Allan Surtees

Erik the Viking

Erik the Viking gathers warriors from his village and sets out on a dangerous journey to Valhalla, to ask the gods to end the Age of Ragnorok and allow his people to see sunlight again. A Pythonesque satire of Viking life.

Eye of the Needle

Great Britain, 1944, during World War II. Relentlessly pursued by several MI5 agents, Henry Faber the Needle, a ruthless German spy in possession of vital information about D-Day, takes refuge on Storm Island, an inhospitable, sparsely inhabited island off the coast of northern Scotland.

Brassneck

Through the story of a single family, Brassneck traces a history that parallels the Labour Party's advent to power in 1945 through to the property speculation of the 1960s and the disillusionment with the Labour government in the early 1970s. Like most of the early work of the writers, David Hare and Howard Brenton, committed radical (if not revolutionary) socialists throughout the 1970s, it is a satirical attack on capitalist greed and corruption, full of savage, and often disturbing, humour.

Get Carter

Jack Carter is a small-time hood working in London. When word reaches him of his brother's death, he travels to Newcastle to attend the funeral. Refusing to accept the police report of suicide, Carter seeks out his brother’s friends and acquaintances to learn who murdered his sibling and why.

I Bring You Frankincense

"A rites of passage drama about a mixed race boy called Sunshine who leaves Guildford in [the] 1970's and moves to London." - BFI

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed

Blackmailing a young couple to assist with his horrific experiments the Baron, desperate for vital medical data, abducts a man from an insane asylum. On route the abductee dies and the Baron and his assistant transplant his brain into a corpse. The creature is tormented by a trapped soul in an alien shell and, after a visit to his wife who violently rejects his monstrous form, the creature wreaks his revenge on the perpetrator of his misery: Baron Frankenstein.

The Reckoning

Michael Marler, a successful businessman in London, is about to make his way to the top. After 37 years, the death of his father brings him back to his hometown of Liverpool, where he’s confronted with his lost Irish roots. He finds out that his father died in a fight with some Anglo-Saxon teddy boys. It becomes a matter of honour for him to take his revenge without involving the police.

Murder On Line One

A series of heinous murders ends with the arrest of the supposed killer. But when similar grisly killings continue, a beautiful reporter sets out to prove that the police are holding the wrong man. Or are they?

Erik the Viking

Erik the Viking gathers warriors from his village and sets out on a dangerous journey to Valhalla, to ask the gods to end the Age of Ragnorok and allow his people to see sunlight again. A Pythonesque satire of Viking life.

Eye of the Needle

Great Britain, 1944, during World War II. Relentlessly pursued by several MI5 agents, Henry Faber the Needle, a ruthless German spy in possession of vital information about D-Day, takes refuge on Storm Island, an inhospitable, sparsely inhabited island off the coast of northern Scotland.

Brassneck

Through the story of a single family, Brassneck traces a history that parallels the Labour Party's advent to power in 1945 through to the property speculation of the 1960s and the disillusionment with the Labour government in the early 1970s. Like most of the early work of the writers, David Hare and Howard Brenton, committed radical (if not revolutionary) socialists throughout the 1970s, it is a satirical attack on capitalist greed and corruption, full of savage, and often disturbing, humour.

Get Carter

Jack Carter is a small-time hood working in London. When word reaches him of his brother's death, he travels to Newcastle to attend the funeral. Refusing to accept the police report of suicide, Carter seeks out his brother’s friends and acquaintances to learn who murdered his sibling and why.

I Bring You Frankincense

"A rites of passage drama about a mixed race boy called Sunshine who leaves Guildford in [the] 1970's and moves to London." - BFI

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed

Blackmailing a young couple to assist with his horrific experiments the Baron, desperate for vital medical data, abducts a man from an insane asylum. On route the abductee dies and the Baron and his assistant transplant his brain into a corpse. The creature is tormented by a trapped soul in an alien shell and, after a visit to his wife who violently rejects his monstrous form, the creature wreaks his revenge on the perpetrator of his misery: Baron Frankenstein.

The Reckoning

Michael Marler, a successful businessman in London, is about to make his way to the top. After 37 years, the death of his father brings him back to his hometown of Liverpool, where he’s confronted with his lost Irish roots. He finds out that his father died in a fight with some Anglo-Saxon teddy boys. It becomes a matter of honour for him to take his revenge without involving the police.

Murder On Line One

A series of heinous murders ends with the arrest of the supposed killer. But when similar grisly killings continue, a beautiful reporter sets out to prove that the police are holding the wrong man. Or are they?

The Adding Machine

An accountant whose job is about to be taken over by a computer starts to re-examine his life and his priorities.

Faith and Henry

A coming of age story of an interracial relationship. Lancashire lad Henry finds himself attracted to Faith, an independent-thinking black school friend of Jamaican heritage.

Sleepers

Amidst the thaw of glasnost, the Kremlin discovers that two Soviet agents, sent to England under deep cover in 1965, have been “lost.” A beautiful and ambitious Russian agent, sent to London to track them down, becomes embroiled in a tangle of CIA, KGB and MI-5 plots and counterplots as the two lost agents, now utterly assimilated, try to avoid detection.

Funny Farm

Alan Wellbeck is a nurse in a mental hospital. His day-to-day struggles with personal feelings and troubled patients provide humour and pathos against the backdrop of a public institution.

Black Island

Joe and Michael, 13-year-old Brits, become separated from their class outing, stranded on a small island, and captured by armed men.

The Luddites

In 1812 there were violent disturbances in Yorkshire when new machines were introduced into the wool industry. This film is an interpretation of those events made in the style of a documentary.

