John Mortimer

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

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An aristocrat won't economize, then his rich brother in law is found murdered in the grounds of the aristocrat's house

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A woman disguises herself in men's clothes in order to follow her husband to the wars.

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Forever England gives John Mills his first leading role as Brown. Born after a brief affair between his mother and a naval officer, he joins the Royal Navy during the First World War. There his bravery and marksmanship keeps a German ship in port so a British ship can sink it. He becomes a hero, but at what cost?

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Leslie Titmuss returns to Rapstone village and will do whatever it takes to fit in with the highest levels of society. Married to his second wife, Jenny, he seeks to buy his first wife's country house. These plans are hampered by a real estate development that Leslie, due to his free market politics, can hardly oppose publicly.

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Fortysomething wife and mother Molly Pargeter leads a stable but dull life in 1980s West London. She feels overweight and there is no passion in her relationship with her husband Hugh, who is secretly seeing another woman. For most of her life, Molly has found escape in detective novels and art books, especially on 15th-century Italian fresco painter Piero Della Francesca. Suddenly, in the small ads, she spots the details of a Tuscany villa to let, and after a viewing, she takes it for holiday.

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Film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's debut novel, 'Mary'.

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A clergyman noted for his support of left-wing causes, leaves his considerable estate to a Conservative member of parliament. Adaptation of the novel by John Mortimer.

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A successful lawyer struck with blindness in middle age continues his battles in the courtroom with the assistance of his family. As his son deals with bitter memories of their relationship, he also seeks his father's respect and love and in the process learns to love in return.

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Touching comedy about a high court judge, now retired to his English countryside home, who resolves to end years of suspicion about his wife's fidelity and the true paternity of their son.

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Agnostic Charles Ryder is seduced by the allure of the Flytes, a wealthy aristocratic family. Although he finds himself at odds with their strong Catholicism, his ties to the family deepen for the decades between the two world wars.

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A bored Rumpole, living in Florida retirement, uses an inquiry from Phyllida as a pretext to re-establish himself back in chambers.

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A dramatisation of the life of famed playwright William Shakespeare from 1590 to 1607.

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Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer. It stars Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an aging London barrister who defends any and all clients, and has been spun off into a series of short stories, novels, and radio programmes.

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An irreverent barrister chooses to defend a young Jamaican boy accused of stabbing on the same day his only son leaves for college in America.

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Shades of Greene is a British television series based on short stories written by the author Graham Greene. The series began in 1975, with each hour-long episode featuring a dramatisation of one of Greene's stories, many of which dealt with issues such as guilt and the Catholic faith, as well as looking at life in general. Actors to have appeared in the series include John Gielgud, Leo McKern, Virginia McKenna, Paul Scofield, and Roy Kinnear. The series began on 9 September 1975 and ran for two seasons.

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John Mortimer's play about the tangled love life of an East London pub landlord. A woman fighting to save her marriage needs help from friends, but is her husband's best friend the right ally? Pip and Bob, both married, are a couple of ordinary working-class blokes in an ordinary London suburb. It's just that they have also been gay lovers for years.

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Francesca's upbringing has been sheltered, but her fiancé isn't slow to realise that his future mother-in-law is in a very lucrative line of business.

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This play is about a couple trying to overcome the problems in making a successfull clandestine assignation. It was one of a series of playlets by John Mortimer, all named after different parts of London. This was based on a theatrical piece first performed in 1960.

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A dentist discovers his wife on the verge of having an affair with another man - a rival dentist

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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.

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John and Mary meet in a singles bar, sleep together, and spend the next day getting to know each other.

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Six of Britain's top television playwrights were given the opportunity to write the plays they had always wanted to write.

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Suspecting that her husband might be having an affair, a wife plots to catch him in the act.

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A happily married couple divorce for tax purposes, but their lawyer, not knowing the real reason for their divorce, falls in love with the wife.

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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.

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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.

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A woman reports that her young daughter is missing, but there seems to be no evidence that she ever existed.

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An anthology series of television plays which aired on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured.

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An Englishman with a grudge against an insurance company for a disallowed claim fakes his own death and escapes to Spain, but is soon pursued by an insurance investigator.

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After nearly 40 years of waiting for his big chance, Wilfred Morgenhall is given the case of defending Herbert Fowle who is accused of murdering his wife. Despite Fowle's insistence of guilt, Moregenhall will not let go of the opportunity to plead his client as innocent and be a star in the courtroom.

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Committed pacifist Tom Jordan's decision to help former President Rivera escape a military coup is a simple act of mercy that takes him and his wife to the edge of despair. It turns them into outlaws and fugitives, hunted by a vicious South American regime; yet it could also bring them together in a way they have never been before.

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A young female designer is on the brink of an affair with a married male executive at the company where she works. The film tells the story of their illicit lunch hour rendezvous.

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A young salesman from Trinidad tries to sell a complete set of encyclopedia to Sally Louth, a housewife living on the Chelsea-Fulham border in London.

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Anthology series of plays where various disparate characters meet in the city of London.

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These dueling one-act comedies highlight the work of playwright John Mortimer. In "The Dock Brief," an ill-prepared attorney is put to the test when his client confesses to killing his wife. In "What Shall We Tell Caroline?" a father with good intentions tries to protect his wife and daughter from the bad things in life.

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