John Grillo

Acting

John Grillo

Born

1942-11-29 (83)

Place of birth

Watford, Hertfordshire, England, UK

Known for

Acting

Credits

65 titles

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia John Grillo (born 29 November 1942, Watford, Hertfordshire) is a British actor and playwright who has appeared in many film and television productions. He was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and while there was actively involved in student theatre. He performed with Footlights in their annual revue. After Cambridge, he was awarded an Arts Council Playwrighting Bursary and his plays were performed at Nottingham, Glasgow, Oxford and Dublin as well as at the ADC Theatre in Cambridge. He played Mr. Samgrass in the ITV series Brideshead Revisited, and Phillip Marriott QC in Crown Court. He had minor parts in other shows, including Blackadder II ("Bell…

Known for

EastEnders poster
4.3

The everyday lives of working-class residents of Albert Square, a traditional Victorian square of terrace houses surrounding a park in the East End of London's Walford borough.

EastEnders

1985

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

The Bill poster
6.8

The daily lives of the men and women at Sun Hill Police Station as they fight crime on the streets of London. From bomb threats to armed robbery and drug raids to the routine demands of policing this ground-breaking series focuses as much on crime as it does on the personal lives of its characters.

The Bill

1984

Foyle's War poster
7.9

As WW2 rages around the world, DCS Foyle fights his own war on the home-front as he investigates crimes on the south coast of England. Foyle's War opens in southern England in the year 1940. Later series sees the retired detective working as an MI5 agent operating in the aftermath of the war.

Foyle's War

2002

Taggart poster
6.6

Taggart is a Scottish detective television program. The series revolves around a group of detectives initially in the Maryhill CID of Strathclyde Police, though various storylines have happened in other parts of the Greater Glasgow area, and as of the most recent series the team have operated out of the fictional John Street police station across the street from the City Chambers.

Taggart

1983

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

Film credits

1990s · 7 titles

Orlando poster
7.0

England, 1600. Queen Elizabeth I promises Orlando, a young nobleman obsessed with poetry, that she will grant him land and fortune if he agrees to satisfy a very particular request.

Orlando

1992

Jack & Sarah poster
6.8

Jack always lands on his feet. He lands on his feet when he marries the beautiful Sarah. He lands on his feet when he buys a luxurious new home. However, when Sarah goes into labour, he takes a tumble down the stairs and lands on his head. When he comes around he discovers he is the proud father of a baby girl, but deficient in the spouse department to the tune of 1.

Jack & Sarah

1995

A Murder of Quality poster
5.7

At the request of his old war time colleague Ailsa Brimley, George Smiley agrees to look into the murder of Stella Rode. Brimley had only just received a letter from her saying she feared for her life at her husband's hand. The husband, Stanley Rode teaches at Carne School, but Smiley is doubtful that he had anything to do with his wife's death. As Smiley investigates, he learns that Stella was a nosy busybody who loved to learn other's little secrets and then gossip about them - or possibly blackmail them. When a student is killed and Smiley unearths a secret, he has the evidence to name the killer.Based on John Le Carré's 1962 thriller (his first) in which George Smiley is brought out of spy retirement to solve a murder in a British public school. The setting is based on Le Carre"s own schooldays in Sherborne and his brief experience teaching at Eton.

A Murder of Quality

1991

Blame It on the Bellboy poster
5.4

Mike Lawton, Maurice Horton, and Melvin Orton are three men who come to Venice. One of them is a hit man sent to take out a mobster. Another is a lech looking for a little action with a woman he never met, whom he was set up with. And one of them was sent by his employer to inspect a property his boss wants to buy. All three men stay at the same hotel. But when the bellboy gets their names mixed up and gives info meant for someone else. So one of them meets a Realtor who will whatever she has to, to close the sale. And another follows a woman looking for romance. And another goes to the home of the mobster who thinks he's sent there to kill him.

Blame It on the Bellboy

1992

Max and Helen poster
7.0

In trying to bring a former concentration camp commandant to justice, Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal uncovers the tragic story of two lovers separated by the war.

Max and Helen

1990

B&B poster
8.0

An out-of-work architect turns his house into a bed and breakfast hotel.

B&B

1992

August Saturday poster
10.0

Grania did something 15 years ago that brought her great happiness but also great pain. The events of that day have been a heavy secret to bear that, if discovered, would devastate those closest to her.

August Saturday

1990

1980s · 16 titles

Brazil poster
7.7

Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle, he meets the woman from his daydream, and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.

Brazil

1985

Firefox poster
6.1

The Soviets have developed a revolutionary new jet fighter, called 'Firefox'. Worried that the jet will be used as a first-strike weapon—as there are rumours that it is undetectable by radar—the British send ex-Vietnam War pilot, Mitchell Gant on a covert mission into the Soviet Union to steal the Firefox.

