Ian Richardson

A memorial of sorts to the plinth on St. Peter's Hill, Grantham, which stood empty for two years before a statue of Margaret Thatcher was mounted in 2022.

It's the night before Hogswatch, usually a time of joy on Discworld, but there are suspicious going-on and the criminal underworld is abuzz. The beloved Hogfather - the jolly bearer of glee and pork-related gifts for children everywhere - has vanished. Suddenly, Discworld's entire mythical system is under threat. The fate of this magical time rests in the hands of a very motley group: A band of wizards headed up by a mystical university president named Mustrum Ridcully (Joss Ackland), a loyal manservant called Albert (David Jason), a level-headed governess called Susan Sto Heilt (Michelle Dockery), and her grandfather, who happens to be - Death (Marnix van den Broeke).

Though young Jane Austen's financially strapped parents expect her to marry the nephew of wealthy Lady Gresham, Jane herself knows that such a union will destroy her creativity and sense of self-worth. Instead, she becomes involved with Tom Lefroy, a charming but penniless apprentice lawyer who gives her the knowledge of the heart she needs for her future career as a novelist.

Alice d'Abanville and Louis Ruinard are two extraordinary personalities. They were the most strikingly glamorous couple of the 70s. But this pair haven't seen each other in thirty years.

The gang return for their third adventure, this time on a trip to scatter Grace's mother's ashes on the Yorkshire Moors.

The Booze Cruise is a series of three feature length comedy dramas written for British television by Paul Minett and Brian Leveson. In this episode the same characters go on a treasure hunt, and end up with their car being washed out to sea on a beach. Marcus (a businessman who deals with Dave's company) first appears in this episode.

France, 1914, during World War I. On Christmas Eve, an extraordinary event takes place in the bloody no man's land that the French and the Scots dispute with the Germans…

This is the true story of a little dog that refused to leave his master's graveside in Edinburgh. The dog visited the grave for years.

As a young boy, future emperor Nero witnesses the mad Emperor Caligula kill his father and exile his mother. While in exile in the pontine islands, Agrippina, his mother, sees a vision telling her that her son can become emperor, but she will have to die first. She accepts the proposal. Back in Rome, Nero, now being raised by emperor Claudius after Caligula's death, Agrippina returns. She poisons Claudius' food and Nero becomes emperor. At first, Nero cuts taxes and introduces successful programs and invades Brittania. Soon he meets a beautiful slave named Claudia Acte, and marries her, throwing off his engagement with Claudius' daughter, Claudia Octavia, telling her she can marry someone she will be happy with. Heartbroken, she arrives at an island and kills herself. Nero enjoys being married to Claudia Acte, but soon he gradually goes mad with power and sets fire to Rome.

Trapped in an isolated cottage, Captain Cavendish thinks he is seeing ghosts. The only person who might understand and help is Kate Lethbridge-Stewart ... but when she arrives, she realises that Cavendish is key in a plot to summon the Daemons back to the Earth. With time running out, Kate discovers that sometimes even the familiar can turn out to be your worst nightmare.

An intimate portrait of director Peter Brook by his son, Simon Brook.

Dramatically presented and narrated by the late internationally renowned actor of stage and screen Ian Richardson, with exquisite Shakespeare readings by Britain’s most successful and award winning actress, Dame Judi Dench, Life Trustee of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Frederick Abberline is an opium-huffing inspector from Scotland Yard who falls for one of Jack the Ripper's prostitute targets in this Hughes brothers adaption of a graphic novel that posits the Ripper's true identity.

Ghost hunters are on the trail of a supernatural phenomenon and legendary figures in Scotland. The forest of Duffus Castle - long one of Scotland's most powerful fortresses - is as much the scene of eerie encounters as Kilneuair Cemetery or Duart Castle on the Isle of Mull. Let the blue mist of eerie Scottish nights waft into your living room and experience the fascinating 3-D effects up close!

Get ready for a howling good time as an all new assortment of irresistible animal heroes are unleashed in this great family tail! In an unlikely alliance, the outrageous Waddlesworth - a parrot who thinks he's a Rottweiler - teams up with Oddball - an un-marked Dalmatian puppy eager to earn her spots! Together they embark on a laugh-packed quest to outwit the ever-scheming Cruella De Vil.

