A Perfect Spy

Featuring dramatised versions of true stories that shocked mainstream Victorian society.

Two provincial newspaper reporters - one a young idealist starting out on his career, the other an embittered man who previously wrote for a failed national daily - swap views.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a seven-part BBC2 spy drama written by Arthur Hopcraft, adapted from John le Carré's eponymous 1974 novel. The serial, which stars Alec Guinness, Alexander Knox, Ian Richardson, Michael Jayston, Bernard Hepton, Anthony Bate, Ian Bannen, George Sewell and Michael Aldridge, was broadcast from 10 September to 22 October 1979. George Smiley, the ageing master spy of the Cold War and once heir-apparent to Control, is brought back out of retirement to flush out a top level mole within the Circus. Smiley must travel back through his life and murky workings of the Circus to unravel the net spun by his nemesis Karla 'The Sandman' of the KGB and reveal the identity of the mole before he disappears.

Anthology series of dramatic works.

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.

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.

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.

Bleak House is BBC television drama first broadcast in 1985. The serial was adapted by Arthur Hopcraft from Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House and it was the second adaptation by the BBC.

England, 1926. An American journalist looks for mystery writer Agatha Christie when she suddenly disappears without explanation, leaving no trace.

Based on the Gothic romance novel by Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca is a classic tale of love and hate. Maxim De Winter marries a woman half his age only a year after his first wife, the beautiful and accomplished Rebecca, dies. She finds herself in an aristocratic social world her middle class upbringing did not prepare her for, and housekeeper Mrs Danvers despises her for taking her darling Rebecca's place. But these are not the only problems to face...

A pair of lookalikes, one a former French aristocrat and the other an alcoholic English lawyer, fall in love with the same woman amongst the turmoil of the French Revolution.

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 weary British spy retreats to a Buenos Aires hotel and recalls his last dirty job, complete with lover.

Two women, looking for amusement on their afternoons off, visit a drinking club.

A middle class man finds life as a Labour MP challenging.

Play by Arthur Hopcraft about Christmas in a Northern town, and the relationship within a family.