Peter Martin

Funny Bones

Tommy Fawkes wants to be a successful comedian. After his Las Vegas debut is a failure, he returns to Blackpool where his father—also a comedian—started, and where he spent the summers of his childhood.

The Royle Family: Joe's Crackers

It is Christmas Day in the Royle household and Barbara is up to her eyes in it, as Jim is out of action following an unfortunate incident in the precinct while Dave and Denise are feeling the effects of the recession the most, and worry that Anthony's lavish gifts will eclipse their gift of a fridge magnet.

Brassed Off

A Yorkshire coal mine is threatened with closure and the only hope is for the men to enter their Grimley Colliery Brass Band into a national competition. They believe they have no hope until Gloria appears carrying her Flugelhorn. At first mocked for being a woman, she soon becomes the only chance for the band to win.

Walk Like a Panther

A group of 1980s wrestlers are forced to don the lycra once last time when their beloved local pub is threatened with closure.

Buses

In Yorkshire during the twenties, it seems that everyone who holds a driver's licence wants to run his own private bus company, and young Jim Stone is no exception.

The Royle Family: Barbara's Old Ring

Christmas is coming but Barbara is not happy. Not only has she lost her wedding ring but Jim has won on a scratch card she found down the back of the sofa whilst looking for the ring and has kept quiet about his hundred pounds winnings. Nor is he especially sympathetic about Dave's impotency problem, though the entire Royle family unite to help recently widowed Joe from next door enjoy a restaurant-style evening in their house with the equally scatty Philomena, whom he has met through a want ad. On Christmas Day Barbara lashes out at Jim for his laziness and juvenile antics - though his description of a busty barmaid cures Dave's problem. However she is in for a pleasant surprise when she discovers just how he spent his scratch card winnings.

On the Palm

Fledge needs a job. He'll take anything. And when Dawlish gives him strange errands to run, for cash in hand, strictly 'on the palm', it's a welcome change from the dole. Until he finds himself digging dirt on an old friend....

A Dedicated Man

Edith is a hotel waitress, single and in her mid-forties, with a major infatuation on Maurice Silcox, the hotel's head waiter. But Edith becomes distraught when she learns that Maurice has been offered a more prestigious job at a luxury hotel. Maurice explains to Edith that he can only take the position if he is married. Unaware Edith's crush, Maurice proposes. She accepts and they set up a household for business purposes only -- complete with a photograph of a make-believe son. As Edith continues to live with this charade, her obsession with Maurice and the "son" grows, leading to a shocking and disturbing outcome!

Wynne and Penkovsky

The true story of Greville Wynne, the British businessman who doubled as a spy on his trips to Russia, and Colonel Penkovsky, the high-ranking Soviet Intelligence officer who passed key information to the West.

Nearly a Happy Ending

A play by Victoria Wood. Maureen has been faithfully attending the slimmers' club for months. Now the weeks of endless crispbreads have paid off - but is her optimism misplaced? Sequel to Wood's earlier play Talent, featuring the same characters of lifelong friends Maureen and Julie.

The Royle Family: Behind the Sofa

Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash discuss the creation of The Royle Family, with a look behind the scenes at the production of the show and interviews with the cast.

One Hundred and Eighty!!!

A darts tournament is put in peril when the players' wives stage a sit-in in the pub.

The Price of Coal, Part 1: Meet the People

The workers of Milton Colliery prepare for a royal visit from Prince Charles.

Rik Mayall Presents: Dancing Queen

Dancing Queen is a 1993 British romantic comedy film starring Rik Mayall and Helena Bonham Carter. It follows the misfortune of Neil (Mayall), a bridegroom trying to get back to his bride with the help of his newfound friend Pandora/Julie (Bonham Carter) the stripper. It was the third episode of the first series of the Granada Television series Rik Mayall Presents.

The Golden Egg Cup

On Jim and Barbara's wedding anniversary, Jim is frustrated because Barbara wants to celebrate abroad. However, she ends up settling for a stay at a caravan park in the 'Pearl of Prestatyn.' The trip is full of mishaps but…… is it about about The Golden Egg Cup.

England's Greens and Peasant Land

A planning decision must be made, and the motorway extension must go through on either the Golf Course or the Allotments - will the greens survive or the peasant lands?

Emmerdale

The lives of several families in the Yorkshire Dales revolve around a farm and the nearby village. With murders, affairs, lies, deceit, laughter and tears, it's all there in the village.

Last of the Summer Wine

Unencumbered by wives, jobs or any other responsibilities, three senior citizens who've never really grown up explore their world in the Yorkshire Dales. They spend their days speculating about their fellow townsfolk and thinking up adventures not usually favored by the elderly. Last of the Summer Wine premiered as an episode of Comedy Playhouse in 1973. The show ran for 295 episodes until 2010. It is the longest running comedy Britain has produced and the longest running sitcom in the world.

Skins

Irreverent comedy drama which follows the messy lives, loves, delirious highs and inevitable lows of a group of raucous teenage friends in Bristol.

Heartbeat

Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines.

Screen Two

Series of single made-for-television dramas.

Bergerac

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.

Peak Practice

Peak Practice is a British drama series about a GP surgery in Cardale — a small fictional town in the Derbyshire Peak District — and the doctors who worked there. It ran on ITV from 10 May 1993 to 30 January 2002 and was one of their most successful series at the time. It originally starred Kevin Whately as Dr Jack Kerruish, Amanda Burton as Dr Beth Glover and Simon Shepherd as Dr Will Preston, though the roster of doctors would change many times over the course of the series. Cardale was based on the Staffordshire village of Longnor for the final series, but was previously based in the Derbyshire village of Crich, although certain scenes were filmed at other nearby Derbyshire towns and villages, most notably Matlock, Belper and Ashover.

