Norman Rossington

After a prolonged industrial dispute in the Liverpool Docks, the striking workers reject management demands of a return to work and decide instead to occupy the docks and run the operation themselves.

When the inland revenue gets an angry mistress's letter exposing a man named Toby as a tax cheat, they quietly put pressure on him. Toby panics, and hires an unscrupulous lawyer named Elvin, but he has a hard time taking his advice.

There's something pretty grisly going on under London in the Tube tunnels between Holborn and Russell Square. When a top civil servant becomes the latest to disappear down there Scotland Yard start to take the matter seriously. Helping them are a young couple who get nearer to the horrors underground than they would wish.

Two inept gamblers on the run from their debts and a gang of crooks find refuge in a film studio.

The first Play for Today is the story of one man's obsession (to win the world long distance piano playing record) and the battle for good (his wife) and evil (his agent) that rages around him.

A comedy short with very little speaking. Graham Stark and John Junkin have a new elevated platform to work with but still manage to get into lots of trouble. Lots of celebrity appearances.

They write so many innocent words, but what are the authors of your children's stories really like?

A 22-year-old factory worker lets loose on the weekends: drinking, brawling, and dating two women, one of whom is older and married.

An insecure Briton and a Briton of Jamaican descent share a London apartment together.

A couple's bizarre romantic relationship is disrupted by the intrusion of a third person.

Digby consumes a bowl of Project X, a liquid growth formula. Soon, he becomes a sheepdog of gigantic size!

A middle-aged stock actor goes to London to try the big time. After much frustration, he lands a job doing TV commercials, gaining wealth and recognition. He eventually gives it all up to return to stage work and keep his pride.

Capturing John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in their electrifying element, 'A Hard Day's Night' is a wildly irreverent journey through this pastiche of a day in the life of The Beatles during 1964. The band have to use all their guile and wit to avoid the pursuing fans and press to reach their scheduled television performance, in spite of Paul's troublemaking grandfather and Ringo's arrest.

In September 1942, the German Afrika Korps under Rommel have successfully pushed the Allies back into Egypt. A counter-attack is planned, for which the fuel dumps at Tobruk are a critical impediment. In order to aid the attack, a group of British commandos and German Jews make their way undercover through 800 miles of desert, to destroy the fuel dumps starving the Germans of fuel.

The children of Barton United are trying to win the cup in their local football (soccer) league. Nasty councillor Mr Bates doesn't like them and wants the team his son plays for to win instead so he makes life as difficult as he can for them. But Barton United are offered help by the local professional team that just happens to be Manchester United with boss man Matt Busby.

A couple's bizarre romantic relationship is disrupted by the intrusion of a third person.

Two unforeseen problems meant that many fans consider this the weakest Christmas special. Firstly, Talbot Rothwell became ill whilst writing the script, and was unable to finish it. Dave Freeman had to be brought in to complete the script, but the two men did not work together. As a result, the script does not flow as easily as the earlier offerings. Secondly, Charles Hawtrey pulled out of the special at short notice. Having taken third billing to Sid James and Terry Scott in the previous two shows, and knowing they would both be absent, Hawtrey demanded top billing. But Carry On producer Peter Rogers refused, giving top billing to Hattie Jacques instead. Hawtrey's role had hastily to be recast, and was split between Norman Rossington and Brian Oulton, both of whom had played cameo roles in several Carry On films. The special featured a collection of historical sketches, loosely linked around an 18th-century banquet.

Based on satirical short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle about a vain, egotistical Etienne Gerard, a French brigadier serving during the Napoleonic Wars. He thinks he's the best soldier and lover that ever lived and intends to prove it.

A gang of aspiring bank robbers involve themselves with arsonists and purchase their very own fire truck in an attempt to create the ultimate diversion. But posing as firemen leads them to disaster.

Intrigue...comedy...adventure...unforgettable characters and exotic settings - the legendary story of Treasure Island comes to life in this colourful adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's masterpiece. Join these timeless travellers in this wonderful and immortal tale of treasure and treachery!

