Discover Top Posts Tagged with #itv playhouse

RIP Mike Hodges (29.7.1932 - 17.12.2022)

"A film is alive. You shouldn't stifle it. You should never over art-direct, over conceive, over research, or walk in with an exact idea of how things should be done."

#mike hodges #rip #death ment tw #film director #get carter #pulp #the terminal man #flash gordon #damien: omen ii #black rainbow #croupier #a prayer for the dying #I'll sleep when I'm dead #the tyrant king #itv playhouse #rumour #suspect #and so farewell to one of the last great british writer directors of his generation #Mike's filmography may be slender by comparison to many of his contemporaries #but for get carter alone he should be considered one of the greats #add in the much under appreciated Pulp and Black Rainbow (and yes Flash Gordon too)#and you have an artist of notable talent and style whose work (often interfered with by studios that couldn't accept his vision) stands #among the best british filmmaking of the era. his itv play Rumour‚ which was thankfully included on the Armchair Cinema boxset as a special #feature (it was in many ways a dry run for what Euston films were hoping to achieve with the subsequent series of one offs)#is one of the single dramas that has most thoroughly stuck in my mind years later and which has to be seen and experienced by anyone #interested in old tv. i wrote to mike as a kid and received a kind response and a signed photo which hung on my wall for many years #he was i believe in post production on a documentary film about his life and career and i hope that it was sufficiently completed to be #released soon. it seems a suitable tribute to a man who sat awkwardly within the cinema machine of big studios and shooting to instruction:#to end by telling his own story as he wanted to tell it

ITV Playhouse: Star Quality (1968) by Noël Coward

Featuring Glynis Johns, Robert Hardy, and a very beautiful haircut

#robert hardy #glynis johns #noel coward #itv playhouse #star quality #theatre #television #photos #60s

ITV Playhouse: Mr. Axelford's Angel (Yorkshire Television, 1974)

"I'm helplessly in love with you. Odd, isn't it? Love is like an illness. I'm sick at heart for you, Angel."

#Mr. Axelford's Angel #ITV Playhouse #Single play #Yorkshire Television #1974 #Peter whitbread #John frankau #Julia Foster #Michael Bryant #Lally bowers #Robert raglan #Jacqueline stanbury #Katy wild #donald sumpter #Matthew Guinness #Sally ducrow #Ruth seglow #Tariq yunus #Whitbread was first and foremost a stage actor who took odd jobs on TV to keep the coffers full; as a screenwriter he had only a handful #Of titles to his name (most notably a clutch of Emmerdale Farm episodes and the creation of well remembered children's series The Flockton #Flyer)‚ and yet he somehow hit paydirt with this freelance script for ITVs drama anthology series: Angel would go on to win rave reviews‚#Getting a repeat showing the following Valentines day‚ was nominated for two BAFTAs and won the emmy for best fiction programme 1974 #A considerable coup for a modest romantic comedy‚ filmed mostly on video tape on a couple of simple sets with a small cast. Bryant was one #Of the uks most versatile and talented character actors‚ tho he wasn't exactly a star‚ and Foster was popular but never quite broke out the #Way she should have. So why so much fuss for such average acorns? Hard to say. Not that this isn't a good play; it's very sweet‚ a classic #Culture clash romance in which working class secretary and stuffy titan of industry find themselves drawn together. But there isn't very #Much to set it apart from any other play from ITV‚ or indeed the BBC‚ in this era. These were the years of the single play‚ hundreds #Produced each year‚ and yet this is the one that for whatever reason grabbed the public consciousness. So it goes. It is rather sweet and #Both leads are very well suited to this particular brand of meet cute without taking the parts too far (he too cold and imperious‚ she too #Ditzy and free living). It's just a fairly simple story told well. Perhaps it was that simplicity that so appealed to the general public?

Michael Bryant as Stuart Lindsey in The Greeks and Their Gifts from 1972.

#michael bryant #stuart lindsey #the greeks and their gifts #itv playhouse #1972 #thank you @donutsandbagels

ITV Playhouse: The Nearly Man (Granada, 1974)

"I feel... panic, sometimes. It comes on at any time, there's no pattern to it. It's a mad feeling, it's absurd. I want to... run somewhere, or I just feel like shouting. I thought at first it was a touch of drinker's hysteria, what old Churchill - reverse of what he used to call 'black dog'. But it isn't. It's just the idiotic business of being me. Is it possible to go insane with frustration? I think it might be! Not that I - not that I feel any loss of reason; far from it, I suffer from this awful clarity of mind. I can see myself, very objectively. An ambitious man, and an able one. But also an uncommonly indulgent one, who has wasted a lot of time, and regrets it. Nagged by a moralist conscience - inherited, and mistakenly thought drowned in pleasures a long time ago. A man who wants to make up all that lost ground; to prove his flair, and his compassion. But he can't do it by his own abilities and his own determination - even if there are enough of these - because he has to be approved. Voted for. Which makes him dependent on the most capricious of factors: other people's opinions."