Jan Francis

Acting

Jan Francis

Born

1947-08-05 (79)

Place of birth

Westminster, London, England, UK

Known for

Acting

Credits

54 titles

Known for

Play for Today poster
6.6

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.

Play for Today

1970

Heartbeat poster
7.1

Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines.

Heartbeat

1992

Minder poster
7.2

Roguish comedy drama following the misadventures of small-time crook Arthur Daley.

Minder

1979

BBC Play of the Month poster
5.2

A BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983.

BBC Play of the Month

1965

ITV Playhouse poster
7.0

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.

ITV Playhouse

1967

Tales of the Unexpected poster
6.8

A British television anthology of stories, often with sinister and wryly comedic undertones, and a twist at the end. With early episodes written and presented by Roald Dahl, the series featured a plethora of big name guest stars.

Tales of the Unexpected

1979

Film credits

1970s · 8 titles

Dracula poster
6.4

In 1913, charming, seductive, and sinister Count Dracula travels to England seeking an immortal bride.

Dracula

1979

Roger of the Raj poster
8.0

On the eve of the Great War Roger Bartlesham's aristocratic parents are firm believers in the Empire though Roger, encouraged by socialist Latin teacher Mr Hopper,dreams of equality and opening a tea shop with his sweet-heart Miranda. After a sojourn in India where various officers shoot themselves to atone for breaches in etiquette Roger gets caught up in Hopper's attempt to bring the Russian revolution to England but is rescued from the chaos by Miranda in time for them to pursue their dream.

Roger of the Raj

1979

The Lonely Man's Lover poster
NR

Poet Daniel Tasker moves to a small Yorkshire village, where he perturbs and disturbs the locals, except for Lizzie, who has feelings awakened in her that change her life.

The Lonely Man's Lover

1974

Give Us a Kiss, Christabel poster
NR

Casual labour appeals to Wilfred, and the street market is a friendly home until he meets the beautiful Christabel. Her haughty dismissal drives him to amazing feats. He'll do anything for a kiss.

Give Us a Kiss, Christabel

1977

No artwork available
NR

A play about a young man's experiences in his first job and in becoming a member of the Union.

Trade Unions: Seven Days that Shook Young Jim

1976

No artwork available
NR

Henry Batley, a bored young journalist in a small town is attracted to both Christie Davenport and her sister Sophie, whilst younger sister Tina is determined to make him hers.

The Four Beauties

1973

Practical Experience poster
NR

'I'm unusual. I really want to be an architect. Always have done. Always wanted to build fine buildings and fine cities where people can work and eat and sleep and be happy. But the rules of the game say before you can do that you've got to start a firm. Employ people. Turn it into a career. I like architecture. I hate careers. The minute you make it a career you build a ladder and people want to climb it. Sometimes they stand on your fingers. It's hard to draw with flattened fingers. Spoils your draughtsmanship.'

Practical Experience

1976

Casting the Runes poster
7.0

The producer of an investigative television programme which is critical of an occultist finds out that he has a curse put on her.

Casting the Runes

1979

Series credits

Play for Today poster
6.6

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.

Play for Today

1970

Heartbeat poster
7.1

Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines.

Heartbeat

1992

Minder poster
7.2

Roguish comedy drama following the misadventures of small-time crook Arthur Daley.

Minder

1979

BBC Play of the Month poster
5.2

A BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983.

BBC Play of the Month

1965

BBC Play of the Month poster
5.2

A BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983.

BBC Play of the Month

1965

ITV Playhouse poster
7.0

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.

ITV Playhouse

1967

Tales of the Unexpected poster
6.8

A British television anthology of stories, often with sinister and wryly comedic undertones, and a twist at the end. With early episodes written and presented by Roald Dahl, the series featured a plethora of big name guest stars.

Tales of the Unexpected

1979

New Tricks poster
7.3

New Tricks is a British comedy-drama that follows the work of the fictional Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad of the Metropolitan Police Service. Originally led by Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman, it is made up of retired police officers who have been recruited to reinvestigate unsolved crimes.

New Tricks

2004

Playhouse poster
7.0

A one-hour anthology television series of one-off contemporary and classic dramas produced by the BBC.

Playhouse

1974

Thirty-Minute Theatre poster
4.2

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.

Thirty-Minute Theatre

1965

Unforgotten poster
7.6

London police detectives Cassie Stuart and Sunny Khan investigate historic cold cases involving missing persons, murder and long-hidden secrets.

