Latest reviews

Adaptation of arguably Agatha Christie's most famous character Detective Hercule Poirot

British sketch comedy show that followed hot on the heels of Not The Nine O'Clock News which also featured the programme's stars, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones.

The instantly recognisable, deceptively benign visage of arguably the world's greatest director of cinematic suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, side-stepped deftly to the smaller screen of US television and welcomed viewers to a polished series of stories...

Set in the late 19th Century when the Wild West was no longer so wild and the 'frontier' had been pushed back almost as far as it would go, Alias Smith and Jones was one of US television's last great flirtations with the Cowboy genre...

Created by TV comedy legends Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft, who were responsible for some of the longest running sitcoms on British television, 'Allo 'Allo! was a wartime comedy created as a parody of Secret Army.

Animated series of stories set round the ancient city of Baghdad which is under the rule of the evil Sultan Bakaar, who has usurped the throne from the rightful inheritance of the young Prince Turham

British critics have called 'All In The Family' "a reworked, far less provocative version" of the show it was based on, BBC's 'Till Death Us Do Part'...

One of Granada Television's most successful series of all time, All Our Yesterdays began in 1960 and was presented by noted foreign correspondent James Cameron who linked together edited version of two 1930s cinema newsreels from the same week twenty-five years ago.

Conrad Phillips starred as the legendary hero from the Swiss settlement of Berglan in Uri, who became a folk hero very much in the Robin Hood mode.

Series about a magazine agony aunt who also runs her own radio phone-in and who, like Dr Frazier Crane many years later, could solve everyone's problems except her own

By the time the final story of the first series was broadcast, Armchair Thriller had built up quite a following, resulting in the first episode of 'The Limbo Connection', which starred James Bolam as a man in search of his missing wife, achieving an audience in excess of 17 million viewers.

BAFTA-nominated comedy After Henry followed the comfortable middle-class lives of three women; except that, for one of them, life wasn't all that comfortable...

Pamela Gems' first play for ITV is about two sisters, May Vine (Vanda Godsell), Louie Robbins and the man who becomes their lodger.

Early British television series fronted by Richard Dimbleby who, with an outside film camera crew, would visit some of the more interesting and unusual parts of the capitol city and the people around them. For the first time the TV cameras could introduce viewers to London's life, customs and traditions.

A series of 12 unconnected half-hour sitcoms, all written by different writers, created as a starring vehicle for Maureen Lipman

When Alun Owen's play 'After the Funeral' was read by Sydney Newman, head of drama for ABC Television, and William Kotcheff, the television director, they were so taken by his conception of Wales and the Welsh, they decided to see for themselves.

Although slammed by the critics The Abbott and Costello Show became a firm favourite with the viewing audience as the comic twosome brought to the small screen the same brand of slapstick humour that had pulled in theatre patrons for years.

The publicity for this ITC show read "travel the world with The Adventurer, in a series of vital, new and dynamic situations in which every turn brings the zing of danger, drama and originality". Most viewers ended up wishing the hero of this particular television outing had stayed at home.

Sitcom following the adventures of a retired Army Brigadier, Garnet Wellington-Bull, a widowed career soldier who, now retired, is trying to come to terms with life on civvy street but not finding it very easy.

Australian series filmed in colour but only available to the UK viewing public of 1957 in black and white, The Adventures of Long John Silver was based very loosely on Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 novel Treasure Island.

Richard Greene starred as the legendary 12th century outlaw who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. ITV's first adventure series managed to maintain a high standard of writing, employing blacklisted Hollywood writers who wrote under various aliases.

Animated tales from the same stable that produced Captain Pugwash

Classic US television series shot at a rapid rate with four episodes being turned out every ten days at a cost of $15,000 each.

According to Dora, subtitled A Bryan's Eye View on the World, was a starring vehicle for Southport born actress/comedienne Dora Bryan who had made her showbiz debut as a child in pantomime in Manchester.

An oddity - a British made sitcom from the 1950s starring a US actress so it could be sold to America.

Another in the series of ITC's 'Adventures Of...' historicals. Sir Lancelot was lavishly filmed, being the first British series to be shot in colour with a view to the American market.

Portland Bill is the keeper of the Trinity House lighthouse, on Guillermot Rock in a children's stop-motion animated series.

Anglo-Canadian sitcom about Annie Brennan, the fog-horn voiced captain of the Narcissus, a tugboat based in a harbour on the Pacific North West of America.

TV series based on one of Hollywood's biggest stars of the 1920s, Rin Tin Tin was one of two survivor of an Apache assault on a wagon train, a scenario that wasn't a million miles from the dog's true origins.

Australian series about a widowed father travelling the Southern Pacific seas with his two sons, daughter and a deckhand.