Cedric Messina

The Happy Valley

In 1940 Kenya as their country prepares for war, the local aristocratic social set lives a decadent, self-indulgent lifestyle, that leads to murder. The same events were also dramatised in the feature film White Mischief, which was released seven months after the first transmission of The Happy Valley.

Spider's Web

Clarissa, the wife of a Foreign Office diplomat, is given to daydreaming. 'Supposing I were to come down one morning and find a dead body in the library, what should I do?' she muses. Clarissa has her chance to find out when she discovers a body in the drawing-room of her house in Kent.

Hamlet

Hamlet comes home from university to find his uncle married to his mother, and his father's ghost haunting the battlements and scaring the watch. Then his father's ghost directs him to seek revenge.

The Tempest

Prospero, the true Duke of Milan is now living on an enchanted island with his daughter Miranda, the savage Caliban and Ariel, a spirit of the air. Raising a sorm to bring his brother - the usurper of his dukedom - along with his royal entourage. to the island. Prospero contrives his revenge.

Twelfth Night

Viola and Sebastian are lookalike twins, separated by a shipwreck. Viola lands in Illyria, where she disguises herself like her brother and goes into the service of the Duke Orsino. Orsino sends her to help him woo the Lady Olivia, who doesn't want the Duke, but finds that she likes the new messenger the Duke's sending. Then, of course, Viola's brother shows up, and merry hell breaks loose. Meanwhile, Olivia's uncle and his cohorts are trying to find some way to get back at Olivia's officious majordomo, Malvolio.

Henry IV Part 2

The death of King Henry the Fourth and the coronation of King Henry the Fifth.

Sweet Wine of Youth

A Life of Rupert Brooke from his letters and poems

Henry IV Part 1

Henry Bolingbroke has now been crowned King of England, but faces a rebellion headed by the embittered Earl of Northumberland and his son (nicknamed 'Hotspur'). Henry's son Hal, the Prince of Wales, has thrown over life at court in favour of heavy drinking and petty theft in the company of a debauched elderly knight, Sir John Falstaff. Hal must extricate himself from some legal problems, regain his father's good opinions and help suppress the uprising.

Henry VIII

Henry is a proud monarch who flies in the face of the church in seeking to divorce Queen Katherine and marry Anne Bullen. As cardinal Wolsey, the powerful Lord Chancellor of England, attempts to bend Rome to the King's wishes, the court reverbates with political intrigue and accusations of treachery.

Measure for Measure

When the Duke of Vienna takes a mysterious leave of absence and leaves the strict Angelo in charge, things couldn't be worse for Claudio, who is sentenced to death for premarital sex. His sister, Isabella (a nun-in-training), however, is a very persuasive pleader. She goes to Angelo, but instead of freeing her brother, she gets an offer from Angelo to save Claudio's life if Isabella sleeps with him. The only sympathetic friend Isabella has is a priest who, in actuality, is the Duke in disguise...and he has a plan.

Julius Caesar

The assassination of the would be ruler of Rome at the hands of Brutus and company has tragic consequences for Brutus and the republic.

As You Like It

Orlando is forced to work like a servant for his brother Oliver, so he goes to win his fortune in a wrestling contest, where he meets a lady of the court, Rosalind. Rosalind (daughter of the deposed duke) is companion to Celia, niece of the deposed Duke, and when the current duke banishes Rosalind from the kingdom, she, Celia, the court jester (and incidentally Orlando) all end up in the forest or Arden, where the deposed Duke holds court. Romantic mixups, cross-dressing, love poems nailed to trees, and a lion await them all.

Richard II

Richard II, who ascended the throne as a child, is a regal and stately monarch. He believes he is the rightful ruler of England, ordained by God, yet he is a weak and ineffective king - wasteful in his spending habits, unwise in his choise of chansellors, and detached from his country and its people. When he seizes the land of his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, both the commoners and the barons decide that their king has gone too far...

Romeo & Juliet

Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes a pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows doth with their death bury their parents' strife.

Exiles

In the 1920s, Michael Arlen was one of the most popular and acclaimed writers in the world, but he mysteriously stopped writing altogether. His son tries to work out why this was.

The Ambassadors

Dramatisation of Henry James's novel. Lambert Strether comes to Europe on a difficult and delicate mission. A chance meeting on arrival with the engaging Maria Gostrey provides him with much-needed support.

