Anthony Smee

In 1979 Clive Sinclair, British inventor of the pocket calculator, frustrated by the lack of home investment in his project,the electric car, also opposes former assistant Chris Curry's belief that he can successfully market a micro-chip for a home computer. A parting of the ways sees Curry, in partnership with the Austrian Hermann Hauser and using whizz kid Cambridge students, set up his own, rival firm to Sinclair Radionics, Acorn. Acorn beat Sinclair to a lucrative contract supplying the BBC with machines for a computer series. From here on it is a battle for supremacy to gain the upper hand in the domestic market.

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A middle aged house-sitter meets two tearaways, and together they form a surrogate family

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A rollicking adaptation of Kingsley Amis's first novel, Lucky Jim stars Stephen Tompkinson as Jim Dixon, a luckless lecturer at a provincial British university, trying to make a splash with his pompous boss, Professor Neddy Welch (Robert Hardy). Jim is also trying to make it with the woman of his dreams, Christine Callaghan (Keeley Hawes, Othello and Wives and Daughters), while simultaneously being pursued by the woman of his nightmares, fellow lecturer Margaret Peel (Helen McCrory, Anna Karenina). One (of many) complications is that Christine is the girlfriend of Professor Welch's egotistical artist son, Bertrand. Another is that Margaret keeps attempting suicide to get Jim's attention. But despite his misadventures, Jim keeps his eyes on the prize: a leg up on the ladder to a professorship in medieval history.

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The tragic story of world-renowned cellist Jacqueline du Pré, as told from the point of view of her sister, flautist Hilary du Pré-Finzi.

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The peacefulness of the Midsomer community is shattered by violent crimes, suspects are placed under suspicion, and it is up to a veteran DCI and his young sergeant to calmly and diligently eliminate the innocent and ruthlessly pursue the guilty.

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In the 1930s, Count Almásy is a Hungarian map maker employed by the Royal Geographical Society to chart the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert along with several other prominent explorers. As World War II unfolds, Almásy enters into a world of love, betrayal, and politics.

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Davy Kotowski is a petty officer aboard submarine HMS Wolverine. Following a rigged arm-wrestling contest, half the crew are in slings. Kotowski is then brought before the Captain, Alec McCleod for the ninth time. He is sentenced to denial of shore leave and 20 hours laundry duty, most of which he delegates to his bunkmate Chris Cheese. Kotowski then plots his revenge on Lionel Pinner and Cheese ends up having a £100 grudge darts match with Pinner on Kotowski's behalf. Meanwhile McCleod's watch has gone missing.

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Bugs was a British television drama series which ran for four series from April 1995 to August 1999. The programme, a mixture of action/adventure and science-fiction, involved a team of specialist independent crime-fighting technology experts, who faced a variety of threats based around computers and other modern technology. It was originally broadcast on Saturday evenings on BBC One, and was produced for the BBC by the independent production company Carnival Films.

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Terry Jones explores the history of the Crusades.

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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.

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Jack Frost is a gritty, dogged and unconventional detective with sympathy for the underdog and an instinct for moral justice who attracts trouble like a magnet. Despite some animosity with his superintendent, Norman “Horn-rimmed Harry” Mullett, Frost and his ever-changing roster of assistants manage to solve cases via his clever mind, good heart, and cool touch.

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On holiday in Spain, London police officer Lawrence Jackson recognises absconded criminal turned informant Eddie Myers, now a wealthy art dealer under the pseudonym Phillip von Joel. Extradited back to England after a nerve-wracking Scotland Yard Operation, Myers agrees to tell what he knows — but only if Jackson is his interrogator. So begins a deadly game of cat and mouse between the master criminal and his determined minder. Which comes first — duty or temptation?

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

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Amongst Barbarians is set far away from Margaret Thatcher's Britain in Penang, Malaysia, a former British colony, where two young Englishmen have been arrested for drug trafficking. As they both face the death penalty, their relatives travel to Penang to come to their rescue. However, they soon find out that there is nothing they can do to save the boys' lives. In the course of their futile attempts at influencing the authorities, their racism becomes more than apparent. The question which is never made explicit is of course who the real barbarians are. Wall's play is based on a true story and featured David Jason's first straight acting role on TV.

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Being accused of child abuse is a nightmare every family dreads. The Taylors are an ordinary happy family, but Paul and Jill are worried about their 11-year-old son Mark, who is not eating. The family GP has diagnosed 'failure to thrive', and Mark is sent to the hospital for a check-up.

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Satirical and surreal play by Arthur Ellis, dealing with the manner in which the British police force has been represented on TV for four decades. In 1949 Tom Riley is arrested for the murder of PC George Dixon. As he awaits interrogation at the station he is mysteriously transported into an episode of The Filth - a 1988 police series where the hard men rule, where he is told by the local CID that he'll be confessing to the murder or else his genitals are getting cut off ! This black comedy questions whether the police have changed or is it the way film and television present them.

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Amateur detective Miss Jane Marple investigates the murder of a young woman whose body is found in the library at Gossington Hall, home of Colonel and Mrs. Arthur Bantry.

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Brass is a British comedy-drama series created by John Stevenson and Julian Roach, and produced by Granada Television for ITV and eventually Channel 4. Satirising the working-class period dramas of the 1970s and the American supersoaps such as Dallas and Dynasty, Brass was unusual for ITV comedies of the time, as there was no laugh track and the humour deliberately kept extremely dry, using convoluted wordplay and subtle commentary on popular culture. Set primarily in Utterley, a fictional Lancashire mining town in the 1930s, two feuding families—the wealthy Hardacres and the poor, working-class Fairchilds, who lived in a small terraced house rented from the Hardacre empire.

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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.

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S.I.S. agent David Callan is brought out of retirement for one last assignment.

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A British television anthology of stories, often with sinister and wryly comedic undertones, and a twist at the end. With early episodes written and presented by Roald Dahl, the series featured a plethora of big name guest stars.

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The story is about a long-established and highly respected family firm of auctioneers, the House of Caradus, in Chester, England, which is now in serious financial trouble. The series captures the drama of the auction room, the excitement of bid and counter-bid, taking in dealers' rings, forged art treasures and the growing invasion of the antiques scene by London-based auction houses starved of pieces to sell. As the House of Caradus struggles to stay alive, by fair means or foul, its clients cover the whole spectrum of need and greed.

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Eric Olthwaite is so boring that his family all leave home to escape him. Then one day he is accidentally caught up in a bank robbery and discovers that the robber shares his interests in shovels, black pudding and rainfall so they team up to make daring raids to steal rainfall records. As a result Eric becomes famous and is considered interesting again, so much so that he is made the mayor of Denley Moor.

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World War II drama about covert organisation Lifeline helping allied airmen escape after being shot down in occupied Europe, working with the Resistance and hiding from the Gestapo.

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After his death, Fred Mumford wants a second chance at achieving the success that eluded him in life. Coming back to Earth as a spirit, he recruits a Victorian gent and a medieval jester to set up 'Rentaghost', a supernatural service for wanted hauntings.

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Jack Regan, an unethical officer of the Flying Squad, uses unorthodox methods to pursue criminals with the help of his partner, George Carter.

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