Ian Kershaw

Every evening at 6:45 p.m. sharp, a prominent guest takes a seat on the red sofa—and DAS! provides daily updates on what's hot in the north.

Instead of spending her golden years lying down, the indomitable Hetty Wainthropp found her calling late in life. Combining common sense, her husband, and her pocketbook, this senior sleuth takes on all the cases the police deem too minor.

The Grand is an ITV television drama series created and written by Russell T Davies and starring Rebecca Callard, Tim Healy, Susan Hampshire, Paul Warriner, and Mark McGann. Following WWI, the Bannerman family re-opens the Grand Hotel after a lengthy closure and a costly re-furbishing. The hotel has been in the family for a long time, and John Bannerman and his wife Sarah desperately want to make a go. Their son Stephen has returned from the wars without any physical harm but still suffers from the mental anguish of seeing so many of his comrades-in-arms falling on the battlefield. When they learn that their accountant has squandered what little money they had left, they must turn to John's brother Marcus, a successful businessman who has eschewed any interest in the hotel over the years but now seems ready to plunge into the business with both feet.

Follows two rival barristers' chambers in Manchester, England, contrasting defence Jack Roper's struggling firm with his former mentor, prosecutor Laurence Scammel's more established chambers, and exploring their personal and professional rivalry through complex legal cases.

Fat Friends is an ITV drama created by Kay Mellor, broadcast from 12 October 2000 to 24 March 2005. It follows a group of overweight people, their laughter and pain and addresses the absurdities of dieting in our modern age. It examines people and how they relate to one another and use body weight as an excuse for all sorts of failings in their relationships, or not living their lives to the full. Four cast members—Ruth Jones, James Corden, Sheridan Smith, and Alison Steadman—went on to appear in Gavin & Stacey.

The First World War - carnage on a scale never-before seen. But how did it all start? And how did some key figures of WWII fare in the earlier war?

Drama based on the real life events of April 1989, when ninety-six Liverpool supporters were crushed to death during an F.A. Cup Semi-Final match against Nottingham Forest at Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough Stadium. This movie follows three Liverpudlian families before the match, during the tragedy and at the ensuing court battles which tried to decide who was to blame and what went wrong.

Adolf Hitler the fighting man is the subject of this engrossing feature, chronicling the future dictator’s combat experience as a foot soldier in World War I. Excerpts from Hitler’s letters from the front, recollections of regimental comrades, and evaluations by his officers offer a revealing portrait of a brooding, fearless loner who preferred battlefields to brothels, frontline service to home leave, and kept the men he frequently risked his life to protect at arm’s length. In a world of death, hardship, and discipline, Hitler sought comfort in the companionship of his English terrier, and in sketches and watercolors he rendered during lulls. It speculates on the influence wartime service exercised on his personal and political development, filling a critical gap for any sincere appraisal of Hitler’s psyche, motives, and subsequent actions.

Sue Johnston stars in this intimate drama exploring the life of Coronation Street star Pat Phoenix. Follow her affair with fellow actor Tony Booth in the 50s that ended in heartbreak, and what eventually happened to the pair years later.

Robson Green and Mark Benton co-star in Christmas Lights, a one-off comedy drama for ITV1 centred on two lifelong friends who have always competed with each other. The festive season brings on new challenges and takes their rivalry to extremes resulting in the two friends forgetting what Christmas is really about. Can anything bring them to their senses?

July, 1944. As WWII raged on, a group of conspirators, led by Claus von Stauffenberg, plotted to assassinate Hitler and end his reign of terror. Using rare color footage, painstakingly recreated dramatizations, detailed CG reconstructions and exclusive interviews with leading historians, this thrilling documentary presents the definitive record of what happened before, during and after these pivotal events.

How was Adolf Hitler able to count on the German public even in the face of unspeakable suffering and impending doom? Evocative and previously unseen private archive footage, much of it in colour, shows life in Nazi Germany from 1933 onwards till the end of the Nazi regime in 1945. This documentary is a revealing portrait of the German people, how they lived and perceived the world, under Hitler.