Acting

John Rapley

Born — Died

1935-04-18 — 2016-04-18

Place of birth

West Ham, Essex, England, UK

Known for

Acting

Credits

53 titles

John Rapley was born on 18 April 1935 in West Ham, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Elephant Man (1980), Jane and the Lost City (1987) and Goodnight Sweetheart (1993). He died on 18 April 2016 in Theydon Bois, Essex, England, UK.

Known for

Film credits

1980s · 6 titles

1970s · 7 titles

The Death of Glory poster
NR

Prevented by health reasons from joining the Army, a man lives out his military fantasies by leading a failing marching band. His life changes when he discovers his beloved ex-Army father has a secret.

The Death of Glory

1973

Cumbernauld HIT poster
NR

A James-Bond type fiction film about an evil woman's plans to 'hi-jack' the New Town of Cumbernauld. Sponsored by Cumbernauld Development Corporation, this film is an original take on the 'promotional' films produced for Scotland's New Towns during the 1970s.

Cumbernauld HIT

1977

Our Miss Fred poster
6.1

Danny La Rue stars in this 1970s drag comedy as Fred Wimbush, a Shakespearean actor who is drafted into WWII and is appearing in a camp show in France when the Nazis advance. Unless he continues in his female costume, Fred is certain to be shot as a spy. The risque gags and double entendres fly as he attempts to make his escape in the company of a troupe of Girl Guides.

Our Miss Fred

1972

Pit Strike poster
NR

1972: striking miners converge on London's power stations. Among them, the huge, dignified figure of Joshua.

Pit Strike

1977

Terror poster
5.3

The descendants of a witch-hunting family and their close friends are stalked and killed by a mysterious entity.

Terror

1979

Nurse Will Make It Better poster
8.0

A woman is hired to care for a young paraplegic girl at her father's estate. Unbeknownst to them, the woman is a devil-worshiper who sets out to steer the young girl down the path of evil.

Nurse Will Make It Better

1975

The Operation poster
NR

David Adler is an operator. He strips assets, other men's wives, and his oldest friend's soul - anything for a cool million.

The Operation

1973

Series credits

The Avengers poster
7.8

A quirky spy show of the adventures of eccentrically suave British Agent John Steed and his predominantly female partners. Jonathan Steed - an urbane, proper gentleman spy - teams with various assistants throughout the series' run, including Dr. David Keel, Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King, to repeatedly save the world from diabolical schemes plotted by equally diabolical evil-doers (among them robots and man-eating monsters).

The Avengers

1961

Minder poster
7.2

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

Minder

1979

Sherlock Holmes poster
8.2

Sherlock Holmes, along with his friend Dr. Watson, uses his abilities to take on cases by private clients and those that the Scotland Yard are unable to solve.

Sherlock Holmes

1984

Upstairs, Downstairs poster
7.8

Upstairs: the wealthy, aristocratic Bellamys. Downstairs: their loyal and lively servants. For nearly 30 years, they share a fashionable townhouse at 165 Eaton Place in London’s posh Belgravia neighborhood, surviving social change, political upheaval, scandals, and the horrors of the First World War.

Upstairs, Downstairs

1971

Blackadder poster
8.0

Blackadder traces the deeply cynical and self-serving lineage of various Edmund Blackadders throughout British history, from the muck of the Middle Ages to the frontline of The Great War.

Blackadder

1983

All Creatures Great and Small poster
7.8

The trials and misadventures of the staff at a country veterinary office in Yorkshire. James Herriot, a young animal surgeon, moves to a small Yorkshire town to begin his first job.

All Creatures Great and Small

1978

Jeeves and Wooster poster
8.1

Jeeves and Wooster is a British comedy-drama series adapted by Clive Exton from P.G. Wodehouse's "Jeeves" stories. It aired on the ITV network from 1990 to 1993, starring Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster, a young gentleman with a "distinctive blend of airy nonchalance and refined gormlessness", and Stephen Fry as Jeeves, his improbably well-informed and talented valet. Wooster is a bachelor, a minor aristocrat and member of the idle rich. He and his friends, who are mainly members of The Drones Club, are extricated from all manner of societal misadventures by the indispensable valet, Jeeves. The stories are set in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1930s.

