded Bomb - The Story of Bomb Disposal, with episodes written by Hawkesworth and four screenwriters. The series chronicles the exploits of the fictional 97 Tunnelling Company which, as a result of thousands of unexploded bombs in London during the Blitz, has become a bomb disposal unit. As with all his fellow officers, Ash must for the most part learn the techniques and procedures of disarming and destroying the UXBs through experience, repeatedly confronted with more cunning and deadlier technological advances in aerial bomb fusing. The storylines were primarily military, with a romantic thread between Ash and an inventor's married daughter, and other human interest vignettes.
Danger UXB
1979 · 8 votes
- TVDrama
Dramatisations of three different women, three different cases—Constance Kent (episodes 1–8), Mary Blandy (9–14), and Adelaide Bartlett (15–22)—all 18th- and 19th-century murderesses.
TV7.3DramaThe ups and downs of small time London gambler Robby Box, and the effect that his poker addiction has on his long suffering girlfriend Jan Oliver and family.
Big Deal
1984 · 4 votes
TV7.0ComedyJennifer Corner is a rather scatterbrained middle-class housewife. Her husband Henry is a school art teacher, and they have three children, Henry, Robin and Trudi.
Not in Front of the Children
1967 · 3 votes
TV7.3DramaA 13-episode miniseries from Yorkshire Television, about Charles Dickens, by now an internationally renowned novelist, during an 1869 tour of America, looking back over his life.
Dickens of London
1976 · 3 votes
TV7.0DramaSci-Fi & FantasySapphire & Steel is a British television science-fiction fantasy series starring David McCallum as Steel and Joanna Lumley as Sapphire. Produced by ATV, it ran from 1979 to 1982 on the ITV network. The series was created by Peter J. Hammond who conceived the programme under the working title The Time Menders, after a stay in an allegedly haunted castle. Hammond also wrote all the stories except for the fifth, which was co-written by Don Houghton and Anthony Read. None of the stories had onscreen titles, or any official titles assigned by the writers. The Region 1 Complete Series DVD release gives the titles "Escape Through a Crack in Time", "The Railway Station", "The Creature's Revenge", "The Man Without a Face", "Dr. McDee Must Die" and "The Trap", respectively. These titles have often been cited as having been created by science fiction magazine Time Screen.
Sapphire & Steel
1979 · 27 votes
TV7.4CrimeDramaWhen a handful of grain is found in the pocket of a murdered businessman, Miss Marple seeks a murderer with a penchant for nursery rhymes.
Miss Marple: A Pocketful of Rye
1985 · 45 votes
TV7.2Sci-Fi & FantasyComedyShillingbury Tales is a 1980–81 British sitcom produced by Associated Television for ITV. Comprising a single feature length pilot and six one-hour episodes, the series deals with life in an idealised fictional English village and stars Robin Nedwell, Diane Keen, Nigel Lambert, Jack Douglas, John Le Mesurier, Bernard Cribbins and Trevor Howard. The series was written by Francis Essex and directed by Val Guest. Unusual for the time, it was shot entirely on location in the village of Aldbury in Hertfordshire on 16mm and consequently there was no laugh track. The show ended when ATV lost their licence to broadcast and their replacement Central declined to continue production.
Shillingbury Tales
1981 · 5 votes
Movies20
Movie6.6ActionAdventureA young British officer resigns his post when he learns of his regiment's plan to ship out to the Sudan for the conflict with the Mahdi. His friends and fiancée send him four white feathers as symbols of what they view as his cowardice. To redeem his honor, he disguises himself as an Arab and secretly saves their lives.
The Four Feathers
2002 · 611 votes
Movie6.0ActionCrimeA 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.
Brannigan
1975 · 120 votes
Movie3.6ComedyA demobbed soldier, Gordon Laid, returning from World War II meets Maxine Lupercal, a member of a traveling troupe of actors returning to England on the same ship. As Gordon closely resembles a member of the troupe of actors, mistaken identity causes him to become embroiled in various murders and an international espionage plot involving a cigarette lighter that strangely affects electricity. The action reaches its comical climax on stage with Gordon and his double as the spies and the police converge on the theatre is a desperate attempt to retrieve the missing cigarette lighter.
Let's Get Laid
1978 · 8 votes
Movie6.7DramaComedyStory of the life of Quentin Crisp, an Englishman who was brave enough to live his life according to his own style even in the hostile days of WW2.
The Naked Civil Servant
1975 · 46 votes
Movie5.7MysteryDramaAt the request of his old war time colleague Ailsa Brimley, George Smiley agrees to look into the murder of Stella Rode. Brimley had only just received a letter from her saying she feared for her life at her husband's hand. The husband, Stanley Rode teaches at Carne School, but Smiley is doubtful that he had anything to do with his wife's death. As Smiley investigates, he learns that Stella was a nosy busybody who loved to learn other's little secrets and then gossip about them - or possibly blackmail them. When a student is killed and Smiley unearths a secret, he has the evidence to name the killer.Based on John Le Carré's 1962 thriller (his first) in which George Smiley is brought out of spy retirement to solve a murder in a British public school. The setting is based on Le Carre"s own schooldays in Sherborne and his brief experience teaching at Eton.
