
Acting
Brian Phelan
Born 1934-12-02 · Dublin, Ireland
Brian Phelan was an Irish playwright, screenwriter and former actor.
Acting credits
7.6An indolent aristocrat gets more than he bargained for when he hires a competent but silently devious manservant.
The Servant
1963
6.5Defiant's crew is part of a fleet-wide movement to present a petition of grievances to the Admiralty. Violence must be no part of it. The continual sadism of Defiant's first officer makes this difficult, and when the captain is disabled, the chance for violence increases.
H.M.S. Defiant
1962
6.3In 1870, a Jamaican colonial family sends its children to Britain for proper schooling, but their ship is taken over by pirates, who become fond of the kids.
A High Wind in Jamaica
1965
6.4Stephen is a professor at Oxford University who is caught in a rut and feels trapped by his life in both academia and marriage. One of his students, William, is engaged to the beautiful Anna, and Stephen becomes enamored of the younger woman. These three people become linked together by a horrible car crash, with flashbacks providing details into the lives of each person and their connection to the others in this brooding English drama.
Accident
1967
6.6Reggie and Dot are a young South London couple who get married before they really get to know each other. After the marriage, they quickly begin to drift apart. Dot seems content to pursue her own interests, until Reggie meets Pete, a fellow cyclist, and begins to explore his own identity.
The Leather Boys
1964
6.4When a robbery at a racetrack goes wrong ex-con Johnny Bannion is caught and sent back to prison. He won't tell the rest of the gang where he has stashed the loot leading to violent consequences.
The Criminal
1960
6.3The parallel stories of two couples in crises and their connections to a drowned woman found in a river.
Four in the Morning
1965
6.0Back in London after serving time, an ex-convict learns that his wife is not willing to return to him. He plans to crack a safe at a club.
Jackpot
1960
7.3In the business end of a kitchen, a polyglot staff strives to cope with a superhuman task. A microcosm of the world, the kitchen looms around and encloses its workers; they include Peter, the German cook, who is in love with waitress Monica, and constantly asks her to leave her husband. The pressure of the day becomes unendurable, and when Peter realises that Monica does not mean to divorce her husband his grief and pain cause him to run berserk!
The Kitchen
1961
6.0Liv, a mercenary, is drawn into a mission to rescue a kidnapped politician. He travels to the volatile Mideast and is assisted by Laura, a translator, where their lives are imperiled.
Honeybaby, Honeybaby
1974
7.0A white boy and a black Jamaican girl have a day out in a city where racial hostility prevails.
Jemima + Johnny
1966
7.0Kate, a young girl under psychiatric examination, suffers from a lack of confidence, self-esteem and self-control – telling of the “bad Kate” who commits immoral acts. Could the hypocrisy, selfishness and weakness of those around her have led to this state of mind or can Kate simply be diagnosed and dismissed as a schizophrenic?
In Two Minds
1967
Three middle-aged Irish bachelors - Shemm, Cloggy and Ambrose - put drinks before sex. Even Mrs Ryder can't shatter their celibacy.
The Virgins
1974
A combination of story, melodrama and ballet
The Soldier's Tale
1964
Behind the camera
5.8The horse Gay Future is at the centre of an Irish betting syndicate in 1974 which saw trainer Antony Collins present a poor performing horse at his stables. The betting stakes were subsequently raised, before the real horse was entered in the race.
Murphy's Stroke
1980
6.8How the Anglo-Irish Treaty between the unrecognised Irish Republic, represented by Michael Collins, and the British government was concluded after high-stakes negotiations in 1921.
The Treaty
1991
4.4Marina Pinares, the wife of the president of a South American country, insists on being his vice-presidential running mate in the next election. She's no stranger to assassination to get what she wants, so some suspect she'll kill her own husband after the election to become president. In a series of flashbacks we see her rise to power: a party girl willing to sacrifice a friend's virtue to gain favor; the lover of a soldier she later tortures; the mistress of the military man she soon marries.
Little Mother
1973
Anna Carteret and David Suchet (TV's Hercule Poirot) star in Being Normal. The pair play a British couple who must come to terms with their son's physical handicap. "Denial" is the operative word in the early scenes, leading to several tense confrontations.
Being Normal
1983
7.0A Government Department with data on us all in its computers is not functioning quite as its ex-Head intended. Frank Strange sets out to clear his own name and finds he is investigating a murder.
In the Secret State
1985
8.0What is it that Edgar Garrett sees, or thinks he sees, on his farm one morning in the mists of early spring? Whatever it is, one thing is certain. Life will never be the same again for him and his family.
The Russian Soldier
1986
6.0Liv, a mercenary, is drawn into a mission to rescue a kidnapped politician. He travels to the volatile Mideast and is assisted by Laura, a translator, where their lives are imperiled.
Honeybaby, Honeybaby
1974
7.8In this unusual feature, Manika is a girl born in a Catholic family in a south Indian fishing village is convinced that she has recently had a former life as a Brahman wife in Nepal. Her parish priest, Father Daniel is under orders to convince her otherwise, as reincarnation does not accord with official Catholic doctrine. Instead, he agrees to journey with her to the site of her dreams of a previous life. Once there, they discover that all is just as she had dreamed it, and her former husband has remarried despite promising not to. Her arrival on the scene does not disturb the man, but it really upsets his new wife, who departs with her baby. Manika decides that it helps no one for her to remain there in Nepal, and returns to her home in the south. However, all this has caused a genuine crisis of faith for the priest who, witnessing all this, has had to grapple with some irreconcilable issues.
Manika, the Girl Who Lived Twice
1989
9.0Alan and Sylvia fall in love and Alan gains a renewed sense of purpose. He begins to hope for an eventual release on licence. However both he and Sylvia have to face the fact that, for the foreseeable future, they cannot enjoy any physical intimacy. They decide to treat their affair as a long Victorian courtship.
Knockback: 2
1985
6.5Chronicle of the shooting down of a Korean passenger plane by Soviet air force on 1st September 1983. Over 280 people died in this incident.
Tailspin: Behind the Korean Airliner Tragedy
1989
7.5In 1965, at the age of 25, Alan Ackland is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a business associate. In 1971, Sylvia Barker, lonely and depressed after a failed marriage and with two young children to bring up alone, seeks a new direction in her life and applies to become a voluntary prison visitor. Several years later their paths cross.
Knockback: 1
1985
NRMembers of a shadowy group demonstrate techniques of enhanced Interrogation of terrorist suspects. However, the demonstration causes consternation that such techniques were approved.
Article Five
1975
Eames is a middle aged man, with a boring, routine job. His life changes when he meets a young girl and a painter. This rekindles his youthful artistic leanings, which he blames his father for stopping.
You've Made Your Bed - Now Lie in It
1969
NREpisode of The Frighteners: A tired and worried man fails to see his reflection in a train window. He comes to the conclusion that he is being ignored in life because he is disappearing from the world.
The Disappearing Man
1972