Leonard Rossiter

A celebration of the actor's life and career, featuring contributions from friends, co-stars and fans including Don Warrington, Sue Nicholls and Mark Lester. The programme also includes a never-before-seen interview with Rossiter himself, and brings new perspectives on one of Britain's best-loved actors, from his upbringing in Liverpool to his remarkable, late-blossoming TV career.

Tribute to the much-loved character actor.

Comedy - Vincent Van Gogh comes back to life after being the recipient of a magic potion. He finds that his work has become quite valuable, and begins stealing his works. At the same time, he has a hard time getting anyone to believe he's really Van Gogh. - David Abbott, Lisa Waltz, Lou Wagner

A compilation of the many characters played by Leonard Rossiter.

A wily publisher of arts magazines tries to cope with ever-growing financial problems - and also his formidable German mother.

A British diplomat to a West Indian island nation finds his idyllic existence thrown into chaos when a large American drilling company finds a huge source of natural mineral water there.

The reign of England's King John is threatened by Philip of France who demands that John's nephew Arthur be placed on the throne. Pragmatic and decisive, King John moves to plactate the French, but there are others who seek disputre his authority.

A middle-aged man is feeling the strain of looking after his elderly grandfather, who is demanding and needs a lot of medical treatment. Then a neighbour suggests a painless way to be rid of him. This black comedy is set in the future, where euthanasia is lawful and increasingly common, but it should still, ideally, be voluntary.

The Pink Panther diamond is stolen once again from Lugash and the authorities call in Chief Inspector Clouseau from France. His plane disappears en-route. This time, famous French TV reporter Marie Jouvet sets out to solve the mystery and starts to interview everybody connected to Clouseau.

Britannia Hospital, an esteemed English institution, is marking its gala anniversary with a visit by the Queen Mother herself. But when investigative reporter Mick Travis arrives to cover the celebration, he finds the hospital under siege by striking workers, ruthless unions, violent demonstrators, racist aristocrats, an African cannibal dictator, and sinister human experiments.

"What's a lock-out, my son? A lock-out is engraved in the history of the class struggle. A lock-out is our Glencoe. It's where they try and drive a stake into our underbelly." A factory's workforce is dwindling as divisions between the workers and management widen.

Stingy landlord Rigsby manages to scam his lodgers John, an art student, and Philip, an African medical student, making both pay for a room they must share. However Rigsby's favorite lodger, Miss Jones, flirts with Philip rather than him, despite his pitiful attempts at seduction.

The incredibly true story of the legendary French entertainer Joseph Pujol, who performed impersonations with his self-described 'elastic anus' and a surfeit of wind.

The outrageous - and not entirely reliable - memoirs of Irish writer Frank Harris, sometime cowboy in the Old West, friend to the famous in the literary world, essayist and critic, and seducer of beautiful women.

A luxury liner carries Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany in a desperate fight for survival.

Charles Dreyfus, who has finally cracked over inspector Clouseau's antics, escapes from a mental institution and launches an elaborate plan to get rid of Clouseau once and for all.

A 'machinegunner' (West Country slang for a debt-collector) turns amateur sleuth, but finds himself in hot water with local criminals.

An Irish rogue uses his cunning and wit to work his way up the social classes of 18th century England, transforming himself from the humble Redmond Barry into the noble Barry Lyndon.

"The voice will make its effect. And it will, undoubtedly, be very touching. But, tell me: after his voice has broken, can you make anything of him then?" After the solo, after the chorus, after the applause?

Set in a cemetery, the film tells the story of a young man whom a blind man wrongly imagines to be black, and explores the nature of human prejudice.

One sixteenth-century clergyman's view breaks the Catholic Church apart.

A junk dealer is caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between a woman, her husband and his mistress when they sell a piece of their furniture.

A petty crook finds himself mistaken for a murderer and a secret agent.