Firefox

1982

Danny the Champion of the World poster
6.2

Somewhere in England, in the Autumn of 1955, a widowed father and his son live an idyllic life together. Only their gas station happens to sit on a piece of land that a local developer wants to buy. And when he won't take no for an answer, and sets government inspectors and social works onto Danny and his father, Danny and his father decide to get even with Hazell and his pheasant- shooting friends in a manner in keeping with their own family tradition.

Danny the Champion of the World

1989

The Cold War Killers poster
8.0

A missing 1950s era airplane is found 27 years later at the bottom of a lake. British and Soviet spy agencies are intensely interested.

The Cold War Killers

1986

Afterward poster
7.0

A skeptical family moves into their new home despite warnings of a resident ghost. They soon become believers.

Afterward

1983

Out of the Shadows poster
6.5

A U.S. Embassy worker is helped by an Interpol agent to prove herself innocent of a murder in the Greek isles.

Out of the Shadows

1988

The Great Riviera Bank Robbery poster
6.0

A group of fervent right wing French nationalists plan to finance a government coup and smash communists by pulling off a daring bank robbery.

The Great Riviera Bank Robbery

1980

The Man Who Lived at the Ritz poster
4.2

In this drama, an American art student is trapped amidst the political turmoil of war-torn Europe while visiting Paris and staying at the fabulous Ritz hotel. Rather than cope constructively with it all, the fellow opts to ignore it and continue living the high-life for as long as possible.

The Man Who Lived at the Ritz

1988

King Lear poster
6.5

An aging King invites disaster, when he abdicates to his corrupt, toadying daughters, and rejects his loving and honest one.

King Lear

1982

The Most Dangerous Man in the World poster
NR

In May 1981 a young Turk, Mehmet Ali Agca, shot Pope John Paul U. Who was Agca? Why did he do it? What made him want to be a killer?

The Most Dangerous Man in the World

1988

Amy poster
8.3

A tale of real-life British aviation pioneer Amy Johnson, the first woman to fly from Britain to Australia, who would later mysteriously disappear.

Amy

1984

Heather Ann poster
6.0

Cornish fisherman John Lewis is waiting for a stroke of luck which will give him the money to pay his debts and rid himself of his wife and his trawler Heather Ann. One day he nets a torpedo...

Heather Ann

1983

Chocky poster
NR

Matthew Gore is an intelligent boy chosen by a mysterious extraterrestrial visitor to be a source of information about life on Earth. As his schoolwork and artistic talent improve dramatically he arouses the suspicion of powerful groups who wish to tap into the amazing fund of knowledge to which he is now party.

Chocky

1984

Gaskin poster
5.0

Drama based on the case history of a Liverpool boy, Graham Gaskin, who spent most of his youth in care. Graham Gaskin says it is not just his story - 'It's all the other little Gaskins we never hear about... and it ain't history. It's now!'

Gaskin

1983

The 17th Bride poster
7.0

Based on Ladislav Grossman's novel "The Bride", this drama was filmed back in 1984 in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, then the crew stopped filming, because protagonist Lisa Hartman had to promote her feature film "Where The Boys Are '84" in the States and they finally finished it on location in Wasserburg, Germany!

The 17th Bride

1985

Dog Ends poster
NR

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.

Dog Ends

1984

1970s · 5 titles

Series credits

EastEnders poster
4.3

The everyday lives of working-class residents of Albert Square, a traditional Victorian square of terrace houses surrounding a park in the East End of London's Walford borough.

EastEnders

1985

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

The Bill poster
6.8

The daily lives of the men and women at Sun Hill Police Station as they fight crime on the streets of London. From bomb threats to armed robbery and drug raids to the routine demands of policing this ground-breaking series focuses as much on crime as it does on the personal lives of its characters.

The Bill

1984

Foyle's War poster
7.9

As WW2 rages around the world, DCS Foyle fights his own war on the home-front as he investigates crimes on the south coast of England. Foyle's War opens in southern England in the year 1940. Later series sees the retired detective working as an MI5 agent operating in the aftermath of the war.

Foyle's War

2002

Taggart poster
6.6

Taggart is a Scottish detective television program. The series revolves around a group of detectives initially in the Maryhill CID of Strathclyde Police, though various storylines have happened in other parts of the Greater Glasgow area, and as of the most recent series the team have operated out of the fictional John Street police station across the street from the City Chambers.

Taggart

1983

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

Rumpole of the Bailey poster
7.1

Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer. It stars Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an aging London barrister who defends any and all clients, and has been spun off into a series of short stories, novels, and radio programmes.

Rumpole of the Bailey

1975

Lovejoy poster
7.4

The adventures of the eponymous Lovejoy, a likeable but roguish antiques dealer based in East Anglia. Within the trade, he has a reputation as a “divvie”, a person with an almost supernatural powers for recognising exceptional items as well as distinguishing genuine antique from clever fakes or forgeries.