Unforgotten

2015

No artwork available
4.1

Pebble Mill was a re-launched version of the 1970s daily chat show Pebble Mill (also known as Pebble Mill At One for a while) which aired on BBC1 in the United Kingdom. The series premiered on October 14, 1991. The show was a mixture of celebrity guests and music. Alan Titchmarsh was a presenter on the show throughout it's complete run. Other presenters included Judi Spiers, Gloria Hunniford and Ross King.

Pebble Mill

1991

Bad Girls poster
7.6

Bad Girls is a British television drama series that was broadcast on ITV from 1 June 1999 to 20 December 2006 and starred Simone Lahbib, Mandana Jones, Debra Stephenson, Linda Henry, Jack Ellis and many more throughout the eight-year run. The series was broadcast in 17 countries and was produced by Shed Productions, the company which later produced Footballers' Wives and Waterloo Road. It is set in the fictional women's prison of Larkhall, and features a mixture of serious and light storylines focusing on the prisoners and staff of G Wing. From 2010, the UK broadcast rights were bought by CBS Drama, and is repeated regularly – as of September 2012, the channel is re-running the series again in a late-night time slot.

Bad Girls

1999

Secret Army poster
7.8

World War II drama about covert organisation Lifeline helping allied airmen escape after being shot down in occupied Europe, working with the Resistance and hiding from the Gestapo.

Secret Army

1977

Thriller poster
7.0

Thriller is a British television series, originally broadcast in the UK from 1973 to 1976. It is an anthology series: each episode has a self-contained story and its own cast. As the title suggests, each story is a thriller of some variety, from tales of the supernatural to down-to-earth whodunits.

Thriller

1973

Churchill's People poster
5.0

Churchill's People is a British anthology series based on A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill's four-volume history of Britain and its former colonies. 26 episodes were produced by the BBC and initially broadcast from 30 December 1974 to 23 June 1975.

Churchill's People

1974

Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense poster
6.5

A short-lived anthology television series from Hammer Studios. Though similar in format to the 1980 series Hammer House of Horror, the Mystery and Suspense series had feature-length episodes, usually running around 70 minutes without commercials. Co-produced by Hammer Studios with 20th Century Fox Television, it is known in the United States as Fox Mystery Theater. Unlike 1980's Hammer House of Horror, all episodes feature American actors as either the leads or in key roles. It first broadcast in the UK on ITV in 1984, though was not simulcast and was shown in different timeslots throughout the various regions.

Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense

1984

Target poster
7.0

A crime drama set in Southampton following a team of detectives and the cases they solve.

Target

1977

The Duchess of Duke Street poster
8.0

In Victorian London, Louisa Leyton works her way up from servant to renowned cook to proprietress of the upper-class Bentinck Hotel in Duke Street, St James's.

The Duchess of Duke Street

1976

Mistresses poster
5.7

Follows the lives of four female friends and their involvement in an array of marital and extramarital relationships.

Mistresses

2008

Fall of Eagles poster
7.0

"Fall of Eagles" is a 13-part British television drama aired by the BBC in 1974. The series portrays historical events from 1848 to 1918, dealing with the collapse of the ruling dynasties of Austria-Hungary (the Habsburgs), Germany (the Hohenzollerns) and Russia (the Romanovs).

Fall of Eagles

1974

No artwork available
7.0

A series of anthologies highlighting the initial projects of directors venturing into television drama filmmaking.

Premiere

1977

Stay Lucky poster
7.0

Drama about a small-time gangster Thomas Gynn (Dennis Waterman) from London who discovers a new life up north in Yorkshire. Helping widowed, self-sufficient businesswoman Sally Hardcastle (Jan Francis) when her car breaks down on the motorway, Thomas reluctantly accepts an offer of a lift to Leeds. Over the coming months, the two become involved in a series of misadventures that soon find them being drawn closer together.

Stay Lucky

1989

Village Hall poster
8.0

Village Hall is an anthology drama series produced by Granada between 1974–75. It is entirely set in a village hall, with each episode highlighting a different use to which the space is put by locals.

Village Hall

1974

Just Good Friends poster
6.6

A bittersweet sitcom about a couple who meet again five years after he jilted her at the altar.

Just Good Friends

1983

Twisted Tales poster
7.7

Twisted Tales is a dark and stylish comedy drama series. With intense scripts written by a mix of established writers and upcoming talent, each story is a self-contained episode with a mysterious twist. The tales set out to spook the brain and tickle the funny bone, so be prepared to expect the unexpected. The series is very closely related to Spine Chillers, an earlier BBC Three series. In effect, Twisted Tales is a rebranded second series of the earlier successful production.