Swinging playboy Grand Duke Nicholas Goduno, a direct descendent of the Romanov family who were overthrown in the Russian Revolution of 1917, learns that his family's crown jewels will be exhibited at a London museum and plots to steal them. To this end, he gathers a crew of beautiful but dangerous women, led by Bridget Rafferty, to assist in his plot against Popov, the Soviet functionary in charge of the exhibit.

Musical adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, a classic tale of an orphan who runs away from the workhouse and joins up with a group of boys headed by the Artful Dodger and trained to be pickpockets by master thief Fagin.

Cat burglar Henry Clarke and his accomplices the Moreaus attempt to steal diamonds from the chateau of millionaire Salinas.

Influenced by concerns about overpopulation, the counterculture of the 1960s and the societal effects of television, the play depicts a world of the future where a small elite control the media, keeping the lower classes docile by serving them an endless diet of lowest common denominator programmes and pornography. The play concentrates on an idea the programme controllers have for a new programme which will follow the trials and tribulations of a group of people left to fend for themselves on a remote island. In this respect, the play is often cited as having anticipated the craze for reality television.

Humanity finds a mysterious object buried beneath the lunar surface and sets off to find its origins with the help of HAL 9000, the world's most advanced super computer.

Margaret Ross is an impoverished old woman who lives alone in a seedy apartment and enjoys a rich fantasy life as an heiress. One day she discovers stolen money hidden by her son and believes her fantasy has come true.

British agent Bulldog Drummond is assigned to stop a master criminal who uses beautiful women to do his killings.

Following a nervous breakdown, Gwen takes up the job of head teacher in the small village of Haddaby. There she can benefit from the tranquillity and peace, enabling her to recover fully. But under the facade of idyllic country life she slowly unearths the frightening reality of village life in which the inhabitants are followers of a menacing satanic cult with the power to inflict indiscriminate evil and death if crossed.

The discovery of mysterious egg-shaped objects at the sites of a series of disasters lead people to believe that we are being attacked by alien beings, but it is revealed to be a conspiracy.

In Victorian England, a fortune now depends on which of two brothers outlives the other—or can be made to have seemed to do so.

Monsieur Feydeau has writer's block, and he needs a new play. But he takes an opportunity to observe the upper class of 1900 Paris - Monsieur Boniface with a domineering wife, and the next-door neglectful husband Henri with a beautiful but ignored wife Marcelle. Henri traces architectural anomalies (most ghost sounds are drains), and plans a night at the Hotel Paradiso; but this hotel is the assignation spot of Marcelle and Boniface. One wife, two husbands, a nephew, and the perky Boniface maid, all at this 'by the hour' hotel, and consummation of the affair is, to say the least, severely compromised (not the least by a police raid). All of this under Feydeau's eye, and his play is the 'success fou' of the next season.

When Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in 1942, the Allied POWs, mostly British but including a few Americans, were incarcerated in Changi prison. Among the American prisoners is Cpl. King, a wheeler-dealer who has managed to establish a pretty good life for himself in the camp. King soon forms a friendship with an upper-class British officer who is fascinated with King's enthusiastic approach to life.

Moorish ruler El Mansuh is determined to locate a massive bell made of gold known as the "Mother of Voices." Viking explorer Rolfe also becomes intent on finding the mythical treasure, and sails with his crew from Scandinavia to Africa to track it down. Reluctantly working together, El Mansuh and Rolfe, along with their men, embark on a quest for the prized object, but only one leader will be able to claim the bell as his own — if it even exists at all.

An English professor decides that there are too many useless people in the world and invents a gas that will kill them off. But first they'll at least have a good laugh.

A young Englishman dreams of escaping from his working class family and dead-end job as an undertaker's assistant. A number of indiscretions cause him to lie in order to avoid the penalties. His life turns into a mess and he has an opportunity to run away and leave it all behind.

In Northern England in the early 1960s, Frank Machin is mean, tough and ambitious enough to become an immediate star in the rugby league team run by local employer Weaver.

As Vic Brown vacillates between infatuation and disinterest for his co-worker Ingrid Rothwell, she finds out that she is pregnant and Vic has to reconcile how he thought his life would go with what life actually has in store for him.