Lovejoy

1986

Cracker poster
6.6

The wise-cracking Edward 'Fitz' Fitzgerald is a brilliant but flawed criminal psychologist with a remarkable insight into the criminal mind.

Cracker

1993

Between the Lines poster
5.5

Detective Superintendent Tony Clark is an ambitious member of the Complaints Investigation Bureau, an internal organisation that investigates claims of corruption inside the police in England and Wales. Along the way Clark overcomes strong influence from his superiors and problems in his private life, most notably the break-up of his marriage following an affair with WPC Jenny Dean.

Between the Lines

1992

The Darling Buds of May poster
7.9

An idyllic picture of 1950's rural England as seen through the lives of the Larkins, a farm family living in Kent. The show revolves around Pa Larkin, a man of a kind and mischievous nature with a penchant for getting into scrapes and talking his way out of them with equal equanimity; and his daughters, as they deal with growing up and discovering the joys and sorrows of young love.

The Darling Buds of May

1991

Brideshead Revisited poster
7.9

Agnostic Charles Ryder is seduced by the allure of the Flytes, a wealthy aristocratic family. Although he finds himself at odds with their strong Catholicism, his ties to the family deepen for the decades between the two world wars.

Brideshead Revisited

1981

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

Dick Turpin poster
7.4

Richard O'Sullivan stars as Dick Turpin in this action-filled adventure series chronicling the exploits of England's most celebrated highwayman.

Dick Turpin

1979

Lady Killers poster
7.5

Compelling crime anthology looks at some of Britain's most notorious murder trials, in which both male and female defendants stood accused of the murder of women. Presented by Robert Morley, seven hour-long dramas reconstruct sensational trials which shocked Britain, offering in-depth analyses of individuals' motives and methods.

Lady Killers

1980

Brass poster
6.1

Brass is a British comedy-drama series created by John Stevenson and Julian Roach, and produced by Granada Television for ITV and eventually Channel 4. Satirising the working-class period dramas of the 1970s and the American supersoaps such as Dallas and Dynasty, Brass was unusual for ITV comedies of the time, as there was no laugh track and the humour deliberately kept extremely dry, using convoluted wordplay and subtle commentary on popular culture. Set primarily in Utterley, a fictional Lancashire mining town in the 1930s, two feuding families—the wealthy Hardacres and the poor, working-class Fairchilds, who lived in a small terraced house rented from the Hardacre empire.

Brass

1983

A Very Peculiar Practice poster
8.2

A young and idealistic Doctor Stephen Daker arrives at Lowlands University to work at the Health Centre, but has to cope with an eccentric set of colleagues.

A Very Peculiar Practice

1986

The Grand poster
5.1

The Grand is an ITV television drama series created and written by Russell T Davies and starring Rebecca Callard, Tim Healy, Susan Hampshire, Paul Warriner, and Mark McGann. Following WWI, the Bannerman family re-opens the Grand Hotel after a lengthy closure and a costly re-furbishing. The hotel has been in the family for a long time, and John Bannerman and his wife Sarah desperately want to make a go. Their son Stephen has returned from the wars without any physical harm but still suffers from the mental anguish of seeing so many of his comrades-in-arms falling on the battlefield. When they learn that their accountant has squandered what little money they had left, they must turn to John's brother Marcus, a successful businessman who has eschewed any interest in the hotel over the years but now seems ready to plunge into the business with both feet.

The Grand

1997

Cribb poster
8.0

Victorian England, the late 1800s: Detective Sergeant Daniel Cribb of the newly formed Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is determined to remove crime from the streets of London using the latest detection methods.

Cribb

1980

Shackleton poster
7.2

The true story of Ernest Shackleton's 1914 Endurance expedition to the the South Pole and his epic struggle to lead his crew to safety after his ship was crushed in the pack ice.

Shackleton

2002

The Modern World: Ten Great Writers poster
8.0

This documentary series uses drama and commentary to shed light on the lives and works of Joseph Conrad, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, T. S. Eliot, Henrik Ibsen, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Luigi Pirandello, Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf.

The Modern World: Ten Great Writers

1988

Maisie Raine poster
NR

Maisie Raine was a drama series originally broadcast on BBC1 for 2 series from 28 July 1998 – 9 July 1999. Pauline Quirke took the lead role as DI Maisie Raine, an unorthodox detective whose hands on and down to earth approach was not always appreciated by her superiors. When she took on a case, she did it her way, regardless of whose toes she stepped on and who she offended. Each episode would see the team investigating a crime and often uncovering more about the perpetrators and the victims histories with DI Raine often becoming personally involved or bending the rules to get the results she wanted. Also starring alongside Quirke were Ian McElhinney, Steve John Shepherd, Rakie Ayola and Richard Graham.