The Love-Girl and the Innocent

The prisoner Nemov is an honest man serving ten 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.

The O'Hooligan File

' He's wasted his life and yours, Olive, on this sort of idiocy. He could have been a headmaster by now, if he'd stuck to teaching.' Jack Dunn is determined to beat the system with pen and postage stamp.

Casualty

Drama series about the staff and patients at Holby City Hospital's emergency department, charting the ups and downs in their personal and professional lives.

Minder

Roguish comedy drama following the misadventures of small-time crook Arthur Daley.

Play for Today

Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.

BBC Play of the Month

A 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.

Playhouse

A one-hour anthology television series of one-off contemporary and classic dramas produced by the BBC.

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.

The Professionals

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.

Wycliffe

Wycliffe is a British television series, based on W. J. Burley's novels about Detective Superintendent Charles Wycliffe. It was produced by HTV and broadcast on the ITV Network, following a pilot episode on 7 August 1993, between 24 July 1994 and 5 July 1998. The series was filmed in Cornwall, with a production office in Truro. Music for the series was composed by Nigel Hess and was awarded the Royal Television Society award for the best television theme. Wycliffe is played by Jack Shepherd, assisted by DI Doug Kersey and DI Lucy Lane. Each episode deals with a murder investigation. In the early series, the stories are adapted from Burley's books and are in classic whodunit style, often with quirky characters and plot elements. In later seasons, the tone becomes more naturalistic and there is more emphasis on internal politics within the police.

Pie in the Sky

Pie in the Sky is a British offbeat police comedy drama programme starring Richard Griffiths and Maggie Steed, created by Andrew Payne and first broadcast in five series on BBC1 between 13 March 1994 and 17 August 1997 as well as being syndicated on other channels in other countries, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The series departs slightly from other police dramas in that the protagonist, Henry Crabbe, while still being an on-duty policeman, is also the head chef of the title restaurant set in the fictional town of Middleton and county of Westershire.

Lovejoy

The adventures of the eponymous Lovejoy, a likeable but roguish antiques dealer based in East Anglia. Within the trade, he has a reputation as a “divvie”, a person with an almost supernatural powers for recognising exceptional items as well as distinguishing genuine antique from clever fakes or forgeries.

BBC2 Play of the Week

An anthology of plays and novels adapted into feature length TV movies, broadcast on BBC2 from September 1977 to April 1979.

Justice

Justice 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.

The Chief

The Chief is a British crime drama transmitted on ITV from 20 April 1990 to 16 June 1995. Produced by Anglia Television, it centred on the politics at the top of a typical English police force in its continual battle to solve the problems the times, in this case the fictional Eastland of East Anglia.

Centre Play

Anthology series of half hour plays produced in BBC's Television Centre's studios.

Softly Softly: Task Force

Softly, Softly: Task Force is a police based drama series which ran on BBC 1 from 1969 to 1976. It was a revamp of Softly, Softly, itself a spin-off from Z-Cars. The change was made partly to coincide with the coming of colour broadcasting to the BBC's main channel BBC1. The programme was due to be called simply Task Force, but reluctant to sacrifice a much-loved brand the BBC compromised this so it became Softly, Softly: Task Force.

New Scotland Yard

New Scotland Yard is a police drama series produced by London Weekend Television for ITV from 1972 and 1974. It features the activities of two officers from the Criminal Investigations Department in the Metropolitan Police force headquarters at New Scotland Yard, as they dealt with the assorted villains of the day.

Out of the Blue

Ambitious DS Franky Drinkall's life is turned upside down when he is diagnosed with epilepsy. His refusal to accept his condition leads him into a downward spiral and ultimately to his demise. DS Rebecca Bennett gives an ever-present emotional charge as she finds herself the subject of both PC Holder's and DC Allen's affections.

Vanity Fair

In early 19th century England, ambitious and ruthless orphan Rebecca Sharp advances from the position of governess to the heights of British society.

Rosie

Rosie is a British situation-comedy television series, written by Roy Clarke that was broadcast between 1977 and 1981. It was filmed and set in Scarborough in North Yorkshire. The central character was PC Penrose, the titular "Rosie", a young and inexperienced police officer, played by Paul Greenwood. For the first series of seven episodes, broadcast in 1975, it was called The Growing Pains of PC Penrose, but it underwent a revamp with a new title, setting and signature tune.

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.

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

Cordelia Gray inherits a struggling detective agency after her boss's suicide. Her assistant Edith Sparshott aids her as she navigates the dark underbelly of crime, uncovering clues in complex cases.

The Brothers McGregor

Black and white half-brothers Wesley and Cyril McGregor run an extremely dodgy secondhand car business out of Liverpool. A comedic spin-off from ITV's soap opera Coronation Street, the producers were unable to get Tony Osoba and Carl Chase to reprise the roles, so Paul Barber and Philip Whitchurch were cast instead. For two characters who appeared in a single May 1982 episode, The Brothers McGregor was very popular, running for four series.

Sleepers

Amidst the thaw of glasnost, the Kremlin discovers that two Soviet agents, sent to England under deep cover in 1965, have been "lost." A beautiful and ambitious Russian agent, sent to London to track them down, becomes embroiled in a tangle of CIA, KGB and MI-5 plots and counter-plots as the two lost agents, now utterly assimilated, try to avoid detection.

Nice Work

Dr Robyn Penrose is a lecturer in English at Rummidge University. Vic Wilcox is the Managing Director of Pringle's, an engineering firm in Rummidge. They meet when Robyn is told by her Head of Department to "shadow" Vic as part of Industry Year. They are initially hostile to each other but gradually come to understand each other's point of view. Based on the novel by David Lodge.