Actor Ian Richardson walks up the hill to Arthur's Seat, which overlooks the city of Edinburgh, as he did during lunch hours as a bored office clerk 50 years ago.

Arthur Conan Doyle reveals the story behind Sherlock Holmes and his mysteries by telling about Dr. Joseph Bell, from whom he drew his inspiration, after meeting him as a medical student in Edinburgh. This TV movie served as the pilot for the later released minisseries Murder Rooms: Mysteries of the Real Sherlock Holmes produced by the BBC. The series then picks up with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's time as a general practitioner in Southsea, solving mysteries with the help of his mentor, Dr Joseph Bell, who is still based in Edinburgh.

Widowed Welsh mother Anna Loenowens becomes a governess and English tutor to the wives and many children of the stubborn King Mongkut of Siam. Anna and the King have a clash of personalities as she works to teach the royal family about the English language, customs and etiquette, and rushes to prepare a party for a group of European diplomats who must change their opinions about the King.

A modern adaptation of the classic children's story 'Alice through the Looking Glass', which continued on from the popular 'Alice in Wonderland' story. This time Alice is played by the mother, who falls asleep while reading the the bedtime story to her daughter. Walking through the Looking Glass, Alice finds herself in Chessland, a magical and fun world. There she meets the Red and White Queens, as well as many other amusing friends on her journey across the chessboard countryside onto become a crowned queen.

Yet another variation on Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee At King Arthur's Court." Here, a computer malfunction causes a science researcher to be sent back in time with her laptop, which she uses to amaze the court.

A man struggles with memories of his past, including a wife he cannot remember, in a nightmarish world with no sun and run by beings with telekinetic powers who seek the souls of humans.

Based upon Wilkie Collins Victorian mystery, the gothic tale tells of a pair of half sisters whose lives end up caught in a grand conspiracy revolving around a mentally ill woman dressed in white. As the story unfolds, murder, love, marriage, and greed stand between the two women and happy lives. Their only hope is the secret the woman in white waits to tell them.

Timmy Sugrue is a persecuted guesthouse keeper and writer who lives with his mad mother in a very rainy part of the Irish midlands. His only consolation are his visits to Dr. Drudy, a psychiatrist whom he can tell about the love of his life - the President of Ireland. A new motorway puts Timmy's guesthouse off the map. A strange Spanish pilot named Marcel comes to visit and create havoc in the guesthouse. Timmy goes to a scriptwriters' conference where only fast, urban and up-beat stories are expected, nothing like Timmy's own story. Uneasy in any of the four provinces of Ireland, he desperately tries to reach the Fifth Province, the province of magic, of passion, of possibility.

Harry Donovan is an art forger who paints fake Rembrandt picture for $500,000. The girl he meets and gets into bed with in Paris, Marieke, turns out to be an arts expert Harry's clients are using to check the counterfeit picture he painted.

'The Canterville Ghost' is one of the most popular choice for making a film in Oscar Wilde's works, and the original short story deserves the popularity. It is a witty spoof about a ghost and the 'haunted' mansion where a rich American family start to live. In this story, the family are not annoyed by the presence of the ghost; no, it is the ghost who is annoyed by the family who just refuse to be terrified. After all, why should we be scared by an old man wearing rusty coat of mail, whose best trick is to walk in the middle of night making big noises?

The doomed marriage of the Prince Regent and Caroline of Brunswick.

Two wannabe Black American princesses aim to marry rich men, who will pay for their world's first combination hair salon and soul food restaurant.

Five motherless children, with the help of a famous doctor, are determined to save their financially strapped father.

Trapped in a loveless arranged marriage to the immature future Czar, a young German Princess proves a skillful political infighter and rises to become Catherine the Great.

During a rugby tour of Britain and Ireland in 1888, a young New Zealander searches for his father who he has never met. While there he falls in love with the daughter of an aristocrat.

Kim Jameson is a university professor while Kate Jameson - also known as Dominique, Kim’s twin sister - is a troubled model working in Paris. Kate is a drunk, in desperate need of rehabilitation. Kim checks her twin sister into a rehab center, agreeing to fill in for Dominique during her absence, but by doing so takes on more than she bargained for.