Maisie Raine

1998

No artwork available
NR

Dramatisations of three different women, three different cases—Constance Kent (episodes 1–8), Mary Blandy (9–14), and Adelaide Bartlett (15–22)—all 18th- and 19th-century murderesses.

A Question of Guilt

1980

Chalk poster
7.1

A British television sitcom set in a comprehensive school named Galfast High. Two series written by Steven Moffat were broadcast on BBC1 in 1997. Like his earlier sitcom Joking Apart, it was produced by Andre Ptaszynski. The series focuses upon deputy headteacher Eric Slatt, permanently stressed over the chaos he creates both by himself and some of his eccentric staff. His wife Janet and new English teacher Suzy Travis attempt to help him solve the problems.

Chalk

1997

Three Up, Two Down poster
6.2

Comedy series about Nick and Angie, a young married couple, Angie's snobbish mother Daphne, and Nick's cockney father Sam. Much of the humour arises from the fact that the mismatched Daphne and Sam are forced by circumstances to share the flat below that occupied by their children.

Three Up, Two Down

1985

Three Up, Two Down poster
6.2

Comedy series about Nick and Angie, a young married couple, Angie's snobbish mother Daphne, and Nick's cockney father Sam. Much of the humour arises from the fact that the mismatched Daphne and Sam are forced by circumstances to share the flat below that occupied by their children.

Three Up, Two Down

1985

Oliver Twist poster
6.3

An orphan endures a harsh life in a workhouse before fleeing to London, where he falls in with a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the criminal Fagin, and eventually finds a better life, exposing the cruelties of poverty and child labor in Victorian England.

Oliver Twist

1999

A Little Princess poster
7.7

Sara Crewe is the pampered daughter of an army colonel in a Victorian London girls' school. But when her father dies, penniless, Sara becomes a skivvy in Miss Michin's school, befriended only by the scullery maid, Becky, her friends Ermengarde and Lottie, a little monkey, a lascar, and the mysterious man next door. Based upon the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

A Little Princess

1987

Fiddlers Three poster
NR

Sitcom following the office politics in an accounts department. A sequel to The Squirrels.

Fiddlers Three

1991

Scorpion Tales poster
7.2

Scorpion Tales is a British anthology that aired on ITV in 1978, featuring one-off, hour-long plays with twist endings. Produced by ATV, the programme was similar in format to other thriller anthologies like Thriller and Sapphire & Steel. Each episode presented a self-contained story, often with a sinister or surprising conclusion, and starred actors such as Trevor Howard, David Robb, and Anthony Bate.

Scorpion Tales

1978

Johnny and the Dead poster
6.3

Not many people can see the dead (not many would want to). 12-year-old Johnny Maxwell can. And he's got bad news: the council want to sell the cemetery as a building site. But the dead have learnt a thing or two from Johnny. They're not going to take it lying down... especially since it's Halloween tomorrow.

Johnny and the Dead

1995

Freud poster
5.0

Freud, also known as Freud: The Life of a Dream, is a 1984 six-part BBC television serial dramatised by Carey Harrison, and starring David Suchet as Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Each episode begins with Freud and his family in London, where they had fled from Vienna in 1938 following the Nazi Anschluss, leading up to Freud's death a little over a year later. The rest of the episodes are told mainly in flashbacks to key moments in Freud's life and career.

Freud

1984

Mr Don & Mr George poster
6.2

Mr Don & Mr George was a Channel 4 sitcom, featuring two characters from the Scottish comedy sketch show Absolutely. Moray Hunter and Jack Docherty played two unrelated characters who happened to share a surname. Hunter and Docherty wrote the series and it was made by their production company, Absolutely Productions. The humour was surreal and often featured ridiculous visual gags and wordplay. A single six-episode series was made, and was first broadcast in the UK on Channel 4 in 1993. The series was released on VHS in the 1990s. A single VHS tape was released with all six episodes on as well. This tape stated that it had the entire first series on one tape, however no further series were made.

Mr Don & Mr George

1993

No artwork available
NR

Beech is Back was a storyline in the long-running police procedural television series, The Bill.

Beech is Back

2001

Chessgame poster
6.5

Chessgame is a British television series produced by Granada Television for the ITV network in 1983. Based on a series of novels by Anthony Price, the series dealt with the activities of a quartet of counter-intelligence agents: David Audley, Faith Steerforth, Nick Hannah and Hugh Roskill. One series of six episodes was made. ⁕The Alamut Ambush ⁕Enter Hassan ⁕The Roman Collection ⁕Digging up the Future ⁕Flying Blind ⁕Cold Wargame The series was rebroadcast as three TV movies in 1986 called The Alamut Ambush, The Deadly Recruits, and The Cold War Killers.

Chessgame

1983

Behind the camera