All Creatures Great and Small

The trials and misadventures of the staff at a country veterinary office in Yorkshire. James Herriot, a young animal surgeon, moves to a small Yorkshire town to begin his first job.

Strangers

Strangers is a 1978–82 ITV police procedural created and principally written by Murray Smith, based on characters created by Kenneth Royce in his novel series and subsequent 1977–78 television adaptation The XYY Man. Don Henderson and Dennis Blanch reprise their roles, respectively, of Detective Sergeant (DS) George Bulman and Detective Constable (DC) Derek Willis. A group of police officers are brought together from across the country to the north of England. There, the fact that they're not well-known gives them the advantage to infiltrate where a more familiar local detective could not. Despite being based around a comparatively small team of detectives, a regular feature in its early years is that few episodes feature the entire team, with most using just two or three regulars in any major role.

Dalziel and Pascoe

In the fictional Yorkshire town of Wetherton, the unlikely duo of politically incorrect elephant-in-a-China-shop-copper DS Andrew Dalziel (pronounced Dee-ell) and his more sensitive and university educated sidekick DS, later DI, Peter Pascoe is always on hand to solve the classic murder mystery, while maintaining down-to-Earth wit and humour.

Cardiac Arrest

This series shows the workings of an English hospital through the eyes of its junior doctors. Naive and idealistic Dr Andrew Collins (Andrew Lancel), soon realises he still has much to learn. His boss, Dr Claire Maitland (Helen Baxendale) on the other hand, has seen it all. She is a competent doctor, with a cynical view, and is ready to work the system when needed, but she and Collins work well together as she guides him through the many minefields of working in the NHS.

The New Statesman

The New Statesman is a British sitcom of the late 1980s and early 1990s satirising the Conservative government of the time.

The Royle Family

The Royle Family is a British sitcom created by Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash, and produced by Granada Television for BBC Two (series 1) and BBC One (series 2 and 3). It centres on the lives of a television-fixated Manchester family, the Royles, comprising lazy patriarch Jim, his hard-working wife Barbara, their entitled daughter Denise, their put-upon son Antony, and Denise's lad fiancé–later husband–David.

dinnerladies

Dinnerladies is a BBC sitcom written by and starring Victoria Wood that chronicles the antics of a group of workers in a canteen in the north of England. Bren tries to maintain a semblance of order in amongst the chaos, while dealing with the canteen supervisor, slightly sex-obsessed cancer sufferer Tony. Dolly and Jean are the bickering menopausal older women, always at odds but best friends beneath it all. Then there's thick-as-two-short-planks Anita, and the terminally uninterested Twinkle, more concerned with having a good time than anything else. Making up the motley crew are military man handyman Stan, all rules and regulations, and ditzy Philippa, who never seems to get anything right.

Victoria Wood

Victoria Wood was a series of six one-off situation comedies written by and starring Victoria Wood in 1989, who took a break from sketches, two years after her very successful and award winning series Victoria Wood As Seen on TV. Wood appeared as "Victoria", a fictionalised version of herself, in all six episodes - in The Library it was said that she "worked in TV" and in Over To Pam characters appeared to recognise her celebrity and in the final episode, Staying In, she was taken to a party to perform as a comedienne and was expected to go through her stand-up 'routine'. Her character often broke the 'fourth wall' of TV and spoke directly to the camera, but not in every episode. Bored with the sketch format and with a yearning to recapture previous success as a playwright, Wood came up with six individual sitcoms as a compromise. She admitted to finding the writing difficult. Though Wood was written as the central character, other lead parts were written with specific actresses in mind, like Julie Walters and Una Stubbs. "I want people to like me and the people who play my friends, and not everybody else" she said. Screenonline says of the shows "Modest in ambition and scale but rich in wit and acuity, the six playlets showcase Wood's eye for human foibles and her distinctively eccentric characters.".

Bill Brand

Following the death of the sitting Labour Party Member of Parliament, Bill Brand is selected as Labour candidate for a Lancashire textile constituency.

The Beiderbecke Connection

The Beiderbecke Connection is a four-part British television serial written by Alan Plater and broadcast in 1988. It is the third and final part of The Beiderbecke Trilogy and stars James Bolam and Barbara Flynn as schoolteachers Trevor Chaplin and Jill Swinburne. Now with a baby in tow, Jill and Trevor are asked by Big Al to look after a refugee called "Ivan".

Hard Times

Hard Times is a four-part British television drama miniseries based on Charles Dickens' 1854 novel of the same name, a survey of English society and a satirisation of 19th century social and economic conditions. Wealthy, retired Coketown merchant Thomas Gradgrind devotes his life to a philosophy of rationalism, self-interest, and fact. He raises his eldest children, Louisa and Tom, according to this philosophy and never allows them to engage in fanciful or imaginative pursuits.

The Gathering Seed

The saga of Manchester lad Joe Henshaw, a story that takes in family life, the trials and tribulations of the Labour movement and World War Two

The Beiderbecke Tapes

The Beiderbecke Tapes is a two-part 1987 British television comedy-drama serial written by Alan Plater. The second installment in The Beiderbecke Trilogy, it stars James Bolam and Barbara Flynn as schoolteachers Trevor Chaplin and Jill Swinburne. When a tape recording of a conversation about nuclear waste inadvertently falls into Chaplin's hands, he and Swinburne find themselves being pursued by national security agents.