
Sonia Dresdel
Actor · 1909 – 1976 · Hornsea, Yorkshire, England, UK
Sonia Dresdel (5 May 1909 - 18 January 1976) was an English actress, whose career ran between the 1940s and 1970s. She was born Lois Obee in Hornsea, East Riding of Yorkshire, England and was educated at Aberdeen High School for Girls. Her leading role in the 1947 film While I Live gained her a great deal of acclaim. In the film she plays Julia Trevelyan, a spinster living in a lonely cliff top house in Cornwall and haunted by the death of her sister 25 years earlier. Her most noted role was that of "Mrs. Baines" in the 1948 film version of Graham Greene's The Fallen Idol, which starred Ralph Richardson and Michèle Morgan. The film received Academy Awards nominations for Best Director (Sir Carol Reed) and Best Screenplay. She died of undisclosed causes, aged 66.
Series19
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
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
TV7.1CrimeDramaBBC series based on the novels by Georges Simenon which starred Rupert Davies as Inspector Maigret, a French police detective who preferred to watch and listen in order to solve crimes. The series ran from 1960-63 on British television.
Maigret
1960 · 15 votes
TV5.8DramaMysteryMystery and Imagination is a British television anthology of classic horror and supernatural dramas. Five series were broadcast from 1966 to 1970 on ITV and produced by ABC and Thames Television.
Mystery and Imagination
1966 · 5 votes
TV6.7ComedyClassic sitcom starring Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques as brother and sister twins who have to tackle the trials and tribulations of suburban life.
Sykes
1972 · 6 votes
TV6.4DramaThis sprawling BBC saga follows an aristocratic family through three generations of power, wealth, intrigue, and scandal in Victorian England. Based on Anthony Trollope’s “political” novels .
The Pallisers
1974 · 5 votes
TV7.0DramaThe Onedin Line is a BBC television drama series which ran from 1971 to 1980. The series was created by Cyril Abraham. The series is set in Liverpool from 1860 to 1886 and deals with the rise of a shipping line, the Onedin Line, named after its owner James Onedin. Around this central theme are the lives of his family, most notably his brother and partner, shop owner Robert, and his sister Elizabeth, giving insight into the lifestyle and customs at the time, not only at sea, but also ashore. The series also illustrates some of the changes in business and shipping, such as from wooden to steel ships and from sailing ships to steam ships. It shows the role that ships played in affairs like international politics, uprisings and the slave trade.
The Onedin Line
1971 · 7 votes
TV8.2The Human Jungle is a British TV series about a psychiatrist, made for ABC Television by the small production company Independent Artists for transmission on ITV. Starring Herbert Lom, it ran for two series which were first transmitted during 1963 and 1965.
The Human Jungle
1963 · 5 votes
TVDramaMysteryAn adaptation of the novel by Charlotte Brontë.
Jane Eyre
1963
TVDramaComedyAnthology series of love stories.
Boy Meets Girl
1967
TV7.0Sci-Fi & FantasyLizzie Dripping was a British television children's programme produced by the BBC in 1973 and 1975. It was written by Helen Cresswell and set in the country village of Little Hemlock, where a young girl, Penelope, with a vivid imagination encounters a local witch whom only she can see and hear. This singular ability is further complicated by the fact that Penelope has established a reputation for being an imaginative liar, making it even more difficult for her to convince others that her witch is real.
Lizzie Dripping
1973 · 3 votes
TV8.0DramaWar & PoliticsThe Caesars is a British television series produced by Granada Television for the ITV network in 1968. Made in black-and-white and written and produced by Philip Mackie, it covered similar dramatic territory to the later BBC adaptation of I, Claudius, dealing with the lives of the early emperors of Ancient Rome, but differed in its less sensationalist depictions of historical characters and their motives.
The Caesars
1968 · 6 votes
- TVDrama
A gentle orphan discovers life and love in an indifferent adult world.
TV6.0DramaArmchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television from mid-1968.
Armchair Theatre
1956 · 6 votes
TV8.0Action & AdventureDramaA completely lost BBC1 miniseries adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' 19th century historical adventure novel of the same name. Years have passed since the Three Musketeers, Aramis, Athos and Porthos, have fought together with their friend, D'Artagnan. But with the tyrannical King Louis using his power to wreak havoc in the kingdom while his twin brother, Philippe, remains imprisoned, the Musketeers reunite to abduct Louis and replace him with Philippe.
The Man in the Iron Mask
1968 · 1 votes
- TVDrama
Forward thinking anthology of dramas about the emerging problems of a city.