Jeeves and Wooster

1990

The Onedin Line poster
7.0

The Onedin Line is a BBC television drama series which ran from 1971 to 1980. The series was created by Cyril Abraham. The series is set in Liverpool from 1860 to 1886 and deals with the rise of a shipping line, the Onedin Line, named after its owner James Onedin. Around this central theme are the lives of his family, most notably his brother and partner, shop owner Robert, and his sister Elizabeth, giving insight into the lifestyle and customs at the time, not only at sea, but also ashore. The series also illustrates some of the changes in business and shipping, such as from wooden to steel ships and from sailing ships to steam ships. It shows the role that ships played in affairs like international politics, uprisings and the slave trade.

The Onedin Line

1971

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes poster
7.5

An anthology series produced by Thames Television, comprised of short mystery, suspense or crime adaptations featuring, as the title suggests, detectives who were literary contemporaries of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes

1971

New Scotland Yard poster
6.3

New Scotland Yard is a police drama series produced by London Weekend Television for ITV from 1972 and 1974. It features the activities of two officers from the Criminal Investigations Department in the Metropolitan Police force headquarters at New Scotland Yard, as they dealt with the assorted villains of the day.

New Scotland Yard

1972

Goodnight Sweetheart poster
7.3

Gary Sparrow is an ordinary bloke in 1990s Britain, married to the ambitious Yvonne and working as a TV repairman. Then his whole world changes when he stumbles upon a portal to WWII-era London and begins a dual life as an accidental time traveler.

Goodnight Sweetheart

1993

Goodnight Sweetheart poster
7.3

Gary Sparrow is an ordinary bloke in 1990s Britain, married to the ambitious Yvonne and working as a TV repairman. Then his whole world changes when he stumbles upon a portal to WWII-era London and begins a dual life as an accidental time traveler.

Goodnight Sweetheart

1993

Terry and June poster
6.5

Middle-aged Terry and June Medford are beginning to find the trials of life more difficult as they try to succeed in their daily lives. The couple have just moved to Purley, south-east London... Aunt Lucy and the mynah bird have disappeared, as had the occasionally visiting daughters. Terry and June now mixed with friendly next door neighbour Beattie; Terry's chatty work colleague, Malcolm; and their gruff boss Sir Dennis Hodge. Otherwise, things were much as before, with Terry's pigheaded childishness causing no end of problems, usually thwarting June's attempts at leading a cosy life.

Terry and June

1979

Shine on Harvey Moon poster
7.7

Shine on Harvey Moon! is a British comedy-drama series made by Central Television for ITV from 8 January 1982 to 23 August 1985 and briefly revived in 1995 by Meridian. This generally light-hearted series was created by comedy writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran. The series is set in the East End of London shortly after the Second World War. Upon being demobbed RAF serviceman Harvey Moon, played by Kenneth Cranham, returns home and finds his family involved in various troubles. His wife Rita, played by Maggie Steed, is not interested in resuming their relationship, and works in a seedy nightclub frequented by American servicemen. He becomes involved with the Labour Party and the union movement. The name of the series is a wordplay on the title of the popular 1908 song 'Shine On, Harvest Moon'. The first series was commissioned and recorded by ATV at their Elstree studios with the remaining series filmed at newly constructed facilities in Nottingham.

Shine on Harvey Moon

1982

Waiting for God poster
7.4

Refusing to succumb to old age, Tom Ballard and Diana Trent are a pair of seasoned delinquents that cause many headaches. Their uneasy alliance is destined to make life difficult at the Bayview Retirement Village.

Waiting for God

1990

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

My Hero poster
6.5

My Hero is a BBC sitcom created by Paul Mendelson. The programme ran for six series, first broadcast in February 2000, and concluding in September 2006. The series follows the antics of the dim-witted superhero "Thermoman", portrayed by Ardal O'Hanlon in series one to five and by James Dreyfus in the final series. The series was regularly directed by John Stroud. In the UK, the digital channel Gold regularly re-runs the programme, although the last series has yet to appear on the channel. In the United States it was shown on PBS and, briefly, BBC America. In Australia, UKTV offered re-runs of the first three series, while BBC Entertainment provided repeats for Scandinavia.

