
Ram John Holder
Actor · b. 1934 · Georgetown, British Guiana
Guyanese actor and musician, Ram John Holder started his professional life as a folk singer in New York in the early '60s before moving to the UK to work as a musician and later an actor for Pearl Connor's Negro Theatre Workshop. His big break was as the effeminate dancer Marcus in the 1969 film Two Gentlemen Sharing and he's worked in film and TV ever since, most notably as the loveable Porkpie in Channel 4 sitcom Desmond's (1989-1994) and the shortlived spin-off Porkpie
Movies24
Movie6.8MusicComedyArthur is a grumpy pensioner who can't understand why his wife Marion would want to embarrass herself singing silly songs with her unconventional local choir. But choir director Elizabeth sees something special in the reluctant Arthur and refuses to give up on him. As she coaxes him out of his shell, Arthur realizes that it is never too late to change.
Song for Marion
2012 · 163 votes
Movie5.2DramaA teenage orphan fights against the Red Army at the end of WWII and in the aftermath is 'adopted' by a Commissar. Years later he is sent to London during the Cold war to work for the KGB, where he questions his life.
Joy Division
2006 · 26 votes
Movie6.4ComedyRomanceStudents Hayley and James are young and in love. After saying goodbye for Christmas at a London train station, they both make the same mad split-second decision to swap trains and surprise each other. Passing each other in the station, they are completely unaware that they have just swapped Christmases.
Your Christmas or Mine?
2022 · 217 votes
Movie6.2ComedyScience FictionBritannia Hospital, an esteemed English institution, is marking its gala anniversary with a visit by the Queen Mother herself. But when investigative reporter Mick Travis arrives to cover the celebration, he finds the hospital under siege by striking workers, ruthless unions, violent demonstrators, racist aristocrats, an African cannibal dictator, and sinister human experiments.
Britannia Hospital
1982 · 74 votes
Movie6.7ComedyDramaA young Pakistani Briton manages a rundown laundrette with his lover while dealing with tension in his family, the local Pakistani community, and a persistent mob of skinheads.
My Beautiful Laundrette
1985 · 324 votes
Movie5.0DramaDr. Lauren Slaughter, a research fellow at the Arab-Anglo Institute in London is utterly frustrated by her job. To supplement her income, she starts moonlighting at the Jasmine Escort Service, where she has more control over men and money than she does at the office. On one of her 'dates', Lauren meets the politician Lord Bulbeck who is trying to mediate a peace accord between the Arabs and Israelis. Bulbeck falls in love with his escort, and unwittingly, Lauren becomes a pawn in some very dirty politics.
Half Moon Street
1986 · 63 votes
Movie5.5ActionDramaA British mercenary arrives in pre-Revolution Cuba to help train the corrupt General Batista's army against Castro's guerrillas while he also romances a former lover now married to an unscrupulous plantation owner.
Cuba
1979 · 54 votes
Movie5.5ComedyWhen milkman Jimmy Connelly accidentally puts Britain's contender for the World title out of action, he is propelled from amateur boxer to the world stage and announced as the replacement contender for the championship fight.
The Calcium Kid
2004 · 64 votes
Movie6.2ComedyRomanceThey've swapped Christmas – again. Can Hayley and James' relationship survive another turbulent family Christmas or has their future together gone off-piste?!
Your Christmas or Mine 2
2023 · 121 votes
Movie5.2CrimeDramaIn the teeming, multicultural metropolis of modern-day London, a seemingly straightforward missing-person case launches a down-at-heel private eye into a dangerous world of religious fanaticism and political intrigue.
City of Tiny Lights
2016 · 87 votes
Movie5.3ComedyScience FictionA frustrated teenage girl creates her perfect man in a virtual reality machine and in a freak accident, gives him life.
