
Alec McCowen
Actor · 1925 – 2017 · Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, UK
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Alexander Duncan McCowen, CBE (26 May 1925 – 6 February 2017) was an English actor. He was known for his work in numerous film and stage productions. Description above from the Wikipedia article Alec McCowen, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Movies24
Movie6.1AdventureActionJames Bond returns as the secret agent 007 to battle the evil organization SPECTRE. Bond must defeat Largo, who has stolen two atomic warheads for nuclear blackmail. But Bond has an ally in Largo's girlfriend, the willowy Domino, who falls for Bond and seeks revenge.
Never Say Never Again
1983 · 1.7K votes
Movie7.3DramaHistoryIn early 1860s New York, Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon is released from prison and returns to the Five Points, seeking revenge against his father's killer, William Cutting, a powerful anti-immigrant gang leader. He knows that revenge can only be attained by infiltrating Cutting's inner circle. Vallon's journey becomes a fight for personal survival and to find a place for the Irish people.
Gangs of New York
2002 · 7.4K votes
Movie7.0DramaRomanceIn 19th century New York high society, a young lawyer falls in love with a woman separated from her husband, while he is engaged to the woman's cousin.
The Age of Innocence
1993 · 1.3K votes
Movie7.1CrimeThrillerLondon is terrorized by a vicious sex killer known as The Necktie Murderer. Following the brutal slaying of his ex-wife, down-on-his-luck Richard Blaney is suspected by the police of being the killer. He goes on the run, determined to prove his innocence.
Frenzy
1972 · 1.1K votes
Movie7.6DramaActionThe sinking of the Titanic is presented in a highly realistic fashion in this tense British drama. The disaster is portrayed largely from the perspective of the ocean liner's second officer, Charles Lightoller. Despite numerous warnings about ice, the ship sails on, with Capt. Edward John Smith keeping it going at a steady clip. When the doomed vessel finally hits an iceberg, the crew and passengers discover that they lack enough lifeboats, and tragedy follows.
A Night to Remember
1958 · 302 votes
Movie7.1WarDramaIn 1415, in the midst of the Hundred Years' War, the young King Henry V of England embarks on the conquest of France.
Henry V
1989 · 421 votes
Movie7.0DramaA dramatic story, based on actual events, about the friendship between two men struggling against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. Donald Woods is a white liberal journalist in South Africa who begins to follow the activities of Stephen Biko, a courageous and outspoken black anti-apartheid activist.
Cry Freedom
1987 · 240 votes
Movie7.0DramaHistoryDuring the Italian Renaissance, Pope Julius II contracts the influential artist Michelangelo to sculpt 40 statues for his tomb. When the pope changes his mind and asks the sculptor to paint a mural in the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo doubts his painting skills and abandons the project. Divine inspiration returns Michelangelo to the mural, but his artistic vision clashes with the pope's demanding personality and threatens the success of the historic painting.
The Agony and the Ecstasy
1965 · 156 votes
Movie7.2DramaA rebellious youth, sentenced to a boy’s reformatory for robbing a bakery, rises through the ranks of the institution by impressing its Governor through his prowess as a long distance runner. He is encouraged to compete in an upcoming race, but faces ridicule from his peers.
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
1962 · 175 votes
Movie5.6DramaRomanceMargaret is a nurse in England during WW2, and married to a secret agent. Things get complicated when she falls for David, an American pilot.
Hanover Street
1979 · 113 votes
Movie6.8WarDramaBased on the true story of Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, the only German prisoner of war captured in Britain to escape back to Germany during the Second World War.
The One That Got Away
1957 · 59 votes
Movie6.9MysteryCrimeScotland Yard detectives attempt to solve a spate of safe robberies across England beginning with clues found at the latest burglary in London. The film is notable for using a police procedural style made popular by Ealing in their 1950 film The Blue Lamp. It is known in the US as The Third Key.
The Long Arm
1956 · 24 votes
Movie6.9DramaHistoryAt the start of World War II, Cmdr. Ericson is assigned to convoy escort HMS Compass Rose with inexperienced officers and men just out of training. The winter seas make life miserable enough, but the men must also harden themselves to rescuing survivors of U-Boat attacks, while seldom able to strike back. Traumatic events afloat and ashore create a warm bond between the skipper and his first officer.
The Cruel Sea
1953 · 84 votes
Movie5.5DramaAdventureA wanderer returns home only to find political turmoil, disease and romantic difficulties.