In 1928 Dublin, during séances concerning Jonathan Swift, the spirits of his former lovers, Stella and Vanessa, emerge to resume their ancient quarrel.

Shortly after she moves into her own flat in Brighton, Bella finds she is being spied on and generally harassed by a man living across from her. Finally driven to solving the problem with a hammer, she realises she is then ready for a crusade against other such problem males

Nicky Wells, a TV journalist who is renowned for her hard-hitting reports from the worlds most dangerous spots, is haunted by the disappearance of her fiancé.

In 1960s China, French diplomat Rene Gallimard falls in love with opera singer Song Liling – but Song is not at all who Gallimard thinks.

Two couples find love and comfort in London. A reserved, but lonely aging American female college professor meats a self-confident, married, but disillusioned aging American and aging English actress meats a young lively American.

Based on actual accounts, this film portrays the days and hours before and during the invasion of the Falkland Islands by Argentina, which eventually lead to the Falklands War. As the Argentine forces land on the main island and make their way towards Government House, the handful of British defenders batten down the hatches and prepare to defend Governor Rex Hunt, his family, and their fellow islanders from the invaders.

An auctioneer's daughter and a rich buyer's emissary fall for each other while trying to keep a rare wine out of the hands of evil doers.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, minor characters from the play 'Hamlet', find themselves on the road to Elsinore Castle at the behest of the King of Denmark. The duo encounter a band of players before arriving to find that they are needed to try to discern what troubles the prince Hamlet. Meanwhile, they ponder the meaning of their existence.

In 1727, an Arab colt is born with the signs of the wheat ear and the white spot on his heel: evil and good. And thus begins the life of Sham. He is a gift to the King of France, through a series of adventures with his faithful stable boy, Agba, he becomes the Godolphin Arabian, the founder of one of the greatest thoroughbred racing lines of all time.

A historical recreation of the 1944 attempt by several German High Command Officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler and take control of the German government.

In pre-WWI England, a youngster is expelled from a naval academy over a petty theft, but his parents raise a political furor by demanding a trial.

While recuperating in a sanatorium in the mountains, a young boy becomes very close friends with an older baron. But the baron is only using the boy to get to know his mother, the wife of an older diplomat. When the boy realises the baron’s intentions, he becomes jealous, moody and depressed.

A dramatic story, based on actual events, about the friendship between two men struggling against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. Donald Woods is a white liberal journalist in South Africa who begins to follow the activities of Stephen Biko, a courageous and outspoken black anti-apartheid activist.

Shaw turned to the classic Victorian melodrama to focus on the insincerity of much that his audience held dear, especially family and marriage. In 1777 as the American War of Independence rages, Dick Dudgeon returns to the family he revolted against years ago. But his life is about to take another twist as the british arrive and seem set on an execution...

Led by Kim Philby, Plan Aurora is a plan that breaches the top-secret Fourth Protocol and turns the fears that shaped it into a living nightmare. A crack Soviet agent, placed under cover in a quiet English country town, begins to assemble a nuclear bomb, whilst an MI5 agent attempts to prevent its detonation.

Anthony Blunt is an eminent Cambridge-educated art historian who is also working as a spy for the Soviet Union. In love with double agent Guy Burgess, he helps Burgess get yet another treasonous British agent to safety in Moscow. When Burgess unexpectedly defects as well, the government becomes suspicious of Blunt, but investigators have trouble believing such a refined and aristocratic gentleman would ever betray his nation and his class.

When a small British owned island in the Caribbean is invaded and the world's most dangerous terrorist kidnaps a member of the Royal family, the countdown to World War 3 begins. If anyone can prevent the oncoming apocalypse it's the American President, but her closest ally the British Prime Minister appears to have gone stark raving mad.

Lorraine Barrie, a fading but brilliant actress with a penchant for manipulating every theatrical endeavour to her best advantage, meets her match when she must trust her success to an equally willful stage director.

Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle, he meets the woman from his daydream, and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.

Sir Alec Guiness stars with Leo McKern in the story of a friendship between a Catholic priest and a Communist Mayor. Together they travel from their remote village to Madrid and back exploring their friendship, the demands of belief and constancy of faith. This lavish production filmed entirely on location captures the wit, warmth, and vitality that make the original novel by Graham Greene a unique work of literature.