Virtual Sexuality
1999 · 59 votes
Movie6.3ComedyCrimeHalf-way through his 12-year prison sentence for an incompetent armed robbery, Jimmy Hands gets a lucky break: he's transferred to a prison from which he can probably escape. He convinces the governor to stage a musical in an old chapel next to the prison's outer wall. He rounds up volunteer actors and puts his escape plan into production. Two other barriers, besides the wall, confront him: the arrival of a nasty inmate, John Toombes, who insists on joining the escape, and Jimmy's feelings of attraction for Anabel, a social worker who agrees to appear in the play. Opening night approaches: is this Jimmy's breakout performance?
Lucky Break
2001 · 39 votes
Movie5.7DramaA 1974 film based on the best-selling autobiography of Sonny Carson who joined a gang and committed petty crime before being sent to prison. After his release from prison he changes his life.
The Education of Sonny Carson
1974 · 8 votes
Movie5.3DramaComedyPrince Leo, last in the line of rulers of a long-deposed monarchy on continental Europe and jaded with the frenetic search for kicks with the European jet-set, returns to his father's London town house for rest.
Leo the Last
1970 · 21 votes
Movie7.5A man struggles to survive after being shipwrecked on a deserted island.
Robinson Crusoe
1974 · 2 votes
Movie6.5DramaA British-born younger son of an immigrant family from Trinidad finds himself adrift between two cultures.
Pressure
1976 · 13 votes
- Movie
Based on J. M. Synge's Playboy of the Western World. Peggy Ford runs her father's rum bar in Mayaro, a quiet fishing village in Trinidad. Nothing much happens in Mayaro until a handsome young stranger appears and insists that he has just murdered his father.
Movie9.0DramaTV MoviePlay based on the tale of Robinson Crusoe, examining the relationship between Crusoe and Man Friday, with a new twist by which both characters believe they are teaching the other.
Man Friday
1972 · 1 votes
MovieDramaTV MoviePlay set in the Caribbean showing how life is hard and a struggle, with problems of unemployment and lack of money.
Movie8.0ComedyDramaThree young Dubliners go to London in search of fun, fortune and, in the case of 17-year-old Mary Kelly, an abortion. Homeless and jobless, their adventures quickly turn sour.
O Mary This London
1994 · 1 votes
MovieDramaCo-directed by Blackwood and Julien, the first full-length feature film by Sankofa Film and Video offers a radical and necessary interrogation into what constitutes 'post-colonial' identity at a time of political and social restlessness in Britain. Set within an isolated desert landscape contrasted with recognizable scenes of the intensity of family life, this vanguard work demonstrates the richness and variety of the black experience; it is a poetic and hard-hitting commentary on the complexities of race, gender and sexuality.
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
Movie4.0DramaCrimeDuring a visit to childhood friend Edith, retired housewife Hetty Wainthropp discovers that Edith's husband, Frank, has a son by a previous marriage. Hetty decides to turn amateur detective to trace him. When this gives her a taste for detection, Hetty decides to set up a private detective agency.
Missing Persons
1990 · 1 votes
Movie7.0CrimeThrillerJazz musician Bernie Weston find himself falsely accused of murder in Bristol. With the aid of a local reporter he sets out to clear his name and find the real killer.
The Jazz Detective
1992 · 1 votes
Series15
TV7.4ComedyCrimeA brilliant but idiosyncratic British detective and his resourceful local team solve baffling murder mysteries on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Marie.
Death in Paradise
2011 · 343 votes
TV6.2DramaSoapDrama series about the staff and patients at Holby City Hospital's emergency department, charting the ups and downs in their personal and professional lives.
Casualty
1986 · 88 votes
TV5.2DramaA 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.
BBC Play of the Month
1965 · 8 votes
TV7.2CrimeDramaSet during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines.
Heartbeat
1992 · 33 votes
TV7.0DramaITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.
ITV Playhouse
1967 · 3 votes
TV6.5KidsFamilyTracy Beaker is a 10-year-old girl who has been placed in a children's home. Tracy makes new friends along the way and causes mischief wherever she goes.
