Sir John Clifford Mortimer CBE QC FRSL was an English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter, and author.
Mortimer was a prolific writer for the theatre, films (starting during World War II, when he wrote scripts for the Crown Film Unit), television and radio. He also wrote fiction and was a trial attorney for more than 30 years.
Horror · Mystery
In a mid-19th century Essex country house, a young governess for two children becomes convinced that the house and grounds are haunted by ghosts and that the children are being possessed.
7.51961
Mystery · Drama
A television anthology series hosted by Alfred Hitchcock featuring dramas, thrillers, and mysteries.
7.81955
Mystery · Thriller
A woman reports that her young daughter is missing, but there seems to be no evidence that she ever existed.
7.21965
Comedy · Drama
In 1930s fascist Italy, adolescent Luca just lost his mother. His father, a callous businessman, sends him to be taken care of by British expatriate Mary Wallace. Mary and her cultured friends - including artist Arabella, young widow Elsa, and archaeologist Georgie - keep a watchful eye over the boy. But the women's cultivated lives take a dramatic turn when Allied forces declare war on Mussolini.
6.41999
Drama
Agnostic Charles Ryder is seduced by the allure of the Flytes, a wealthy aristocratic family. Although he finds himself at odds with their strong Catholicism, his ties to the family deepen for the decades between the two world wars.
7.91981
Crime · Drama
An Englishman with a grudge against an insurance company for a disallowed claim fakes his own death and escapes to Spain, but is soon pursued by an insurance investigator.
6.71963
Drama · Romance
John and Mary meet in a singles bar, sleep together, and spend the next day getting to know each other.
5.91969
Adventure · Comedy
Adapted from the work of Miguel de Cervantes, this is the story of a hidalgo, fanatic for chivalry novels, who loses his sanity and believing to be a knight named Don Quixote de La Mancha, decides to go on imaginary adventures along with his friend, the simple farmer Sancho Panza, who becomes his squire. On their journeys, they rescue dames in distress in honorable acts and fight giants among other perils, with Don longing to be with the love of his life, lady Dulcinea, and Sancho waiting to be rewarded with an island where he's about to become a governor.
6.32000
Drama · Comedy
Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer. It stars Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an aging London barrister who defends any and all clients, and has been spun off into a series of short stories, novels, and radio programmes.
7.11975
News · Talk
This topical debate series based on Any Questions? typically features politicians from at least the three major political parties as well as other public figures who answer pre-selected questions put to them by a carefully selected audience.
5.91979
Adventure · Drama
Mark Conrad, a habitual drunk and troublemaker with a shady past, is expelled by Hong Kong police after one too many bar fights. He's sent to Macao on the Fa Tsan, a ferry owned by Captain Hart. Conrad's papers are out of order and Macao refuses him entry. Unable to go ashore, Conrad is a permanent passenger on the ferry with Hart, who detests him. It's all one long, lazy voyage for Conrad until one fateful trip when an encounter with a typhoon and pirates forces Conrad to choose between an aimless drifter's life and becoming a man again.
5.61959
Comedy · Drama
After nearly 40 years of waiting for his big chance, Wilfred Morgenhall is given the case of defending Herbert Fowle who is accused of murdering his wife. Despite Fowle's insistence of guilt, Moregenhall will not let go of the opportunity to plead his client as innocent and be a star in the courtroom.
6.61962
Horror · Mystery
In a mid-19th century Essex country house, a young governess for two children becomes convinced that the house and grounds are haunted by ghosts and that the children are being possessed.
7.51961
Mystery · Thriller
A woman reports that her young daughter is missing, but there seems to be no evidence that she ever existed.
7.21965
Comedy · Drama
In 1930s fascist Italy, adolescent Luca just lost his mother. His father, a callous businessman, sends him to be taken care of by British expatriate Mary Wallace. Mary and her cultured friends - including artist Arabella, young widow Elsa, and archaeologist Georgie - keep a watchful eye over the boy. But the women's cultivated lives take a dramatic turn when Allied forces declare war on Mussolini.
6.41999
Crime · Drama
An Englishman with a grudge against an insurance company for a disallowed claim fakes his own death and escapes to Spain, but is soon pursued by an insurance investigator.
6.71963
Drama · Romance
John and Mary meet in a singles bar, sleep together, and spend the next day getting to know each other.