Mr. Shrigley, a small businessman dealing in office equipment, believes that the recession happens to other people. Unfortunately he is wrong, and, when it catches up with him, he comes up with a plan for some unusual cutbacks.

The story of two brothers, Scottish noblemen whose family is torn apart by the Jacobite rising of 1745.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson try to track down the Great Mogul, the second-largest diamond in the world.

When a nobleman is threatened by a family curse on his newly inherited estate, detective Sherlock Holmes is hired to investigate.

A boy, a girl, a tramp and a piano with the most amazing effect on people, find each other in a park in a heatwave.

Is Richard the pub bore, or is he someone very intriguing? Arthur is a man of habit - four pints a night and home by 7.0, but tonight it's past 11.0 before he leaves the pub.

A village cricket match on the lawn of a great country house - a traditional setting for the perfect English murder. A natural case for the Yard's best technicolor detective, except for the victim-the 20th-century lord of the manor, Sheik Ali Ben Hassim.

Based on the turbulent life of the temperamental French painter, Paul Gauguin, and his compulsive search for creative freedom which caused him to abandon his wife and five children in Paris for a life of contentment in Tahiti.

Charlie Muffin, top British Intelligence operative, has just broken up a major Soviet spy network in England. However, a new Director with new ideas takes over and wants Charlie out. But then a high-ranking Soviet spy-master hints that he wants to defect, and both British Intelligence and the CIA want him and will do anything to get him. Charlie may be the only man who can bring the defection off successfully, but is the whole thing an elaborate set-up? And when your so-called allies are stabbing each other and you in the back to get this prize, whom can Charlie trust on either side?

The complicated relationship between Winston Churchill and the leaders of the British army during World War II.

Eisenhower the military man is the focus of this mini-series, his relationships with the other wartime leaders, and, very discreetly, his personal relationship with his driver, Kay Summersby.

Two TV Plays by Vaclav Havel, one called 'Audience', and one called 'Private View'.

Danton's Death is arguably the most dramatic and penetrating study of revolution ever written. Georg Büchner concentrates on that moment in 1794 when the Reign of Terror, already well established, spills over into a total blood-bath. The play, adapted by director Alan Clarke and Stuart Griffiths, both highly imaginative and closely documentary, shows how the great hero of the early phase of the Revolution, Danton, sickened by the excesses of the guillotine, which he helped to create, wants to call a halt. But Robespierre and Saint-Just, leaders of the Jacobins, with a ferocious puritanical zeal, spur on 'the wild horses of the Revolution'.

The medieval legend of a supernatural knight who challenges the king's men to kill him.

In the 16th century, poet, playwright and part-time actor Miguel de Cervantes has been arrested, together with his manservant, by the Spanish Inquisition. They're accused of presenting an entertainment offensive to the Inquisition. Inside the huge dungeon into which they have been cast, the other inmates gang up on Cervantes and his manservant, staging a mock trial, with the intention of stealing or burning his possessions. Cervantes wishes to desperately save a manuscript he carries with him and stages, with costumes, makeup, and the participation of the other prisoners, an unusual defense—the story of Don Quixote.

The story of Charles Darwin's journey on The Beagle.

Peter Hall's film adaptation of Shakespeare's comedy, filmed in and around an English country house and starring actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company.

An adaptation directed by Claude Whatham for the BBC's Theatre 625 slot. Essentially a recording of John Barton's acclaimed Royal Shakespeare Company production starring Catherine Lacey (the Countess), Ian Richardson (Bertram), Lynn Farleigh (Helen), Clive Swift (Parolles) and Sebastian Shaw (the King), it was broadcast on 3 June 1968.

In Charenton Asylum, the Marquis de Sade directs a play about Jean Paul Marat's death, using the patients as actors. Based on 'The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade', a 1963 play by Peter Weiss.

One of the earliest hits for the newly established RSC, Michael Elliott’s sparkling version of Shakespeare's comedy is still remembered with joy by a generation of theatre-goers. The design was dominated by a huge oak tree, but the production is most memorable for Vanessa Redgrave’s luminous Rosalind, supported by Max Adrian and Ian Bannen.