The Hawaiians
1970 · 20 votes
Movie6.0AdventureComedyAt his mother's funeral, stuffy bank clerk Henry Pulling meets his Aunt Augusta, an elderly eccentric with more-than-shady dealings who pulls him along on a whirlwind adventure as she attempts to rescue an old lover.
Travels with My Aunt
1972 · 41 votes
Movie6.5CrimeThrillerAlec Graham is sentenced to death for the murder of his girlfriend Jennie, with whom he spent a weekend at the English country home of the parents of his friend Brian Stanford. Alec’s father, David Graham, a not-so-successful writer and alcoholic who has neglected his son in the past, flies in from Canada to visit his son on death row. David then goes on a quest to try and clear his son’s name while battling “the bottle.”
Time Without Pity
1957 · 53 votes
Movie6.0HorrorThrillerFollowing a nervous breakdown, Gwen takes up the job of head teacher in the small village of Haddaby. There she can benefit from the tranquillity and peace, enabling her to recover fully. But under the facade of idyllic country life she slowly unearths the frightening reality of village life in which the inhabitants are followers of a menacing satanic cult with the power to inflict indiscriminate evil and death if crossed.
The Witches
1966 · 65 votes
Movie5.0DramaHistoryThe Peloponnesian Wars (Athens versus Sparta for twenty-seven years) told in the format of news broadcast-like monologues by Theucydides, Plato, and others.
The War That Never Ends
1991 · 2 votes
Movie5.4ComedyDramaTwo young gentlemen living in 1890s England use the same pseudonym ('Ernest') on the sly, which is fine until they both fall in love with women using that name, which leads to a comedy of mistaken identities.
The Importance of Being Earnest
1988 · 7 votes
Movie4.9DramaRomanceA woman is unhappy in her marriage to a boring, stiff judge, so she takes up with a wild-living RAF pilot, who ends up being more than she can handle.
The Deep Blue Sea
1955 · 14 votes
Movie6.9ComedyMysteryAfter a chance meeting and an indiscreet conversation, childhood friends Tommy Beresford and Tuppence Cowley become involved in a convoluted intrigue led by a mysterious man known simply as Mr. Brown.
The Secret Adversary
1983 · 11 votes
Movie6.5DramaComedyFour doctors face a serious dilemma when the beautiful wife of a TB-stricken artist begs one of them to cure her brilliant, but amoral, husband.
The Doctor's Dilemma
1959 · 9 votes
Movie6.3TV MovieDramaA young man journeys from a difficult childhood to maturity, exploring social injustice, personal development, and the complexities of human relationships.
David Copperfield
2001 · 24 votes
Movie6.0ComedyFed up with working hard just to scrape by, Christine Painter comes up with a bold plan to become the madam of a brothel and earn her financial freedom: she opens a house of spanking to fabulous reviews.
Personal Services
1987 · 48 votes
Series24
TV7.5CrimeDramaThe peacefulness of the Midsomer community is shattered by violent crimes, suspects are placed under suspicion, and it is up to a veteran DCI and his young sergeant to calmly and diligently eliminate the innocent and ruthlessly pursue the guilty.
Midsomer Murders
1997 · 374 votes
TV6.6DramaPlay for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.
Play for Today
1970 · 10 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
TV7.2DocumentaryOmnibus was an arts-based BBC television documentary series, broadcast mainly on BBC1 in the United Kingdom. The programme was the successor to the long-running arts-based series 'Monitor'. It ran from 1967 until 2003, usually being transmitted on Sunday evenings. During its 35-year history, the programme won 12 Bafta awards. Among the series' best remembered documentaries are Cracked Actor, a profile of David Bowie, and Rene Magritte, a graduate film by David Wheatley, 'Madonna: Behind the American dream', a film produced by Nadia Hagger, and a profile of the British film director Ridley Scott. For a season in 1982, the series was in a magazine format presented by Barry Norman. The series was replaced by 'Imagine' hosted by Alan Yentob.
Omnibus
1967 · 9 votes
TV7.2DramaTheatre 625 is a British television drama anthology series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC2 from 1964 to 1968. It was one of the first regular programmes in the line-up of the channel, and the title referred to its production and transmission being in the higher-definition 625-line format, which only BBC2 used at the time.
Theatre 625
1964 · 5 votes
TV7.0DramaJim Bergerac is a detective sergeant in The Foreigners Office who likes to do things his own way. While dealing with his own personal demons Bergerac has a knack of finding trouble, and sometimes causing it.
Bergerac
1981 · 25 votes
TV5.2DramaAn anthology series of television plays which aired on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured.
The Wednesday Play
1964 · 5 votes
- TV5.1
The BBC's flagship cinema review TV program featuring reviews of new releases, news items and interviews. The title of the program changes each year to incorporate the year of broadcast.
