Tom Stoppard

Young William Shakespeare is forced to stage his latest comedy, 'Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter', before it's even written. When lovely noblewoman Viola de Lesseps auditions for a role, they fall into forbidden love — and Shakespeare's play finds a new life (and title). As their relationship intensifies, the comedy soon transforms into tragedy.

Timon the meerkat and Pumbaa the warthog are best pals and the unsung heroes of the African savanna. This prequel to the smash Disney animated adventure takes you back -- way back -- before Simba's adventure began. You'll find out all about Timon and Pumbaa and tag along as they search for the perfect home and attempt to raise a rambunctious lion cub.

An artist falls for a married young woman while he's commissioned to paint her portrait. The two invest in the risky tulip market in hopes to build a future together.

Jamie Graham, a privileged English boy, is living in Shanghai when the Japanese invade and force all foreigners into prison camps. Jamie is captured with an American sailor, who looks out for him while they are in the camp together. Even though he is separated from his parents and in a hostile environment, Jamie maintains his dignity and youthful spirit, providing a beacon of hope for the others held captive with him.

In Imperial Russia, Anna, wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets charming cavalry officer Vronsky, to whom she's immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation.

Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle, he meets the woman from his daydream, and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.

In the year 1935, a teen named Billy Bathgate finds first love while becoming the protégé of fledgling gangster Dutch Schultz.

The story of the WWII project to crack the code behind the Enigma machine, used by the Germans to encrypt messages sent to their submarines.

Barley Scott Blair, a Lisbon-based editor of Russian literature who unexpectedly begins working for British intelligence, is commissioned to investigate the purposes of Dante, a dissident scientist trapped in the decaying Soviet Union that is crumbling under the new open-minded policies.

A marriage crisis between a writer and his wife leads her to flee to Germany and eventually return with another man, through whom the writer is going to overcome his writer's block.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, minor characters from the play 'Hamlet', find themselves on the road to Elsinore Castle at the behest of the King of Denmark. The duo encounter a band of players before arriving to find that they are needed to try to discern what troubles the prince Hamlet. Meanwhile, they ponder the meaning of their existence.

When a leak of information in the African section of British Intelligence is discovered, a security man is brought in to investigate.

Private eye Philip Marlowe and his bride move to a desert town, where he uncovers a land scheme.

An esoteric play portraying the life of poet A. E. Housman focusing specifically on his personal life and love for a college classmate.

Against the backdrop of Hamlet, two hapless minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, take centre stage. As the young double act stumble their way in and out of the action of Shakespeare’s iconic drama, they become increasingly out of their depth as their version of the story unfolds.

One hot June day, three friends decide there is nothing they would like to do more than to get away from London. A boating holiday with lots of fresh air and exercise would be just the very thing, or so their doctors tell them. So, after debating the merits of hotel or camp beds and what to pack, they set off on their voyage - a trip up the Thames from Henley to Oxford - but very quickly find themselves ill-equipped for the trials of riverbank life.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Leopoldstadt was the old, crowded Jewish quarter of Vienna, Austria. But Hermann Merz, a factory owner and baptised Jew now married to Catholic Gretl, has moved up in the world. We follow his family’s story across half a century, passing through the convulsions of war, revolution, impoverishment, annexation by Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. A company of 40 actors represent each generation of the family in this epic, but intimate play.

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour is a stage play by Tom Stoppard with music by André Previn. It was first performed in 1977. The play criticizes the Soviet practice of treating political dissidence as a form of mental illness. Its title derives from the popular mnemonic used by music students to remember the notes on the lines of the treble clef. The filming was undertaken at a live performance at Wembley Conference Centre in April 1978, conducted by Previn.

Berlin, 1930, during the rise of Nazism. Hermann Hermann, a Russian emigrant and chocolate manufacturer, married to the capricious Lydia, loses his temper more and more every day when dealing with his workers and other businessmen; until he meets Felix, a vagrant, who seems to be physically identical to him; a disconcerting fact that leads Hermann Hermann to plot a particular way out of a fake world he actually hates.

Acclaimed playwright Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love, Arcadia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) returns to the National Theatre with his highly-anticipated new play The Hard Problem, directed by Nicholas Hytner (Othello, Hamlet, One Man, Two Guvnors). Hilary, a young psychology researcher at a brainscience institute, is nursing a private sorrow and a troubling question at work, where psychology and biology meet. If there is nothing but matter, what is consciousness? This is ‘the hard problem’ which puts Hilary at odds with her colleagues who include her first mentor Spike, her boss Leo and the billionaire founder of the institute, Jerry. Is the day coming when the computer and the fMRI scanner will answer all the questions psychology can ask? Meanwhile Hilary needs a miracle, and she is prepared to pray for one.

A BBC schools programme broadcast about Tom Stoppard’s abridged version of the play which was performed by the National Youth Theatre at the Royal Opera House in London. The televised recording of the performance is preceded by comments on the work in progress from stage director Paul Roseby and writer Tom Stoppard. Jeremy Irons, who played Antonio in the film version of The Merchant of Venice (2004), comments on the merits of producing a play with young actors.

When their boss goes off to Vienna to dine with his fiancé, his clerks decide this may be their last chance for an adventure (razzle) and head for the Big City. Zangler must cancel his plans, as his niece has run off with her boyfriend. Naturally, soon everyone is running into everyone else!

Rupert Purvis jumps off a bridge onto a dog, causing problems for Blair, his superior at MI5. Blair must convince Hogbin, the agent who's been tailing Purvis, of which side Purvis is really on--once he finds out what it is.

An account of how Lech Walesa and the "Solidarity" trade union confronted the might of Communist dictatorship in Poland.

The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.

ITV 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.

An anthology of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known.

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

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

The story of a love triangle between a conservative English aristocrat, his mean socialite wife and a young suffragette in the midst of World War I and a Europe on the brink of profound change.

Friday Night, Saturday Morning was a television chat show with a revolving guest host. It ran on BBC2 from 28 September 1979 to 2 April 1982, broadcast live from the Greenwood Theatre, a part of Guy's Hospital. It was most notable for being the only television show to be hosted by a former British Prime Minister and for an argument about the blasphemy claims surrounding the movie Monty Python's Life of Brian. The programme was the idea of Iain Johnstone and Will Wyatt, who insisted on a changing presenter every fortnight. Another innovation was that the presenters chose the guests they were to interview.

A monthly series of highly personal documentary films in which individuals are given a platform to discuss issues close to their heart.