
Maria Aitken
Actor · b. 1945 · Dublin, Ireland
Aitken was born in Dublin, Ireland, the daughter of Sir William Aitken, a Conservative MP, and Penelope Aitken, whose father was John Maffey, 1st Baron Rugby. Her grandfather was the UK Representative to Ireland (1939–49). She is a great-niece of newspaper magnate and war-time minister Lord Beaverbrook, and sister to former Conservative cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken. She attended Riddlesworth Hall Preparatory School in Norfolk, Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset and St Anne's College, Oxford, where she graduated with a degree in English Language and Literature. She has directed several plays in the West End and on Broadway. Her production of The 39 Steps, which ran in London for nine years, also played three years on Broadway and won Olivier and Tony Awards. In 2011, she directed Frank Langella in Man and Boy on Broadway. She is a Visiting Lecturer at Yale, NYU and Juilliard drama schools. Her extensive acting career includes leading roles at the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and in the West End. She has played more Noël Coward leads than any other actress. Her film career includes appearances in Doctor Faustus (1967), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971), Half Moon Street (1986), A Fish Called Wanda (1988) (for which she was nominated for a BAFTA award), The Fool (1990), The Grotesque (1995), Fierce Creatures (1997), Jinnah (1998) and Asylum (2005). She is the author of A Girdle Round the Earth, a story of some of the more remarkable women travellers of the last 200 years, and Style: Acting in High Comedy, published in 1996, which contends that "High comedies are not bloodless, refined, wordy plays — their themes are sex, money and social advancement. They contain a splendid contradiction: wit and elegance at the service of man's basest drives." From Wikipedia
Movies16
Movie7.2ComedyCrimeWhile a diamond advocate attempts to steal a collection of diamonds, troubles arise when he realises he’s not the only one after the collection.
A Fish Called Wanda
1988 · 2.5K votes
Movie6.0DramaThrillerA woman becomes very curious about one of her psychiatrist husband's inmates, a man who was found guilty in the murder and disfigurement of his former wife.
Asylum
2005 · 138 votes
Movie6.2ComedyRomanceEx-policeman Rollo Lee is sent to run Marwood Zoo, the newly acquired business of a New Zealand tycoon. In order to meet high profit targets and keep the zoo open, Rollo enforces a new 'fierce creatures' policy, whereby only the most impressive and dangerous animals are allowed to remain in the zoo. However, the keepers are less enthusiastic about complying with these demands.
Fierce Creatures
1997 · 405 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
Movie6.7DramaHistoryMary Stuart, who was named Queen of Scotland when she was only six days old, is the last Roman Catholic ruler of Scotland. She is imprisoned at the age of 23 by her cousin Elizabeth Tudor, the English Queen and her arch adversary. Nineteen years later the life of Mary is to be ended on the scaffold and with her execution the last threat to Elizabeth's throne has been removed. The two Queens with their contrasting personalities make a dramatic counterpoint to history.
Mary, Queen of Scots
1971 · 64 votes
Movie5.8ActionAdventureA series of unexplainable accidents befall the people and companies responsible for developing the world's first supersonic airliner. A British agent is sent to investigate and with the help of another agent uncovers a plot masterminded by Carl Petersen who stands to gain eight million pounds if the aircraft is not ready by a certain date.
Some Girls Do
1969 · 27 votes
Movie6.9HistoryWarBiography of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of modern Pakistan is told through flashbacks as his soul tries to find eternal rest. The flashbacks start in 1947 as Jinnah pleads for a separate nation for the Muslim minority, infuriating Lord Mountbatten. Mountbatten then tries to enlist Gandhi & Nehru to persuade Jinnah to stop his efforts. Gandhi sides with Jinnah, which upsets Nehru. However, Jinnah turns down the offer to become prime minister and the film takes another slide back to 1916, which reveals all of the political implications that have occurred.
Jinnah
1998 · 29 votes
MovieSketch comedy pilot from Douglas Adams and Graham Chapman.
Out of the Trees
1976
Movie5.4ComedyDramaSir Hugo is more interested in reconstructing dinosaur bones than in paying attention to his wife, Lady Harriet. He's not thrilled when daughter Cleo brings home her betrothed, Sidney, who aspires to be a poet. The new butler, Fledge, provides Lady Harriet with the attention she's been missing and then seduces Sidney. Did he have a role in Sidney's disappearance as well?
The Grotesque
1995 · 15 votes
- Movie8.0Drama
A costume drama / satire about financial skull-duggery, and confidence tricksters in both the upper and lower classes in Victorian London. A working class man impersonates a lord who is supposedly very rich and a financial wizard. As such he is invited to all the best peoples' parties.
The Fool
1990 · 3 votes
- Movie6.0TV MovieComedy
Trevor and Susannah, whose marraige is on the rocks, inflict their miseries on their nearest and dearest: three couples whose own relationships are tenuous at best. Taking place sequentially in the three beleaguered couples' bedrooms during one endless Saturday night of co-dependence and dysfunction, beds, tempers, and domestic order are ruffled, leading all the players to a hilariously touching epiphany.
Bedroom Farce
1980 · 1 votes
Movie8.0DramaA reporter is asked to look into the mysterious death of a nun who died in a locked room at a convent. She had recently inherited a fortune. The reporter next leans off an apparition that haunts the hallways at night and seems to portend death. Flashlight in hand, she goes off in search of the "Black Nun."