Film '72
1971 · 8 votes
TV4.3DramaAn anthology of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known.
Thirty-Minute Theatre
1965 · 8 votes
TV3.5DramaSunday Night Theatre was a long-running series of televised live television plays screened by BBC Television from early 1950 until 1959. The productions for the first five years or so of the run were re-staged live the following Thursday, partly because of technical limitations in this era, and the theatrical basis of early television drama. Some of the earliest collaborations between Rudolph Cartier and Nigel Neale were produced for this series, including Arrow to the Heart and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Sunday night drama slot was subsequently renamed The Sunday-Night Play which ran for four seasons between 1960 and 1963. ITV transmitted its own unrelated run of Sunday Night Theatre between 1971 and 1974.
Sunday Night Theatre
1950 · 2 votes
TV7.0DramaComedyAn anthology of plays and novels adapted into feature length TV movies, broadcast on BBC2 from September 1977 to April 1979.
BBC2 Play of the Week
1977 · 1 votes
TV7.3DramaFamilyNET Playhouse is an American dramatic television anthology series produced by National Educational Television. NET subsequently merged with WNDT Newark, New Jersey to form WNET and was superseded by the Public Broadcasting Service. American television anthology series of wide range of genres, from history and drama, to fantasy, and science fiction. Fiction novels, stories, stage plays, fairytales, and historic events are dramatized in each episode.
NET Playhouse
1966 · 3 votes
- TV7.5Drama
Studio 4 is an anthology drama series utilising BBC Television Centre's Studio Four, and running for two series in 1962 on BBC One. It was envisaged as a sequel to Storyboard, a similar anthology series which had been transmitted the previous year.
Studio 4
1962 · 2 votes
TV7.0DramaAnthology series of half hour plays produced in BBC's Television Centre's studios.
Centre Play
1973 · 1 votes
TV6.5AnimationAn animated adaptation of twelve of Shakespeare's best-known plays. The series was produced by S4C for the BBC, but animated by some of the foremost artists of Soyuzmultfilm, the former Soviet Union's main animation studio. Each 26-minute play is directed by a different animator, in a wide variety of styles: cel animation for Macbeth, stop-motion puppets in Twelfth Night, and paint on glass for Hamlet.
Shakespeare: The Animated Tales
1992 · 17 votes
TV6.8MysteryDramaOrson Welles’ Great Mysteries is a British television anthology series produced by Anglia Television for the ITV network and broadcast between 1973 and 1974. The series presents standalone adaptations of classic mystery, crime, and supernatural stories drawn from literary sources including Dickens, Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins, Balzac, Maugham, O. Henry, and others. Each episode is framed by original introductory and closing sequences performed by Orson Welles, who serves as the series’ host and sole recurring on-screen presence. These segments, written and directed by Welles (uncredited), function as stylized narrative framing devices rather than dramatic participation in the stories themselves. The dramatic content of each episode is performed by separate casts and directors, with no continuing characters or serialized narrative, establishing the series as a unified television anthology rather than a collection of standalone films.
Orson Welles' Great Mysteries
1973 · 4 votes
- TV8.0Drama
An anthology of single plays offering up adaptations of either of prominent stage plays or novels.
Festival
1963 · 1 votes
TV6.5MysteryComedySpirited dialogue, posh Roaring '20s style, and devious mysteries abound as Tommy and Tuppence Beresford mix marriage and mystery solving.
Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime
1983 · 18 votes
TV5.7DramaMr. Palfrey is a mild-mannered, but highly skilled counter-espionage agent employed by a small, unnamed department within British intelligence. He and his team tackle complex cases, often involving government cover-ups and internal affairs.
Mr. Palfrey of Westminster
1984 · 3 votes
- TV5.0Drama
Anthology of self-contained dramas that aired from 1977 to 1978.
The Sunday Drama
1977 · 1 votes
TV8.0DramaHighly regarded anthology from the 1980s presenting a diverse range of high-quality single dramas that would serve as pilots for possible future series.
Storyboard
1983 · 2 votes
TV7.0DramaThe fascinating story of John Harrison who, in the 18th century, believed he could make a clock that would work on board a ship—and so solve the problem of finding longitude at sea.
Longitude
2000 · 5 votes
TV7.0DramaA young man journeys from a difficult childhood to maturity, exploring social injustice, personal development, and the complexities of human relationships.
David Copperfield
2000 · 1 votes
TVDramaA series of dramas featuring staged theatre plays.
Theatre Night
1985