Simon Oates

With new interviews with the actors and production team, this documentary reveals the inspiration for stories, outlines how the team knew they were upsetting the government and big business, and explains why Robert Powell left at the height of its popularity.

The waters surrounding an island become contaminated by chemical dumping, and people who eat fish caught in those waters become deformed and violent.

A washed-up actor has a nervous breakdown and believes that he really is the movie monster that he has been hired to play. Created as an episode of Nigel Kneale’s “Beasts” horror anthology miniseries.

A group of scientists are kidnapped and taken to an outer space outpost in order to save Earth from destruction.

Black comedy play about two pensioners struggling to manage on an old-age pension and living in a high-rise block of flats.

Former OSS officer Alan Holiday, now living in London, is visited on New Year's Eve by Catherine Carrel who says she is a close friend of Jules Lemoine who served with Holiday during the war. Lemoine urgently requests that Holiday go to Paris on a secret mission. Lemoine visits and wants Alan to deliver a reel of tape which he gives him, and keeps a fake reel himself to deceive enemy agents. Lemoine is killed and the fake tape stolen. Holiday, poses as an assistant to photographer Louis Vernay, and they take three models along to further the ruse.

Biology student Harry is kicked out of his research program. He does not understand why. What Harry don't know is that he has a double.

A quirky spy show of the adventures of eccentrically suave British Agent John Steed and his predominantly female partners. Jonathan Steed - an urbane, proper gentleman spy - teams with various assistants throughout the series' run, including Dr. David Keel, Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King, to repeatedly save the world from diabolical schemes plotted by equally diabolical evil-doers (among them robots and man-eating monsters).

Jim 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.

Laura Holt, a licensed private detective, opens a detective agency but finds that potential clients refuse to hire a woman, however qualified. To solve the problem, Laura invents a fictitious male superior whom she names Remington Steele. Through a series of events that unfold in the first episode, "License to Steele," a former thief and con man, whose real name is never revealed, assumes the identity of Remington Steele. Behind the scenes, Laura remains firmly in charge.

The lives of Bodie and Doyle, top agents for Britain's CI5 (Criminal Intelligence 5), and their controller, George Cowley. The mandate of CI5 was to fight terrorism and similar high-profile crimes. Cowley, a hard ex-MI5 operative, hand-picked each of his men. Bodie is a cynical ex-SAS paratrooper and mercenary whose nature ran to controlled violence, while his partner, Doyle, comes to CI5 from the regular police force, and is more of an open minded liberal. Their relationship is often contentious, but they are the top men in their field, and the ones to whom Cowley always assigned to the toughest cases.

No Hiding Place is a British television series that was produced at Wembley Studios by Associated-Rediffusion for the ITV network between 16 September 1959 and 22 June 1967. It was the sequel to the series Murder Bag and Crime Sheet, all starring Raymond Francis as Detective Superintendent, later Detective Chief Superintendent Tom Lockhart.

Dr Finlay's Casebook is a BBC television series that was broadcast from 1962 until 1971. Based on A. J. Cronin's novella Country Doctor, the storylines centred on a general medical practice in the fictional Scottish town of Tannochbrae during the late 1920s.

The New Avengers is a British secret agent fantasy adventure television series broadcast during 1976 and 1977. It is a sequel to the 1960s series The Avengers and was developed by Albert Fennell and Brian Clemens. A joint United Kingdom-France-Canada production, the show picks up the adventures of John Steed and his team of Avengers fighting evil plots and world domination. Whereas in the original series Steed had almost always been partnered with a woman, in the new series he had two partners: Mike Gambit, a top agent, crack marksman and trained martial artist, and Purdey, a former trainee with The Royal Ballet who was an amalgam of many of the best talents from Steed's previous female partners.

A series of television plays, some original, some based on pre-existing plays or novels.

A BBC anthology series featuring adaptations of detective stories over 45 episodes in three seasons that ran from 1964 to 1969. As with many BBC programmes made before the early 1970s, many of its episodes no longer exist. Of the eighteen episodes from the first season only twelve are currently known to exist; likewise six of the sixteen editions from the second run are considered lost, and just one of the final ten survives in the archives.

Jason King - a suavely sophisticated former secret agent turned novelist - travels the world searching for material to fill his books, encountering an endless parade of glamorous women, exotic locales, menacing villains and daring intrigue! Before Austin Powers swung into action, Jason King set the standard for the hip crime-fighting international playboy!

Doomwatch is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC, which ran on BBC 1 between 1970 and 1972. The series was set in the then present-day, and dealt with a scientific government agency led by Doctor Spencer Quist, responsible for investigating and combating various ecological and technological dangers. The series was followed by a film adaptation produced by Tigon British Film Productions and released in 1972, and a revival TV film was broadcast on Channel 5 in 1999.

Accused of treason, a former U.S. intelligence officer based in London tries to clear his name, taking on freelance jobs around Europe as he searches for answers.

The Main Chance was a British television series which first aired on ITV between 1969,1970,1972 and 1975. A drama, it depicts the sudden transformation in the life of solicitor David Main who relocates from London to Leeds.

Emergency: Ward 10 is a British television soap shown on ITV between 1957 and 1967. Like The Grove Family, a series shown by the BBC between 1954 and 1957, Emergency: Ward 10 is considered to be one of British television's first major soap operas. Set in Oxbridge General Hospital, this soap opera focused equally on the lives and loves of its medical staff and the pressure of their work.

Department S is a United Kingdom spy-fi adventure series produced by ITC Entertainment. The series consists of 28 episodes which originally aired in 1969–1970. It starred Peter Wyngarde as author Jason King, Joel Fabiani as Stewart Sullivan, and Rosemary Nicols as computer expert Annabelle Hurst. The trio were agents for a fictional special department of Interpol. The head of Department S was Sir Curtis Seretse.

London itself takes the starring role in this series of plays from the BBC – a role which varies between hero and villain, enchantress and harpy. The series features extensive location filming, ranging from Soho to the Law Courts, Wembley to the docks. Of the twelve episodes, eleven are believed to be lost.

In WWII-era colonial Singapore, a wealthy British family struggle to preserve their prosperous business – whether by commercial or amorous schemes – amid cataclysmic world events.

Beasts is a series of six television plays by Manx writer Nigel Kneale, unconnected save for a bestial horror theme, made by ATV for ITV in the United Kingdom and broadcast in 1976. The series avoids typical monster horror clichès, moreso focusing on psychological and supernatural themes.

That's My Boy is a British sitcom produced by Yorkshire Television for ITV from 1981 to 1986. It stars Mollie Sugden as Ida Willis, who takes a job as a housekeeper for her son, whom she gave up for adoption years earlier.

In 17th century France, young D'Artagnan wants to join the King's Musketeers, but instead befriends three legendary musketeers—Athos, Porthos, and Aramis—and together, they become embroiled in the political intrigue surrounding King Louis XIII and his adversaries, particularly the powerful Cardinal Richelieu.

Sarah Thompson, an American visiting England, meets and marries William Whitfield, the Duke of Whitfield. They settle in a chateau in France and begin a family. World War II interrupts their happiness and alters their future. After the war, the family helps war survivors by buying their jewelry and eventually opens a jewelry store, which rapidly becomes a success. But conflicts abound as new generations arise and forces from both outside and within threaten the store and the family.

Armchair 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.