City '68
1967
- TVDrama
Nineteen-year-old Margaret Hale has lived for almost 10 years in London with her cousin Edith and her wealthy Aunt Shaw, but when Edith marries Captain Lennox, Margaret happily returns home to the southern village of Helstone. Margaret has refused an offer of marriage from the captain's brother Henry, an up-and-coming barrister. Her life is turned upside down when her father, the local pastor, leaves the Church of England and the rectory of Helstone as a matter of conscience; his intellectual honesty has made him a dissenter.
North and South
1966
- TV9.0Drama
Adaptation of George Eliot's novel. The tragic tale of Maggie Tulliver, the miller's daughter, who defies her embittered brother in standing by the man she loves - shocking the stifling society in which she lives - in an attempt to pursue her blighted dreams.
The Mill on the Floss
1965 · 1 votes
TVDramaWives and Daughters is a classic 1971 BBC television mini-series adapted from Elizabeth Gaskell's 1864 Victorian novel. Directed by Hugh David and written by Michael Voysey, the period drama follows the coming-of-age story of Molly Gibson and the social and romantic complexities that ensue when her father remarries
Movies12
Movie6.4DramaHistoryEngland, 1890s. The brutal and embittered Marquis of Queensberry, who believes that his youngest son, Bosie, has an inappropriate relationship with the famous Irish writer Oscar Wilde, maintains an ongoing feud with the latter in order to ruin his reputation and cause his fall from grace.
The Trials of Oscar Wilde
1960 · 32 votes
Movie7.2DramaThrillerPhillipe, the son of an ambassador in London, hero-worships his father's butler Baines. His perception of the man changes when he accidentally discovers the secret that Baines keeps and witnesses the consequences that adults' lies can cause.
The Fallen Idol
1948 · 200 votes
Movie7.0ThrillerDramaA rich young society girl falls in love with a car mechanic. Her family is appalled and stops her seeing him. The girl attempts to commit suicide and then decides to elope.
Now and Forever
1956 · 5 votes
Movie5.9DramaHistoryLady Caroline Lamb, dissatisfied in her marriage, has an affair with the dashing Romantic poet Lord Byron.
Lady Caroline Lamb
1972 · 15 votes
MovieComedyDramaSet in 1923, a British author named Marie Stopes is having quite the tumultuous life until one day she attempts to sue Dr. Halliday Sutherland for libel, since she thinks he criticized her birth control clinic. A lawyer named Patrick Hastings comes to represent Stopes, and judge Ernest Charles comes to represented Dr. Halliday Sutherland.
Movie6.3MysteryThrillerAfter leaving the British Secret Service, David Somers finds work catalouging butterflies at the country house of Nicholas and Jess Fenton. After the murder of a local gamekeeper, suspicion falls on their niece, Sophie Malraux. Somers helps Sophie to escape arrest and they go on the run together.
The Clouded Yellow
1950 · 22 votes
Movie6.2ThrillerSuave supercilious Carling (Karel Stepanek) receives several callers to his isolated house, all of whom hold a grudge against him. Next morning a corpse is found, and later identified as his by one of the visitors.
The Third Visitor
1951 · 8 votes
Movie6.9CrimeA group of inmates escape from Dartmoor prison. They hide out in the English country side but are doggedly chased by police.
The Break
1963 · 8 votes
- MovieDramaFamily
Film "The Adventures of Alice" based on the novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll.
Movie5.7CrimeDramaThe woman here is Sylvia Russell: power mad with set goals. In order to achieve those goals she is sadistically devoted to her son and daughter, able to possess and direct them. She subtly ruins her daughter's marriage by corrupting a servant girl and, then, uses her to compromise her son-in-law; slowly breaks her bumbling, unambitious husband's confidence...
This Was a Woman
1948 · 9 votes
Movie6.9ThrillerIn 1922, young pianist and composer Olwen Trevelyan, troubled and sleepless over her inability to finish the final notes of her composition, falls to her death from the cliffs of Cornwall. 25 years on, Olwen has gained posthumous fame as a result of her tragic death and her haunting uncompleted composition 'The Dream of Olwen'. Her reclusive sister Julia (Sonia Dresdel), who has never come to terms with Olwen's death, becomes convinced that Olwen has returned when she meets an amnesiac woman who looks like her.
While I Live
1947 · 7 votes
Movie8.0DramaRomanceWhen a British pilot is hospitalized after a plane crash, the woman he loves sits by his bedside and remembers, in flashbacks, key episodes from their life together.
The World Owes Me a Living
1945 · 2 votes