BBC Television

The Sleeper

Violet fights to keep her farm, but her son plans to sell it. An old friend threatens to reveal Violet's secrets, so she takes drastic action, unaware of the consequences.

The Africans: A Triple Heritage

Written and narrated by Dr. Ali Mazrui in the early 1980s and jointly produced by the BBC and PBS (WETA, Washington) in association with the Nigerian Television Authority. Africa's triple heritage, as envisioned by Mazrui is a product resulting from three major influences: (1) an indigenous heritage borne out of time and climate change; (2) the heritage of eurocentric capitalism forced on Africans by European colonialism; and (3) the spread of Islam by both jihad and evangelism. The negative effects of this history have yet to be addressed by independent African leaders, while the West has tended to regard Africa as recipient rather than as transmitter of effects. Yet Africa has transformed both Europe and America in the past, Mazrui points out, and the difficult situation in which Africa finds itself today (economically dependent, culturally mixed, and politically unstable) is the price it has had to pay for Western development.

The Triumph of the West

Hosted by historian John Roberts, the series focuses on the origins and evolution of Western civilization, and the transformative challenges and influence it has exerted on the rest of the world, including the socio-economic, political, and cultural movements that helped shape history.

Doctor Who

The adventures of The Doctor, a time-traveling humanoid alien known as a Time Lord. He explores the universe in his TARDIS, a sentient time-traveling spaceship. Its exterior appears as a blue British police box, which was a common sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired. Along with a succession of companions, The Doctor faces a variety of foes while working to save civilizations, help ordinary people, and right many wrongs.

The Dick Emery Show

A British sketch comedy show broadcast on the BBC from 1963 to 1981, with frequent performers including Pat Coombs, Deryck Guyler, Roy Kinnear, Joan Sims and Josephine Tewson.

Suspense

Anthology series telling suspenseful tales.

Studio 4

Studio 4 is a BBC drama anthology series, filmed at the BBC TV Centre's Studio Four, and screening over two seasons in 1962. The series was envisaged as a sequel to Storyboard, an anthology series which had been transmitted the previous year.

A for Andromeda

Set in 1970, a team of scientists decipher a mysterious signal from space and discover that it provides instructions to build a powerful super-computer. Once built, this computer provokes argument between two of leading team members, Fleming and Dawnay, over the machine's real intentions as it provides further instructions to create a living organism, which Dawnay starts to develop. Later it appears to compel lab assistant Christine to commit suicide, and when the organism is fully developed, it appears in the exact form of Christine, and named Andromeda. But what is the purpose of this "creature" ...?

Stranger on the Shore

Marie-Hélène Ronsin, a young French teenager, is on her first trip to England as an au pair. Speaking some English, but very shy, she lives with a family in Brighton, and faces the challenges of culture shock.

Storyboard

'Storyboard' is a BBC drama anthology series of 30 minute plays, each written by Troy Kennedy-Martin, the first series created by the prolific screenwriter. The series was followed by Studio 4

Hurricane

The story of two newly qualified nurses on their first assignment in the West Indies.

Sunday-Night Play

BBC anthology drama series that ran over four seasons and replaced the previous BBC Sunday Night Theatre series.

Androcles and the Lion

A Christian slave pulls a thorn from a lion's paw and is spared from death in the Colosseum as a result of his kind act.

Emma

Emma Woodhouse is a congenial young lady who delights in meddling in other people’s affairs. She is perpetually trying to unite men and women who are utterly wrong for each other. Despite her interest in romance, Emma is clueless about her own feelings, and her relationship with gentle Mr. Knightley.

Ivor The Engine

...Not very long ago, in the top left-hand corner of Wales, there was a railway. It wasn't a very long railway or a very important railway, but it was called The Merioneth and Llantisilly Rail Traction Company Limited, and it was all there was. And in a shed, in a siding at the end of the railway, lives the Locomotive of the Merioneth and Llantisilly Rail Traction Company Limited, which was a long name for a little engine so his friends just called him Ivor..." ...And that was how it began, back in 1959: one of Oliver Postgate's most loved creations, Ivor the Engine. It was a series about the Welsh adventures of a little green railway engine and his many friends. But Ivor wasn't an ordinary steam engine. He pretty much wished he was a person and ended up doing things like singing in a choir and swimming in the sea! One season of six, 10 minute, Black and White films was made for and screened by Associated-Red.

Bleak House

Bleak House is the first BBC adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel of the same name. It was adapted by Constance Cox as an eleven-part series of half-hour episodes first transmitted from 16 October 1959. It stars Andrew Cruickshank in the role of John Jarndyce, Diana Fairfax as Esther Summerson and Colin Jeavons as Richard Carstone. The complete series still exists.

Spycatcher

Based on the real-life activities of Dutch counterintelligence officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Oreste Pinto, who specialised in the interrogation of suspected spies during World War II and had later published his memoirs under the title Spy Catcher. Each episode showed Pinto questioning refugees to England from Nazi-dominated Europe, and eventually exposing them as enemy agents.

Science Is News

Drumbeat

Drumbeat was a BBC television series that aired every Saturday from 4 April to 29 August 1959. It was the BBC's answer and rival to ITV's TV series Oh Boy!, though as the latter finished on 30 May, for most of its run Drumbeat had no comparable competition.

Blue Peter

A fun-packed and informative magazine show for younger viewers with information and reports from around the world.