The Country Wife

Directed by Donald McWhinnie.

The Winslow Boy

The term at Osborne Naval College is not yet over. Why, therefore, has cadet Ronnie Winslow returned home? And why, moreover, is he hiding in the garden in the rain?

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

TV-movie version of the Victor Hugo novel.

Private Lives

Divorced couple Amanda and Elyot have both recently remarried. On their honeymoons, however, they discover that they have accidentally booked adjoining suites at the same hotel. Containing some of Coward's best dialogue, the play revolves around the agonising realisation that despite their ferocious incompatibility, they are still drawn to each other.

French Without Tears

The romantic and comic adventures of a group of Englishmen in France, on a course to learn the language.

Loyalties

During a weekend at a country house in the 1920s, a Jewish outsider accuses a former officer of theft, setting off a tragic chain of events.

The Philanthropist

The original play by Christopher Hampton, was adapted into this made-for-TV movie and it offers witty dialogue in the midst of remarkable conflict among its privileged characters.

King Lear

King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.

The Wood Demon

A luncheon party gathers to celebrate a wealthy unmarried man's birthday; his sister hopes he'll marry Sonya, the daughter of a selfish gout-ridden old professor who makes life Hell for his son George and his young wife, Helen. At the luncheon is Khrushchov, a passionate environmentalist, called "the Wood Demon" by all, in love with Sonya and she with him, but neither will say it. Two weeks later there's a family meeting at the professor's estate; two weeks after that, a supper at the cabin of Dyadin, who's cheerful to all. George, Helen, Sonya, and Khrushchov are each suffocating. Can any of them take action?

Electra

Living in exile after the death of their father, the grown children of a murdered and usurped king converge to exact eye-for-an-eye revenge.

The Changeling

Sexual passion breeds violence in the Thomas Middleton and William Rowley written tale of a beautiful woman who falls in love with a sea-captain. Filmed with lush production values and at a leisurely, very British pace, Helen Mirren is riveting as Beatrice-Joanna, a young lass already torn by love and commitment.Beatrice-Joanna (Helen Mirren) is betrothed to Lord Alonzo de Piraquo (Malcolm Reynolds) but is in love with Alsemero (Brian Cox). She hires her father's manservant, De Flores (Stanley Baker), to kill Alonzo but after he has done so, she realises De Flores wants her as a reward.The Changeling was an instalment of the BBC's Play of the Month series and is a production for television of a 1622 Jacobean tragedy of the same name, written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley.

The Common

A social comedy about the relationship between two couples with different political beliefs. Edward and Jane Noble are right wing, but with some liberal leanings, whereas Sean and Marcia are more radical and left wing.

The Love-Girl and the Innocent

A BBC television adaptation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel. The prisoner Nemov is an honest man serving a term of 10 years for violations of Article 58. Nemov falls in love with Lyuba, who is having sex with the camp doctor Mereshchun, in exchange for better food and living conditions.

Mrs. Warren's Profession

Performed in 1902, after being banned by the censor for eight years, Shaw's indictment of the hypocrisy surrounding prostitution still shocked its audiences. Mrs. Warren has graduated from prostitution to opening and operating a chain of brothels throughout Europe. When her educated daughter Vivie discovers the truth about her mother's profession her reactions affect everyone around her.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Mistaken identity, unrequited love, and the supernatural are combined in Shakespeare's classic set in the woods of Greece on a moonlit night.

Macbeth

The Thane of Cawdor plots to become King of Scotland.

The Rivals

The play by Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

Separate Tables

A play by Terence Rattigan about the stories of several people staying at a seaside hotel in Bournemouth which features dining at "Separate Tables."

Much Ado About Nothing

Dame Maggie Smith stars in the 1967 screen version of Franco Zeffirelli's exuberant National Theatre production of Shakespeare's romantic comedy, in which young lovers Hero and Claudio conspire to make sharp-tongued rivals Beatrice and Benedick fall in love with each other.

Billy Budd

A version of Benjamin Britten's opera based on the Melville story. Will the virtuous young sailor Billy Budd be hanged for murder?

The World of George Orwell: 1984

Early adaption of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as part of the Theatre 625 series.

The Siege of Manchester

A German mercenary is hired to defend the small township of Manchester during the English Civil War.

Miss Julie

Miss Julie has a torrid, strange relationship with her servant, Jean.