A Murder of Quality
1991 · 28 votes
Movie5.6DramaCommunism seen through the eyes of a young girl who watches her beloved uncle struggle with the oppressive government .
A Pin for the Butterfly
1995 · 5 votes
Movie6.3ComedyA feature-length compilation of the funniest and naughtiest bits from the legendary 1970s 'Adventures of a...' series!
The Best of the Adventures
1981 · 3 votes
Movie8.0ComedyTV MovieA mockumentary charting the life and career of the fictitious British actor Sir Norbert Smith.
Norbert Smith: A Life
1989 · 3 votes
Movie5.2ComedyJoe North is a London taxi driver who manages to get himself into any number of sexual situations with various women.
Adventures of a Taxi Driver
1976 · 30 votes
Movie7.7DramaComedyUnexpected 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.
Pat and Margaret
1994 · 11 votes
Movie6.2CrimeComedyWhen D. C. Dangerous Davies, not held in high regard by his superiors, is assigned to find a notorious criminal kingpin, he uncovers the details of 15-year-old cold case.
Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective
1981 · 10 votes
Movie7.5DramaComedyA play about an ambitious young manager of a Dixons-style electrical warehouse who gets saddled with a 65-year-old re-trainee on a frenetic bank holiday.
King of Fridges
2004 · 2 votes
Movie4.0ComedyThree young men, a scriptwriter, a producer and a director are called in by Benny U Murdoch, an exotic movie producer. He wants to make a new erotic movie starring a big woman - the "Eskimo Nell" of the title. However problems start from the beginning, the scriptwriter is a virgin, a lover of penguins and hasn't a clue on how to write an erotic movie, each of the three main backers want a different type of movie - a western, an erotic and a kung-fu movie with different people in the main part. However problems really start for the three when Benny runs off with all the money and they have to make three different versions of the same film and try not to let the backers and stars know what has happened. And this is made harder when there is a clean-up-filth society breathing down their necks....
Eskimo Nell
1975 · 24 votes
Movie5.9CrimeDramaA gung-ho ex-military man pursues a secret life of crime, culminating in the kidnapping of a teenage heiress.
The Black Panther
1977 · 24 votes
Movie1.0ComedyScience FictionThe Metaliens, alien robots intent on galactic domination, encounter a major setback. Their enormous Space Saucer, 'Compromise', enters a black hole in a strange, uncharted region of Space, and collides with another craft – sending the Kleptonite Ball, their precious cargo and the key to Universal Conquest, hurtling to a planet inhabited by primitive life forms: Earth. Having materialised in a bar, the Ball variously functions as a Christmas tree decoration, a bathroom ornament, and a fortune-teller's prop. The Metaliens must retrieve the Kleptonite Ball if their mission is ever to succeed. And that's when their problems really begin…
Stainless Steel and the Star Spies
1981 · 1 votes
Movie6.7ComedyCrimeTimes are hard for habitual guest of Her Majesty Norman Stanley Fletcher. The new prison officer, Beale, makes MacKay look soft and what's more, an escape plan is hatching from the cell of prison godfather Grouty and Fletcher wants no part of it.
Porridge
1979 · 40 votes
Movie6.8ComedyDramaAn innocent and unsophisticated Guyanese immigrant is exposed to the hustlin' way of life in the Brixton ghetto.
Black Joy
1977 · 8 votes
Movie5.8Science FictionDramaThe Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive on an unnamed planet. At first believing themselves in the midst of World War I, they realise it to be one of many War Zones overseen by the War Lords, who have kidnapped large numbers of human soldiers to form the greatest army the universe has ever seen. At the helm of this plot is the War Chief, another renegade Time Lord like the Doctor. The creeping realisation sets in that the Doctor cannot solve this problem alone, and that his days of wandering may be at an end...
Doctor Who: The War Games in Colour
2024 · 6 votes
Movie9.0DramaTV MovieThe true story of Terry Wiles, born with no limbs in 1962 as a result of his mother's use of the drug thalidomide. This film tells the story of his childhood and adoption by the couple Len and Hazel Wiles who live on a remote farm, and the subsequent challenges and resistance to give Terry a 'normal' life.
On Giant's Shoulders
1979 · 1 votes
Movie6.0TV MovieComedyTo mark the conclusion of their "Third World Week" celebration, a cricket team in a small English village invites a black cricket team from South London to a charity game with comical results.
Playing Away
1987 · 6 votes