Quiet as a Nun
1978 · 1 votes
Movie9.5ComedyIn 1913 the British government, hearing that the Germans are planning World War I, ask top agent Whinfrey to intervene, but instead he decides to go on holiday to Cornish fishing village Torpoint. Here he believes he has stumbled upon a smuggling ring, but in fact they are Germans who are masquerading as locals in an advance invasion party. The British arrive and arrest them, believing that Whinfrey deliberately planned everything - though it is apparent that he did not.
Whinfrey's Last Case
1979 · 2 votes
Movie5.3MysteryDramaFaustus is a scholar at the University of Wittenberg when he earns his doctorate degree. His insatiable appetite for knowledge and power leads him to employ necromancy to conjure Mephistopheles out of hell. He bargains away his soul to Lucifer in exchange for living 24 years during which Mephistopheles will be his slave. Faustus signs the pact in his own blood and Mephistopheles reveals the works of the devil to Faustus.
Doctor Faustus
1967 · 28 votes
MovieDramaTV MoviePlay about middle class domestic abuse.
Don't Be Silly
1979
Movie7.0DocumentaryA documentary on the making of the film Jinnah (1998), and the trials and tribulations faced by a British production team.
Dare To Dream: The Making of Jinnah
1998 · 1 votes
Series16
TV5.3Talk ShowChat show hosted by Terry Wogan, featuring live studio interviews with famous and notable personalities.
Wogan
1982 · 7 votes
TV5.7DramaCrown Court is an afternoon television courtroom drama produced by Granada Television for the ITV network that ran from 1972, when the Crown Court system replaced Assize courts and Quarter sessions in the legal system of England and Wales, to 1984.
Crown Court
1972 · 6 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
- 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
TV7.3DramaJustice is a British drama television series which originally aired on ITV in 39 hour-long episodes between 8 August 1971 and 16 October 1974. Margaret Lockwood stars as Harriet Peterson a female barrister in the North of England. It was made by Yorkshire Television and was based loosely on Justice Is a Woman, an episode of ITV Playhouse broadcast in 1969 in which Lockwood had previously also played a barrister. The theme music was Crown Imperial by William Walton.
Justice
1971 · 3 votes
TV6.2DramaThe Edwardians is an eight-part miniseries broadcast in 1972–73. An anthology, each 90-minute episode explores influential figure(s) of the Edwardian era: Charles Rolls and Henry Royce; Horatio Bottomley; E. Nesbit; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Robert Baden-Powell; Marie Lloyd; Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick; and David Lloyd George.
The Edwardians
1972 · 4 votes
TV6.8DramaWar & PoliticsManhunt is a World War II drama series consisting of 26 episodes, produced by London Weekend Television in 1969 and broadcast nationwide.
Manhunt
1970 · 4 votes
TV4.5DramaThe Regiment is a 1972 BBC One television drama series starring Christopher Cazenove and follows the story of a British Army regiment from the view of two families.
The Regiment
1972 · 2 votes
- TV8.0Drama
Codename, which premiered in April 1970, was about the secretive MI17 Spy Organisation of the same name based in the residential hall of a Cambridge College. Eventually the series attained a more international flavour, although its base was always in Great Britain. Primarily Codename dealt with the themes of espionage and counter-espionage at the time of the Cold War of the sixties. Its cast contained many of Great Britain's most versatile and talented actors.
Codename
1970 · 1 votes
TV5.2DramaComedyRefined civil servant Jasper Pye is sent to the rural Suffolk–Norfolk border to close the Office of Output Statistics, which has outlived its usefulness. Instead, he's seduced by the small idyllic world he discovers, making his task far more difficult than he'd imagined. He soon finds himself entangled with the local aristocrat's three beautiful daughters.
Love on a Branch Line
1994 · 5 votes
TV7.0Sci-Fi & FantasyDramaSimon King, an alien agent from the Inter Galactic Council, is sent to Earth on a mission to stop unscrupulous refugees from a dying planet from wiping out Mankind and taking over the planet Earth.
Counterstrike
1969 · 2 votes
- TVDrama
Television adaptations of six books by well-known romantic novelists.
Romance
1977
TV8.0Patricia Hodge stars as the investigative journalist, TV presenter, writer and amateur sleuth Jemima Shore . This enormously popular series based on the novels by Antonia Fraser - also features appearances by Tom Baker, Don Henderson, Bill Nighy, Brian Cox and Lysette Anthony. Poised, determined, and possessed of a sharp intellect and a keen eye, Jemima presents Megalith Television s Jemima Shore Investigates . But in her spare time, she uses her connections to pursue her own investigations and her relentlessly inquiring mind uncovers crime and intrigue of every variety, particularly within the world of the wealthy and the privileged...
Jemima Shore Investigates
1978 · 1 votes
TVAction & AdventureTwo undercover army operatives infiltrate an activist group working towards an independent Scotland by illegal means.
TV7.5ComedyA sitcom portraying the lives of two financially-struggling cousins who attempt to rebuild their lives, following the loss of their husbands from divorce and widowhood.
Poor Little Rich Girls
1984 · 2 votes
- TVDrama
Sister and brother Samantha and Simon Company open a night club, sing their own songs and find themselves solving problems and mysteries for their customers.
Company and Co
1980