Sexual passion breeds violence in the Thomas Middleton and William Rowley written tale of a beautiful woman who falls in love with a sea-captain. Filmed with lush production values and at a leisurely, very British pace, Helen Mirren is riveting as Beatrice-Joanna, a young lass already torn by love and commitment.Beatrice-Joanna (Helen Mirren) is betrothed to Lord Alonzo de Piraquo (Malcolm Reynolds) but is in love with Alsemero (Brian Cox). She hires her father's manservant, De Flores (Stanley Baker), to kill Alonzo but after he has done so, she realises De Flores wants her as a reward.The Changeling was an instalment of the BBC's Play of the Month series and is a production for television of a 1622 Jacobean tragedy of the same name, written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley.

In the early 1800s, a group of fur trappers and Indian traders are returning with their goods to civilization and are making a desperate attempt to beat the oncoming winter. When guide Zachary Bass is injured in a bear attack, they decide he's a goner and leave him behind to die. When he recovers instead, he swears revenge on them and tracks them and their paranoiac expedition leader down.

Quietly competent young Joanna moves with her scatterbrain mother to a country village to take up her first job as District Nurse. She soon overcomes the suspicion of her patients used to someone rather older, while becoming romantically involved with a local farmer - at least until he tries to evict a newly-arrived expectant couple who park their caravan on his land.

Three children are locked in a store by accident. They help catch a gang who break into the store the same day in order to get to the bank next door.

A short film without any direct action designed more as an experiment, with disjointed comic scenes with no common thread.

During a game of golf between a police inspector and a vicar the inspector cheats by having a constable move his ball into favourable positions and the vicar's into hazardous ones. when the vicar discovers this he prays for divine intervention which turns the tables.

When singer Guy Lambert goes on tour in Europe, he is pursued by two beautiful women, bumbling jewel thieves, and a mysterious killer.

An American writer goes to a remote Welsh manor on a $20,000 bet that he can write a classic novel like 'Wuthering Heights' in 24 hours. However, upon his arrival he discovers that the apparently empty manor has several rather odd inhabitants.

Told his battalion is to be split up due to lack of recruits at home, Sharpe and Harper return to England to investigate. What should have been a simple query turns politically explosive as they come nearer to exposing profiteering on the home front that could jeopardize the Wellington's war.

A former burglar trying to go straight joins a rehabilitation scheme using much the same methods as AA. Through the process, he takes work as a department store Santa, where the endless parade of goods and money, not to mention the pretty young shop hands have him like a moth to a flame in no time flat.

A fateful Stranger's Meeting leads to a maelstrom of crime, deception and murder in this 64-minute British programmer. The beautiful Delphi Lawrence heads a stellar cast, including such reliables as Victor Maddern, Norman Rossington, Conrad Phillips and Reginald Hearne. The plot centers around acrobat Peter Arne, falsely accused of murder. Escaping from the authorities, Arne hides out in a rustic inn, allowing first-time director (and former cinematographer) Robert Day ample opportunity for dark, menacing shadows and sinister underlighting. The genuine murderer is revealed just seconds before the culprit's death. Stranger's Meeting was held back from release until Robert Day's "official" directorial debut, The Green Man, had made the rounds.

Fall in for the first ever film in the highly successful Carry On comedy series—now an acclaimed British institution. Kenneth Connor and Charles Hawtrey are the prankish misfits who become the hilarious bane of Army Officers existence when he makes a bet he will turn them into ‘Star Squad’ Award soldiers—or bust!

Lady Booby alias 'Belle', the lively wife of the fat landed squire Sir Thomas Booby, has a lusty eye on the attractive, intelligent villager Joseph Andrews, a Latin pupil and protégé of parson Adams, and makes him their footman. Joseph's heart belongs to a country girl, foundling Fanny Goodwill, but his masters take him on a fashionable trip to Bath, where the spoiled society comes mainly to see and be seen, but drowns in the famous Roman baths. When the all but grieving lady finds Joseph's Christian virtue and true love resist her lusting passes just as well as the many ladies who fancy her footman, she fires the boy. He's found and nursed by an innkeeper's maid, which stirs lusts there, again besides his honorable conduct, but is found by the good parson.