5.91969
Adventure · Comedy
Adapted from the work of Miguel de Cervantes, this is the story of a hidalgo, fanatic for chivalry novels, who loses his sanity and believing to be a knight named Don Quixote de La Mancha, decides to go on imaginary adventures along with his friend, the simple farmer Sancho Panza, who becomes his squire. On their journeys, they rescue dames in distress in honorable acts and fight giants among other perils, with Don longing to be with the love of his life, lady Dulcinea, and Sancho waiting to be rewarded with an island where he's about to become a governor.
6.32000
Adventure · Drama
Mark Conrad, a habitual drunk and troublemaker with a shady past, is expelled by Hong Kong police after one too many bar fights. He's sent to Macao on the Fa Tsan, a ferry owned by Captain Hart. Conrad's papers are out of order and Macao refuses him entry. Unable to go ashore, Conrad is a permanent passenger on the ferry with Hart, who detests him. It's all one long, lazy voyage for Conrad until one fateful trip when an encounter with a typhoon and pirates forces Conrad to choose between an aimless drifter's life and becoming a man again.
5.61959
Comedy · Drama
After nearly 40 years of waiting for his big chance, Wilfred Morgenhall is given the case of defending Herbert Fowle who is accused of murdering his wife. Despite Fowle's insistence of guilt, Moregenhall will not let go of the opportunity to plead his client as innocent and be a star in the courtroom.
6.61962
Drama · Thriller
Committed pacifist Tom Jordan's decision to help former President Rivera escape a military coup is a simple act of mercy that takes him and his wife to the edge of despair. It turns them into outlaws and fugitives, hunted by a vicious South American regime; yet it could also bring them together in a way they have never been before.
6.21962
Crime · Drama
A bored Rumpole, living in Florida retirement, uses an inquiry from Phyllida as a pretext to re-establish himself back in chambers.
5.81980
Comedy
A young female designer is on the brink of an affair with a married male executive at the company where she works. The film tells the story of their illicit lunch hour rendezvous.
6.81962
Drama · Romance
This adaptation of Laurie Lee's autobiographical novel follows a young man's maturation in the country town of Gloucestershire near the end of World War I. As young Laurie comes of age under the protective eye of his mother, he learns to live with an eccentric collection of friends, neighbours, and relatives. As he enters his teenage years, Laurie discovers women.
5.61998
Mystery · Drama
A television anthology series hosted by Alfred Hitchcock featuring dramas, thrillers, and mysteries.
7.81955
Drama
Agnostic Charles Ryder is seduced by the allure of the Flytes, a wealthy aristocratic family. Although he finds himself at odds with their strong Catholicism, his ties to the family deepen for the decades between the two world wars.
7.91981
Drama · Comedy
Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer. It stars Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an aging London barrister who defends any and all clients, and has been spun off into a series of short stories, novels, and radio programmes.
7.11975
News · Talk
This topical debate series based on Any Questions? typically features politicians from at least the three major political parties as well as other public figures who answer pre-selected questions put to them by a carefully selected audience.
5.91979
Drama · Comedy
Ruth Patchett has it all: a large, warty body, a standard suburban home, a couple of unruly children, a dog, a cat and a guinea pig. She also has Bobbo, her unfaithful accountant husband who resents her very existence. Bobbo wants, and is wanted by, romance novelist Mary Fisher, who lives in a lighthouse by the sea. When Bobo leaves Ruth for Mary, Ruth decides that Mary doesn't know the first thing about love, and she's gonna teach her.
Drama
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.
6.61970
Drama
Long-running anthology program sponsored by Hallmark Cards. Beginning in 1951 and continuing into 2019, the series received 80 Emmy Awards, 24 Christopher Awards, 11 Peabody Awards, 9 Golden Globes, and 4 Humanitas Prizes. Early seasons were a weekly live drama, eventually transitioning to videotaped and then filmed productions broadcast as occasional specials.
8.81951
Mystery · Drama
Fortysomething wife and mother Molly Pargeter leads a stable but dull life in 1980s West London. She feels overweight and there is no passion in her relationship with her husband Hugh, who is secretly seeing another woman. For most of her life, Molly has found escape in detective novels and art books, especially on 15th-century Italian fresco painter Piero Della Francesca. Suddenly, in the small ads, she spots the details of a Tuscany villa to let, and after a viewing, she takes it for holiday.
