The Making of a Lady

Agatha Christie: A Life in Pictures

A biopic of Agatha Christie including her 10 day disappearance.

The Importance of Being Oscar

A star-studded BBC film of Oscar Wilde’s glittering and controversial career before his trial for homosexual crimes and tragic fall from grace. Highlights from Oscar’s brilliant comedies such as The Importance of Being Earnest and stories such as The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Canterville Ghost are adapted and performed by a cast including Freddie Fox, Claire Skinner, Anna Chancellor and James Fleet. Wilde enthusiasts and experts, including Stephen Fry, Wilde’s grandson Merlin Holland and his latest biographers, provide revelatory accounts of how his own life informed his work. His Irish roots, his early career, his marriage and the importance of women as well as men in his life all combine in a complex and compelling characterisation and celebration that adds flesh to the bones of a man who is too often caricatured.

Rudolf Nureyev: Dance to Freedom

Dance, espionage and passion come together in this powerful and exciting docudrama that tells the extraordinary story of how Soviet ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West in 1961 and became a living legend.

Wire in the Blood

Clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill's uncanny ability to see into the minds of murderers means he finds it difficult to distance himself from disturbing cases.

Primeval

When strange anomalies start to appear all over England, Professor Cutter and his team must track down and capture all sorts of dangerous prehistoric creatures from Earth's distant past and near future.

Francis Bacon: A Brush with Violence

In this unique, compelling film, those who knew him speak freely, some for the first time, to reveal the many mysteries of Francis Bacon.

Home

The ostensibly calm and courteous Gerald Ballantyne lives in and embodies modern suburbia. But he is haunted by the memory of a recent car crash and hounded by his estranged wife and her demands for divorce. Slowly, a festering insanity takes over and unwilling to face the outside world he embarks on a lunatic experiment. Confining himself to his middle-class home, he eschews contact with others and survives entirely off 'food' which he can find in his house. Based on JG Ballard's The Enormous Space.

Son of Sam: The Hunt for a Killer

A shocking serial murder case terrorized New York 40 years ago. Surviving victims, families of the deceased, and the detectives who worked on the case recount their stories.

Playhouse Presents

Playhouse Presents is a series of self-contained TV plays, made by British broadcaster Sky Arts. The series started airing on 12 April 2012, on Sky Arts 1. Each episode is written by a different writer with a different cast.

Surrealissimo: The Trial of Salvador Dali

A comic drama about the weird and wonderful world of Salvador Dali and the Surrealists. This film charts Dali's meteoric rise from obscurity to the world's most publicised artist.

Pinochet in Suburbia

In 1998 former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet visits Britain for medical treatment. On being tipped off, Amnesty International seize the chance to bring to justice a man they insist is guilty of multiple human rights violations. The newly-elected Labour government is initially amenable, and soon Pinochet is under house arrest (albeit in a detached house in leafy suburbia) and awaiting extradition to Spain. However, Amnesty are up against the complexities of British law, the vacillations of Home Secretary Jack Straw, Pinochet's former ally Margaret Thatcher - and the Senator's own vast reserves of cunning.

Consenting Adults

Fifty years ago, a Home Office committee chaired by Wolfenden, then vice-chancellor of Reading University, recommended the decriminalization of homosexuality. But behind the scenes of what was to become a turning point in British social history, there was an even more extraordinary story. Jack's son Jeremy, then a brilliant undergraduate at Oxford, was himself gay, something his father could not bring himself to acknowledge.

Star Trek Story

Gene Roddenberry's Utopian vision of humanity in the 24th century had a profound effect on American viewers. During the height of the Cold War, the tension of the civil rights movement and the jingoism of the Vietnam War, they saw a multicultural crew working together on the bridge of the Enterprise. Leonard Nimoy, Patrick Stewart, Nichelle Nicols, Brent Spiner and others reflect on Star Trek's cultural impact over its 30-year history, and contemplate its future on the small screen.

The Private Lives of Pompeii

The Private Lives of Pompeii concentrates on the people that lived and worked in Pompeii at the time of its destruction, as depicted in the archaeology of their houses, their tombs and the surviving documents that relate to them. Emilia Fox introduces us to the themes and ideas that lie behind the structure of the Roman society of Pompeii, themes which are then played out by actors illustrating the private lives of four key characters.

Joe Orton Laid Bare

Exploring the wit, work and world of Joe Orton through his own words, and the testimony of those who knew him and worked with him.

Ted Hughes: Stronger Than Death

Documentary exploring Ted Hughes, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, focusing on how his life story influenced his work and vision.