Anthony Hope's classic tale gets a decidedly 'un-classic' treatment at the hands of Peter Sellers. Following the story somewhat, friends of the new King Rudolph of Ruritania fear for his life, and switch him with a look-a-like London cabby. Throw in two(!) lovely blondes, treachery, and a battle for life and honour, and enjoy life at its zaniest.

In Victorian England, a fortune now depends on which of two brothers outlives the other—or can be made to have seemed to do so.

Three London gentlemen take a vacation rowing down the Thames, encountering various mishaps and misadventures along the way.

Set in Haven Hospital where a certain men's ward is causing more havoc than the whole hospital put together. The formidable Matron's debut gives the patients a chill every time she walks past, with only Reckitt standing up to her. There's a colonel who is a constant nuisance, a bumbling nurse, a romance between Ted York and Nurse Denton, and Bell who wants his bunion removed straight away, so after drinking alcohol, the men decide to remove the bunion themselves!

An American ex-GI takes a job as a truck driver to support his British war bride Connie. It isn't long, however, before Harry is blackmailed into joining a smuggling operation run by a conniving criminal.

The Titanic disaster as seen through the eyes of one couple in each of the three classes on board.

Based on the true story of Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, the only German prisoner of war captured in Britain to escape back to Germany during the Second World War.

The Krays is a film based on the lives and crimes of the British gangsters Ronald and Reginald Kray, twins who are often referred to as The Krays and were active in London in the 1960s.

Involuntarily-retired Colonel Hyde recruits seven other dissatisfied ex-servicemen for a special project. Each of the men has a skeleton in the cupboard, is short of money, and is a service-trained expert in his field. The job is a bank robbery, and military discipline and planning are imposed by Hyde and second-in-command Race on the team, although civilian irritations do start getting in the way.

In 1950s England, slow-witted Derek Bentley falls in with a group of petty criminals led by Chris Craig, a teenager with a fondness for American gangster films. Chris and Derek's friendship leads to their involvement in the true case which would forever shake England's belief in capital punishment.

Doctors Burke and Hare leave the confines of St Swithins for the world of general practice, stopping off on the way as patients at the Foulness Anti-cold Unit. Hare then takes up a position as junior in a well-healed G.P.'s surgery while Burke continues to sow his doctorial wild oats.

In order to boost circulation of his newspaper, Lord Rawnsley announces an air race and offers £10,000 to the first person who can fly across the English Channel. But one of the participants, Percy, plots to sabotage his competitor's planes. Will Percy triumph?

Fresh-faced young Michael Rimmer worms his way into an opinion poll company and is soon running the place. He uses this as a springboard to get into politics and in the mini-skirted flared-trousered world of 1970 Britain starts to rise through the Tory ranks.

During the Crimean War between Britain and Russia in the 1850s, a British cavalry division, led by the overbearing Lord Cardigan, engages in an infamously reckless strategic debacle against a Russian artillery battery.

The story of British officer T.E. Lawrence's mission to aid the Arab tribes in their revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Lawrence becomes a flamboyant, messianic figure in the cause of Arab unity but his psychological instability threatens to undermine his achievements.

The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French. Marshall Erwin Rommel, touring the defenses being established as part of the Reich's Atlantic Wall, notes to his officers that when the Allied invasion comes they must be stopped on the beach. "For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day"

The sinking of the Titanic is presented in a highly realistic fashion in this tense British drama. The disaster is portrayed largely from the perspective of the ocean liner's second officer, Charles Lightoller. Despite numerous warnings about ice, the ship sails on, with Capt. Edward John Smith keeping it going at a steady clip. When the doomed vessel finally hits an iceberg, the crew and passengers discover that they lack enough lifeboats, and tragedy follows.

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

Crown Court is an afternoon television courtroom drama produced by Granada Television for the ITV network that ran from 1972, when the Crown Court system replaced Assize courts and Quarter sessions in the legal system of England and Wales, to 1984.

The Army Game is a British sitcom that aired on ITV from 1957 to 1961. Made in black-and-white, it is about National Service conscription to the post-war British Army. It was created by Sid Colin. Many stars, like Charles Hawtrey, William Hartnell, Bernard Bresslaw, Alfie Bass and Dick Emery became household names, and appeared in the Carry On films, which began with Carry On Sergeant, virtually a spin-off. It was made for the ITV network by Granada Television.

Hallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The longest-running primetime series in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning during 1951 and continuing into 2013. From 1954 onward, all of its productions have been shown in color, although color television video productions were extremely rare in 1954. Many television movies have been shown on the program since its debut, though the program began with live telecasts of dramas and then changed to videotaped productions before finally changing to filmed ones. The series has received eighty Emmy Awards, twenty-four Christopher Awards, eleven Peabody Awards, nine Golden Globes, and four Humanitas Prizes. Once a common practice in American television, it is the last remaining television program such that the title includes the name of the sponsor. Unlike other long-running TV series still on the air, it differs in that it broadcasts only occasionally and not on a weekly broadcast programming schedule.

Acclaimed blackly comic historical drama series. Set amidst a web of power, corruption and lies, it chronicles the reigns of the Roman emperors - Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and finally Claudius.

Comedy set in a small Police Station filled with self serving corrupt coppers!

A group of very different people pool together their funds and buy a house large enough to accommodate them all. Characters include librarian Georgina Ruddy, council official Simon Willow, unemployable Daisy Burke, Yorkshire sea dog Captain Illiffe and his French singing wife, newlywed Hattons and law student Gordon Brent.

The Venturers is a British television series produced by the BBC in 1975. The series, created by Donald Bull, had started out as an edition of Drama Playhouse in 1972 before being commissioned as an ongoing series. The Venturers took place in the high pressure world of Prince's Merchant Bank and dealt with the intricacies of high finance amongst its millionaire clients. Geoffrey Keen starred as director Gerald Lang, in a virtual reprise of his role as oil executive Brian Stead in Mogul / The Troubleshooters. Other major cast members included James Kerry, David Buck, Cyril Luckham and William Squire. The Venturers lasted for a single series of ten episodes.

Curry and Chips is a British sitcom broadcast in 1969 which was produced by London Weekend Television for the ITV network. Set on a factory floor of 'Lillicrap Ltd', it starred a blacked up Spike Milligan as an Asian immigrant who went by the name of Kevin O'Grady. It also featured Eric Sykes as the foreman, Norman Rossington as the shop steward, and other regulars were Kenny Lynch, and Sam Kydd. The series was written by Till Death Us Do Part writer Johnny Speight, but based on idea by Milligan. It was the first LWT sitcom to be made in colour, and all episodes still exist.

Accused of treason, a former U.S. intelligence officer based in London tries to clear his name, taking on freelance jobs around Europe as he searches for answers.

The story of a group of builders in postwar Britain.

The Big Noise

The Nineteenth Hole

In a similar vane to Ronnie Barker’s Seven Of One, Cilla Black dips her toe into the world of sitcom, each week playing a different character in six one off comedy plays.

Thirty-Minute Theatre is an anthology drama series of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, which was used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short running length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known. Thirty-Minute Theatre followed on from a similarly named ITV series, beginning on BBC2 in 1965 with an adaptation of the black comedy Parsons Pleasure. In 1967 BBC2 launched the UK's first colour service, with the consequence that Thirty-Minute Theatre became the first drama series in the country to be shown in colour.

The Italian adventurer and libertine Giovanni Jacopo Casanova lived from 1725 to 1798, but in this six-part series Dennis Potter attempted to find a contemporary relevance through his central themes of sex and religion. He commented that Casanova "was concerned with religious and sexual freedom, and these are the things we have to address ourselves to now." Casanova was imprisoned in Venice in 1755, and Potter used that event as a central device, constantly inter-cutting to contrast Casanova's amorous escapades, radiant, joyful and brightly lit, with his oppressive solitary confinement in the gloom of a half-darkened cell.

Victor Frankenstein witnesses his creation turn uncontrollable after he's duped by his associate, Dr. Polidori.

Beryl Reid performs her favourite comedy sketches and scenes, featuring some of her own famous characters, with special guests.

Taboo-busting adaptation for television of Jean-Paul Sartre's trilogy.

Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television from mid-1968.