My Hero

2000

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

Reilly: Ace of Spies poster
7.0

Reilly, Ace of Spies is a 1983 television miniseries dramatising the life of Sidney Reilly, a Russian Jew who became one of the greatest spies ever to work for the British. Among his exploits, in the early 20th-century, were the infiltration of the German General Staff in 1917 and a near-overthrow of the Bolsheviks in 1918. His reputation with women was as legendary as his genius for espionage.

Reilly: Ace of Spies

1983

Reilly: Ace of Spies poster
7.0

Reilly, Ace of Spies is a 1983 television miniseries dramatising the life of Sidney Reilly, a Russian Jew who became one of the greatest spies ever to work for the British. Among his exploits, in the early 20th-century, were the infiltration of the German General Staff in 1917 and a near-overthrow of the Bolsheviks in 1918. His reputation with women was as legendary as his genius for espionage.

Reilly: Ace of Spies

1983

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

The Return of Sherlock Holmes poster
7.9

In the second series of the widely celebrated ITV detective programme, Dr John Watson finds a mystery in an empty house, while Holmes and he later solve the mysteries of an abbey grange, the Musgrave ritual, a second stain, a man with a twisted lip, the priory school, and a half-dozen plaster busts of Bonaparte.

The Return of Sherlock Holmes

1986

Danger UXB poster
8.0

Danger UXB is a 1979 British television series developed by John Hawkesworth and starring Anthony Andrews as Lieutenant Brian Ash, an officer in the Royal Engineers. The programme is titled and partly based on the memoirs of Major A. B. Hartley, M.B.E, RE, Unexploded Bomb - The Story of Bomb Disposal, with episodes written by Hawkesworth and four screenwriters. The series chronicles the exploits of the fictional 97 Tunnelling Company which, as a result of thousands of unexploded bombs in London during the Blitz, has become a bomb disposal unit. As with all his fellow officers, Ash must for the most part learn the techniques and procedures of disarming and destroying the UXBs through experience, repeatedly confronted with more cunning and deadlier technological advances in aerial bomb fusing. The storylines were primarily military, with a romantic thread between Ash and an inventor's married daughter, and other human interest vignettes.

Danger UXB

1979

Only When I Laugh poster
6.7

Only When I Laugh is an ITV1 sitcom broadcast from 29 October 1979 to 16 December 1982 for four series with seven episodes each, and a Christmas special in 1981. The title is the answer to the question, "Does it hurt?" A naïve middle-class man is admitted to an NHS hospital ward, shared with a working-class layabout and an upper-class hypochondriac. The trio never fail to cause a nuisance for the poor, unsuspecting staff.

Only When I Laugh

1979

Murder Most English: A Flaxborough Chronicle poster
6.5

Murder Most English: A Flaxborough Chronicle (often referred to simply as Murder Most English) is a seven-part British detective miniseries based on Colin Watson's Flaxborough novel series. While Martin Lisemore receives billing on all episodes, he died midway through filming, and was replaced by Bill Sellars, who refused credit. Flaxborough, near the sea, near the countryside, seems such a nice town, so quiet, so charming. But underneath its placid surface, all kinds of scandalous things go on.

Murder Most English: A Flaxborough Chronicle

1977

The Fourth Arm poster
6.5

Starring Paul Shelley in a role reminiscent of his Secret Army character in all but name, this 12-part serial follows a team of secret agents parachuted into occupied Europe during World War II, exploring their recruitment, training, and first mission behind enemy lines.

The Fourth Arm

1983

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

Counterstrike poster
7.0

Simon King, an alien agent from the Inter Galactic Council, is sent to Earth on a mission to stop unscrupulous refugees from a dying planet from wiping out Mankind and taking over the planet Earth.

Counterstrike

1969

Nightingales poster
7.0

Nightingales is a British situation comedy set around the antics of three security guards working the night shift. It was written by Paul Makin and produced by Alomo Productions for Channel 4 in 1990.