7.21989
Action · War
Forever England gives John Mills his first leading role as Brown. Born after a brief affair between his mother and a naval officer, he joins the Royal Navy during the First World War. There his bravery and marksmanship keeps a German ship in port so a British ship can sink it. He becomes a hero, but at what cost?
6.21935
Drama
A successful lawyer struck with blindness in middle age continues his battles in the courtroom with the assistance of his family. As his son deals with bitter memories of their relationship, he also seeks his father's respect and love and in the process learns to love in return.
7.41984
Comedy
Suspecting that her husband might be having an affair, a wife plots to catch him in the act.
6.51968
Mystery · Drama
An aristocrat won't economize, then his rich brother in law is found murdered in the grounds of the aristocrat's house
6.41938
Comedy · Romance
A woman disguises herself in men's clothes in order to follow her husband to the wars.
5.61935
Mystery · Crime
An irreverent barrister chooses to defend a young Jamaican boy accused of stabbing on the same day his only son leaves for college in America.
8.01975
A dentist discovers his wife on the verge of having an affair with another man - a rival dentist
4.01972
Drama · Romance
Helen Lester is in love with a man she has known just 24 hours, a playboy who spent time in jail for passing bad checks. Though the man has promised to change, most of her strait-laced relatives are up in arms. But Clare Lester, Helen's grandmother, says the girl is free to join the man she loves. On one condition, that she listen to the story of a day in Clare's own life and of a man she tried to change.
5.01961
Drama · TV Movie
The true story of Unity Mitford who in the 1930s went to live in Germany and was friends with Adolf Hitler.
9.01981
Drama · Romance
Film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's debut novel, 'Mary'.
9.01987
Drama · TV Movie
Touching comedy about a high court judge, now retired to his English countryside home, who resolves to end years of suspicion about his wife's fidelity and the true paternity of their son.
8.01984
Comedy
These dueling one-act comedies highlight the work of playwright John Mortimer. In "The Dock Brief," an ill-prepared attorney is put to the test when his client confesses to killing his wife. In "What Shall We Tell Caroline?" a father with good intentions tries to protect his wife and daughter from the bad things in life.
8.01959
Drama
Attractive Julia Swinton is a middle-aged woman. Her life went normally and without big occurrences. But through the unexplained death of a familiar young lady in a houseboat and the sudden appearance of a strange stranger, unrest and threat now break into the seemingly so peaceful everyday life of the Swinton family. As it soon turns out, Mr. Swinton has a secret relationship with the lady on the boathouse...
10.01967
Drama
An anthology of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known.
4.21965
Documentary · Talk
The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.
5.61978
Drama
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.
6.01956
Drama
An anthology series of television plays which aired on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured.
5.21964
Drama
ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.
7.01967
Drama
A dramatisation of the life of famed playwright William Shakespeare from 1590 to 1607.
10.01978
Drama
Shades of Greene is a British television series based on short stories written by the author Graham Greene. The series began in 1975, with each hour-long episode featuring a dramatisation of one of Greene's stories, many of which dealt with issues such as guilt and the Catholic faith, as well as looking at life in general. Actors to have appeared in the series include John Gielgud, Leo McKern, Virginia McKenna, Paul Scofield, and Roy Kinnear. The series began on 9 September 1975 and ran for two seasons.
8.51975
Documentary
A monthly series of highly personal documentary films in which individuals are given a platform to discuss issues close to their heart.
7.01967
Drama
Leslie Titmuss returns to Rapstone village and will do whatever it takes to fit in with the highest levels of society. Married to his second wife, Jenny, he seeks to buy his first wife's country house. These plans are hampered by a real estate development that Leslie, due to his free market politics, can hardly oppose publicly.
8.01991
Drama
A one-hour anthology television series of one-off contemporary and classic dramas produced by the BBC.
7.01974
Drama
A BBC television series of forty-five-minute excerpts from stage plays running in London.
1957
Comedy
Under the Hammer is a 1993 British comedy-drama series written by John Mortimer that follows the romantic and intriguing lives of art experts working at a prestigious London auction house. The show stars Richard Wilson as Ben Glazier and Jan Francis as Maggie Perowne. The seven-episode series originally aired from late 1993 to early 1994, with storylines centring around art fraud, mysterious deaths tied to rare masterpieces, and even international trips to Moscow.
1994
