Moira Armstrong

Directing

Moira Armstrong

Born

1930-01-01 (96)

Place of birth

Crieff, Perthshire, Scotland, UK

Known for

Directing

Credits

26 titles

Born in Crieff in 1930 and raised in north-east Scotland, Moira Armstrong is a Scottish television director whose career has expanded over nearly fifty years. Her credits include episodes of Armchair Thriller (based on the novel Quiet as a Nun), The Onedin Line, Lark Rise to Candleford, Where the Heart Is, The Bill, Midsomer Murders, Something in Disguise, The Wednesday Play, and Adam Adamant Lives!, the biographical serial Freud (1984) as well as the television film The Countess Alice (1992). She also directed Sunset Song, the 1971 adaptation for television of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's novel, notable not only for being the first drama to be recorded in colour by BBC Scotland but also featuri…

Known for

Series credits

Behind the camera

Clay, Smeddum and Greenden poster
7.0

Trilogy of one-act plays based on short stories by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. ‘Clay’ is the story of a men who neglects his wife in favour of his land. ‘Smeddum’ is the story of a matriarch’s attempt to control her brood. ‘Greenden’ is the story of a city woman moving to the country with her husband.

Clay, Smeddum and Greenden

1976

After the Solo poster
NR

"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?

After the Solo

1975

The Countess Alice poster
10.0

A reporter is assigned a then-and-now piece on a 50-year old photospread of three society beauties. One of them, Lady Alice Munroe, now the widowed Grafin von Holzendorf, has agreed to be interviewed.

The Countess Alice

1993

Quiet as a Nun poster
8.0

A reporter is asked to look into the mysterious death of a nun who died in a locked room at a convent. She had recently inherited a fortune. The reporter next leans off an apparition that haunts the hallways at night and seems to portend death. Flashlight in hand, she goes off in search of the "Black Nun."

Quiet as a Nun

1978

Breakout poster
6.7

A pair of scientists investigate a mysterious death.

Breakout

1997

Three Steps to Hendon poster
NR

The lead singer of a defunct 70s rock band is found murdered with a whisky bottle stuffed down his throat

Three Steps to Hendon

2005

Letting the Birds Go Free poster
NR

A farm family catch a young man stealing eggs from their barn. Seemingly homeless, the man stays with them. Daughter Grace is disgusted by the stranger at first. The relationship between the outsider and the family changes course.

Letting the Birds Go Free

1983

A Village Affair poster
5.0

An apparently happy wife in an English village has a relationship with a local aristocrat's daughter.

A Village Affair

1995

No Visible Scar poster
NR

A wounded member of a rebel terrorist organisation is tended by an English nurse. She is imprisoned, interrogated, then released to face another form of interrogation.

No Visible Scar

1981

C.Q. poster
NR

Life changes dramatically for radio amateur Norman when he gets in touch with a round-the-world yachtsman who introduces him to a different life - and a taste of fame.

C.Q.

1984

No artwork available
NR

A young coal miner's daughter enters the servility of a deeply religious and lonely old aristocratic woman in regional England during the late 1920s, forming a temporary bond of mutual social dependency.

Abide with Me

1976

The Long Bank Holiday poster
8.0

A spate of computer thefts from government offices, a possible suicide under the wheels of a high-speed train, an absconded lifer on the loose, and a grisly trove of human bones in a garden all conspire to keep Davies on the job during a long Easter weekend.

The Long Bank Holiday

2004

How Many Miles to Babylon? poster
NR

Wealthy Alexander Moore and working-class Jerry Crowe are childhood friends and in 1914 find themselves in the same Army unit - Alex as an officer and Jerry as a private. They still remain close, however, until Jerry is court-martialed for desertion, and Alex is put in charge of the firing squad.

How Many Miles to Babylon?

1982

Minor Complications poster
NR

Kay Gilbert goes into hospital for a minor operation which goes badly wrong. Based on an actual case, this play tells the story of her fight for compensation.

Minor Complications

1980

A Christmas Carol poster
6.7

Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption.

A Christmas Carol

1977

No artwork available
NR

God Speed Co-operation is a British television movie that was released on September 26, 1982. It was directed by Moira Armstrong and written by Sheila MacLeod

God Speed Co-operation

1982

Fairies poster
10.0

'I'd stake my reputation on it. These photographs are not faked.' But how could photographs, taken on a simple camera by two Yorkshire village girls, have momentous implications for man's understanding of the world?

Fairies

1978

For the Whales poster
8.0

The maker of an anti-whaling video finds himself under pressure from all sides because of Japanese business interests.

For the Whales

1976

The Mountain and the Molehill poster
NR

It is May 1944, two weeks before D-day. Britain stands poised for the long-awaited invasion of France - thousands of troops wait anxiously for the orders to come for embarkation. MI5 is horrified to discover the top-secret codewords for the invasion suddenly appearing as clues in the Daily Telegraph crossword. Two agents are immediately dispatched to confront the culprit, the headmaster of a boys' school in southern England.

The Mountain and the Molehill

1989

The Bevellers poster
NR

An ambitious apprentice glassmaker clashes with his new colleagues in a Glasgow workshop.

The Bevellers

1974

A Safe House poster
NR

In the aftermath of the Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings, a large number of people of Irish descent were rounded up for questioning by the police in London. Most were subsequently released. But for the Maguire family, 3 December 1974 was the start of a nightmare that is only now ending.

A Safe House

1990

No artwork available
NR

An everyday story of Alternative Society folk, beginning in 1969. It traced the developing relationship of three people from then until present 1978. Frank, a radical social worker just out of mental hospital after a nervous breakdown, was being nursed back to health by Linda, a hairdresser, in the absence of his 'girl friend. Joanna, on a social work project. By the second scene. Frank and Linda were married with a baby daughter, and Frank had opted for a cushy teaching job in a middle class school and even betrayed his Left-wing idealism to the point of joining the Labour Party.

We Never Do What They Want

1978

To the Camp and Back poster
NR

Christine, grieving for her fiancé who was shot down by the German Luftwaffe during the war, is persuaded by her cousin to meet a German prisoner-of-war—a Luftwaffe pilot.

To the Camp and Back

1983

No artwork available
NR

An evening's drinking by rugby players after a match gets out of hand.

One of the Boys

1978

The Dunroamin' Rising poster
NR

Sixty years ago Ian Sinclair was a revolutionary leader. Today he is in an old folks' home, but has not lost his sense of humour, or his appetite for the struggle. In protest at the proposed closure of the home, the old socialist firebrand embarks upon a hunger strike that ends up having wide-range repercussions.

The Dunroamin' Rising

1988