Twisted Tales

2005

Next of Kin poster
6.4

Whip-smart general practitioner Dr. Mona Harcourt lives in London with her political lobbyist husband Guy and her family. When a bomb goes off in London on the same day that her brother, Dr. Kareem Shirani, is abducted in Pakistan, Mona's charmed life is shaken to its core.

Next of Kin

2018

Country Matters poster
4.6

An anthology series adapted from plays and short stories by A.E Coppard and H.E. Bates, depicting English country life and rural romance at the turn of the 20th-century. It presents unsentimental stories of human relationships and raw emotions – heartfelt passions, crippling frustrations, unspoken love and destructive jealousy.

Country Matters

1972

Raffles poster
8.4

Raffles was a 1977 television adaptation of the A. J. Raffles stories by Ernest William Hornung. The series was produced by Yorkshire Television and written by Philip Mackie. The episodes were largely faithful adaptations of the stories in the books, though occasionally two stories would be merged to create one. In Victorian-era London, gentleman thief A. J. Raffles, a renowned cricketer, and his friend, the eager but naive Bunny Manders, test their skills in relieving the wealthy of their valuables whilst avoiding detection, especially from the persistent Inspector Mackenzie.

Raffles

1977

Ripping Yarns poster
7.7

A British television comedy series, written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. Following an initial pilot episode in January 1976, it ran for two subsequent series of five and three episodes in October 1977 and October 1979 respectively. Each episode had a different setting and characters, looking at a different aspect of British culture and parodying pre-World War II literature aimed at schoolboys.

Ripping Yarns

1976

No artwork available
7.0

After surviving a series of attempts on his life, successful businessman Lew Burnett decides to remain 'dead' after the most recent one so he can go undercover and find out which of his close friends and business associates want him dead.

The Hanged Man

1975

No artwork available
7.0

A young man on a council estate becomes suspicious of his mother's employer and, with help from a friend and an Inland Revenue investigator, starts a tax fraud investigation, using the nickname 'Ghostbusters' ror their undercover work.

The Ghostbusters of East Finchley

1995

Doctor in Charge poster
6.0

Doctor in Charge is a British television comedy series based on a set of books by Richard Gordon about the misadventures of a group of doctors. The series follows directly from its predecessor Doctor at Large, and was produced by London Weekend Television in 1972-73. Writers for the Doctor in Charge episodes were David Askey, Graham Chapman, Graeme Garden, George Layton, Jonathan Lynn, Bernard McKenna, Bill Oddie, Phil Redmond and Gail Renard.

Doctor in Charge

1972

The Alan Clark Diaries poster
7.3

The Alan Clark Diaries is a television serial dramatising the colourful diaries of controversial British Conservative politician Alan Clark. The six-episode series was transmissioned from 15 January to 19 February 2004 on BBC Four.

The Alan Clark Diaries

2004

No artwork available
10.0

Doctor Otter is a stop-motion animated series produced by Ealing Animation and Cosgrove Hall. It was shown on CBeebies during 2001. There were 3 seasons in all.

Doctor Otter

2001

I Want My Wife Back poster
4.7

Murray is a nice guy. Everyone says so. So no-one is more surprised than Murray when, on her 40th birthday, his wife walks out on him. So begins Murray's quest to discover what went wrong and how to win her back.

I Want My Wife Back

2016

The Good Companions poster
9.0

Discontent with his home, his work and his football team, Jess Oakroyd tears up his insurance card and disappears into the night. Intent on going to Nuneaton, he instead finds himself on the ragged edges of showbusiness. We share with him the trials and tribulations of the Good Companions as they tour seaside towns, industrial cities and rural backwaters in their search for success and stardom.

The Good Companions

1980

Anne of Green Gables poster
NR

Anne Shirley, an orphan, is fostered by farmer Matthew Cuthbert and his sister Marilla, who were expecting a boy to be sent them to help with their farm work. They accept Anne, who quickly endears herself to them and to the local villagers.

Anne of Green Gables

1972

The Long Chase poster
10.0

A father-son birdwatching outing becomes a widespread mystery when teenage John Corby—after coming to the aid of neighbour Susan Fraser—finds that his father Tom has vanished.

The Long Chase

1972

No artwork available
NR

Frank Clancy goes from penniless working-class idealist in the 1930s to superstar journalist and editor in the London of the swinging '60s — but at what cost to his integrity?

Looking for Clancy

1975