The Story of Tracy Beaker
2002 · 31 votes
TV6.5Sci-Fi & FantasyDramaShy college student Cassie Hughes only wants to be accepted by others, but is only truly loved by her best friend Thelma Bates. Cassie later discovers that she possesses dangerous powers, and is being drawn into a world far beyond her control. And the man that she should fear the most manages to find a way into her heart.
Hex
2004 · 67 votes
TV5.8CrimeDramaRockliffe's Babies is a British television police procedural devised by Richard O'Keefe, and starring Ian Hogg as maverick Detective Sergeant Alan Rockliffe, who is assigned to train seven young recruits to the CID, all fresh out of uniform. Under his irascible guidance, it is hoped that they will blossom into full-blown detectives. But Rockliffe is human – so human that he makes more mistakes than the 'Babies' he's supposed to be training. A follow-up series, Rockliffe's Folly, follows Rockliffe through his relocation to Wessex, dealing with rural crimes as part of a new team of investigators. The seven episode third series proved to be the last, with many citing a change in the programme's formula for the heavy ratings decline. Many viewers stated that the success of the two Babies series came not from Rockliffe himself, but from the popular ensemble cast.
Rockliffe's Babies
1987 · 5 votes
TV7.3ComedyDesmond's was a British television situation comedy broadcast by Channel 4 from 1989 to 1994. With 71 episodes, Desmond's became Channel 4's longest-running sitcom. The first series was shot in 1988, with the first episode broadcast in January 1989. The show was made in and set in Peckham, London, England and featured a predominantly Black British Guyanese cast. Conceived and co-written by Trix Worrell, and produced by Charlie Hanson and Humphrey Barclay, this series starred Norman Beaton as barber Desmond Ambrose. Desmond's shop was a gathering place for an assortment of local characters.
Desmond's
1989 · 15 votes
- TVDramaComedy
An anthology of 1920s set plays and musicals, transmissioned from 10 September to 10 December 1968 on BBC One.
The Jazz Age
1968
TV6.8DramaComedyBeautiful People is a British comedy drama television series based on the memoirs of Barneys creative director Simon Doonan. The series takes place in Reading, Berkshire, in 1997, where thirteen-year-old Simon Doonan and his best friend Kylie dream of escaping their dreary suburban surroundings and moving to cosmopolitan London "to live amongst the beautiful people." The first episode aired on BBC Two on 2 October 2008 and recorded overnight ratings of 1.5 million viewers and positive critical reaction. Episodes are self-contained, but do follow a loose story arc throughout the course of each series. The second and final series finished airing on 18 December 2009.
Beautiful People
2008 · 26 votes
- TV7.0ComedyFamily
King Stupid and Butler Goober control a machine causing mischief worldwide, like kids poking with "Devil Fingers" and a divorced man camping at his ex-wife's home.
Stupid!
2004 · 2 votes
TV6.6ComedyThe incredible misadventures of two handymen on the road and the extraordinary people they meet along the way.
White Van Man
2011 · 14 votes
- TV7.0Comedy
Porkpie was a British sitcom on Channel 4 television starring Ram John Holder as Augustus "Porkpie" Grant. It was a spinoff from Desmond's. Porkpie kept several key characters from Desmond's and in the first episode Grant was seen standing outside the barbershop Desmond used to run, saying: "Desmond, since you died it hasn't stopped raining. I know how much you used to say it can rain in England, and it's true. Must be one of two things: either a thousand angels weeping for you, or you having a good drink up in heaven and you spilling it all over the place."
Porkpie
1995 · 3 votes
TV5.0CrimeDramaThe Fear is a five-part television drama produced by Thames Television subsidiary Euston Films for ITV. Broadcast from 17 February to 16 March 1988, the serial follows Carl Galton, the enterprising leader of a criminal gang running a protection racket in North London. Young and ambitious, Galton represents a new breed of criminal who seeks to expand his underworld empire and takes on the old East End firms. 1980s materialism clashes with old school London villainy as Galton rises to power, yet his ruthlessness carries a personal cost, especially on his wife Linda and best friend Marty.
The Fear
1988 · 1 votes