Nightingales

1990

No artwork available
7.3

Grundy is a British television sitcom starring Harry H. Corbett as puritanical newsagent Leonard Grundy who, after a divorce, opposes the idea of a 'permissive society' and befriends the wife of the man who left with his wife. It was initially scheduled for late 1979, but a ten-week industrial dispute and a subsequent heart attack by Corbett caused broadcast to be postponed until 1980.

Grundy

1980

Blott on the Landscape poster
7.5

A thwarted Lady Maud runs off to her solicitor to start divorce proceedings and that gives Sir Giles his bright idea-why not run the proposed bypass for the area through their very own Cleene Gorge, thereby wrecking Lady Maud's ancestral home and copping rather a lot of compensation from the government to boot? Witness the frolics of the bumbling dundridge - the Y-front clad man from the ministry, Sir Giles' versatile Mrs Forthby - Mediterranean harlot and naughty schoolgirl extraordinaire, not forgetting Blott himself, gardener and mystery man, casting his enigmatic eye over the eccentricities of the great British aristocracy... Starring, George Cole, Geraldine James, David Suchet, Simon Cadell and Julia McKenzie

Blott on the Landscape

1985

tlc poster
6.2

tlc is a darkly surreal farce-like sitcom created and written by Fintan Coyle, set in a fictional NHS hospital called South Middlesex where coffee is traded like drugs and pretty much everyone has a personality complex. Dr Laurence Flynn finds himself thrown in at the deep end when he gets his first job after leaving Medical School (where he failed his finals). Always the butt of jokes by other staff (being called on to revive dead people)he has to cope not only with the patients but mad colleagues too – an ex surgeon now the hospital chaplain and a German theatre assistant with a masochistic kink. The show never confirms what 'tlc' stands for, although it's presumed to be a sarcastic reference to the widely used abbreviation for 'tender loving care', but could equally refer to the alternative yet related abbreviation 'total lack of concern'.

tlc

2002

Little Women poster
7.5

Little Women is a 1970 BBC television miniseries, based on Louisa May Alcott's 1868-69 two-volume novel of the same name about four sisters who come of age in America in the aftermath of the Civil War. The third BBC adaptation of the novel, the nine-part series is often considered—while not particularly widely acknowledged—one of the more faithful adaptations.

Little Women

1970

The Bounder poster
7.0

The Bounder is a British sitcom which ran from 16 April 1982 to 28 October 1983, made by Yorkshire Television. The series starred Peter Bowles as Howard Booth, an ex-convict who served two years in jail. He lives with Trevor Mountjoy who's his brother in law, and his wife Mary Rosalind Ayres. The latter left after Series one in 1982. It also starred Isla Blair as the next door widowed neighbour, Laura Miles. This series was created by Eric Chappell.

The Bounder

1982

No artwork available
7.0

Ken Archer has worked for the same company for 33 years. Then, one day, he's told that he is about to be made redundant. To make a bad day even worse, Ken's wife Joan tells him that she is leaving him for a man 20 years younger. Things continue to go from bad to worse as Kern is subsequently mugged, taken hostage, arrested and committed to an asylum.

Time of My Life

1980

No artwork available
7.0

1961: the days of happy motoring and AA patrolmen were duty-bound to salute to every passing passenger that bore an AA badge on their vehicle, and hapless patrolman Harry Thorpe struggles with his job. He frequently clashes with his superior, one Inspector Leonard Spanwick, who also happens to reside in a caravan in Harry's back garden and is romantically involved with his blowsy sister Joyce. Leonard often makes Harry's life difficult, and he struggles to keep his local branch afloat and recruit new members, which is compounded by the intense competition from the rival RAC organisation, who are keen to drain away their trade. Although he's dedicated, Harry often has difficulty trying to stay up to date with some of the organisation's recent advancements.

The Last Salute

1998

God's Wonderful Railway poster
7.0

Three generations of the Grant family live and work on the Severn Valley branch of the Great Western Railway, from the Victorian era to the Second World War.

God's Wonderful Railway

1980

No artwork available
9.0

With their once-wealthy family teetering on the brink of financial ruin, the six Bastable children – Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Noel, Alice and H.O. (Horace Octavius) – turn to treasure-seeking in a desperate effort to save their family home.

The Story of the Treasure Seekers

1982