
Acting
Thomas Baptiste
Born — Died
1929-03-17 — 2018-12-06
Place of birth
Georgetown, British Guiana
Known for
Acting
Credits
57 titles
Thomas Baptiste was born on March 17, 1929 in Georgetown, British Guiana. He was an actor, known for The Wild Geese (1978), The Ipcress File (1965) and for playing Coronation Street's first black character. He died on December 6, 2018 in Brighton & Hove, East Sussex, England.
Known for
4.3The 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
5.7Crown Court is an afternoon television courtroom drama produced by Granada Television for the ITV network that ran from 1972, when the Crown Court system replaced Assize courts and Quarter sessions in the legal system of England and Wales, to 1984.
Crown Court
1972
6.6Play 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
7.4Simon Templar is The Saint, a handsome, sophisticated, debonair, modern-day Robin Hood who recovers ill-gotten wealth and redistributes it to those in need.
The Saint
1962
5.2An anthology series of television plays which aired on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured.
The Wednesday Play
1964
7.2Roguish comedy drama following the misadventures of small-time crook Arthur Daley.
Minder
1979
Film credits
1990s · 5 titles
5.2Oscar-winner Colin Firth stars in this heart-warming cross-cultural romantic comedy set in the idyllic South of France. Nimi, a beautiful Nigerian single mother to son Sammy, is under pressure from her family to find a suitable husband and who better than the local Reverend? After making friends with Matthew, a British comic-book writer and one of his heros, Sammy has other ideas. He successfully plots to get them together but they've still a few obsticles to overcome. (from Amazon)
The Secret Laughter of Women
1999
10.0A two part documentary that details the contribution of black and Asian people to television history from the birth of television in 1936 to 1992. Interviewees include: Pearl Connor, Thomas Baptiste, Lenny Henry, Norman Beaton, Horace Ové, Carmen Munroe, and Stuart Hall.
Black and White in Colour
1992
7.0A golden floppy disk becomes a prophetic device through which a young Ghanaian girl living in England, Ama, rediscovers her African identity. She learns its contents at the office where her mother cleans. The disk, through magic realism and by way of ancestors, warns her of the dangers of forgetting one's heritage.
Ama
1991
NRThe true story of a daring prison break. Wycliffe Kato, Director of Civil Aviation in Idi Amin's Uganda was at the airport to catch a flight to Canada for a conference when he was arrested by Amin's secret police, members of the notorious State Research Bureau, and thrown into the Nakasero prison. This should have meant certain death, but, along with his cell mates, army officers who had come under suspicion of organizing a coup, he escaped and made it on foot to Nairobi. This TV movie is based on Wycliffe Kato's own account in his book "Escape From Idi Amin's Slaughterhouse".
Escape From Kampala
1991
4.4Memory mixes with desire as a museum attendant is caught up in sado-masochistic fantasies inspired by a 19th century painting of slaves in chains called Scene on the coast of Africa. The man remembers his past as a singer and delivers Dido's lament from Purcell's opera.
The Attendant
1993
1980s · 5 titles
5.8Mercenary soldiers Jamie and Drew are hired by a large corporation to liberate Zangaro, a small African nation, from an despot. Havoc ensues.
The Dogs of War
1980
7.6The chronicle of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and his tyranic rule from 1971 to his overthrow in 1979.
Amin: The Rise and Fall
1981
5.6A former green beret is hired by the Kenyan government to stop increasingly bold and violent poachers. As if that wasn't hard enough, he has to deal with his estranged father, now a safari guide, and with the woman they both love.
Nairobi Affair
1984
NR'I don't think at first I thought at all. I had a nice house, lovely kids. I didn't think about blacks at all. I should've done, but I didn't. They were just there.'
Drums Along Balmoral Drive
1986
10.0A man who has had a good life in England wants to retire to Jamaica, but the celebration with his daughters doesn't go as expected.
King
1984
1970s · 11 titles
6.8A British multinational company seeks to overthrow a vicious dictator in central Africa. It hires a band of (largely aged) mercenaries in London and sends them in to save the virtuous but imprisoned opposition leader who is also critically ill and due for execution. Just when the team has performed a perfect rescue, the multinational does a deal with the vicious dictator leaving the mercenary band to escape under their own steam and exact revenge.
The Wild Geese
1978
6.2Detective John Shaft travels incognito to Ethiopia, then France, to bust a human trafficking ring.
Shaft in Africa
1973
5.3On a 19th century Caribbean island, slaves revolt against their beautiful and sadistic mistress.
Black Snake
1973
6.5Recently divorced career woman Alex Greville begins a romantic relationship with glamorous mod artist Bob Elkin, fully aware that he's also intimately involved with middle-aged doctor Daniel Hirsh. For both Alex and Daniel, the younger man represents a break with their repressive pasts, and though both know that Bob is seeing both of them, neither is willing to let go of the youth and vitality he brings to their otherwise stable lives.
Sunday Bloody Sunday
1971
4.9A pirate crewman kills his captain after learning where he has hidden his buried treasure. However, as he begins to lose his memory, he relies more and more on the ghost of the man he just murdered to help him find the loot.
Ghost in the Noonday Sun
1973
5.2A dedicated teacher tries to reach out to juvenile delinquent students at a London alternative school.
The Class Of Miss MacMichael
1978
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
10.0At a famous London disco venue, a competition is announced to select two dancers to star in a new film.
The Music Machine
1979
NRPlay set in the Caribbean showing how life is hard and a struggle, with problems of unemployment and lack of money.
In the Beautiful Caribbean
1972
7.0An American musician working in Nigeria becomes involved with a patriot hunted by a mercenary in Africa.
Countdown at Kusini
1976
10.0Two sworn enemies, one black and the other white, are forced to confront their prejudices when they are forced together by circumstance.
Pal
1971
1960s · 11 titles
6.8Sly and dry intelligence agent Harry Palmer is tasked with investigating British Intelligence security, and is soon enmeshed in a world of double-dealing, kidnap and murder when he finds a traitor operating at the heart of the secret service.
The Ipcress File
1965
6.5Five train passengers are joined by a mysterious fortuneteller who offers to read Tarot. A quintet of stories unfold: an architect returns to his ancestral home to find a vengeful werewolf; a doctor suspects his new wife is a vampire; an intelligent vine takes over a house; a jazz musician plagiarises music from a voodoo ceremony; and a pompous art critic is pursued by a disembodied hand.
Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
1965
6.9An obscure Eastern cult that practices human sacrifice pursues Ringo after he unknowingly puts on a ceremonial ring (that, of course, won't come off). On top of that, a pair of mad scientists, members of Scotland Yard, and a beautiful but dead-eyed assassin all have their own plans for the Fab Four.
Help!
1965
7.0An anachronistic martinet RSM on a remote Colonial African army caught in a local coup d'etat must use his experience to defend those in his care.
Guns at Batasi
1964
6.3Domestic difficulties develop in a working-class family when their daughter falls in love with a Jamaican man.
Flame in the Streets
1961
5.5An insecure Briton and a Briton of Jamaican descent share a London apartment together.
Two Gentlemen Sharing
1969
5.8After he mends a marital rift between a vacationing young couple, the bored, fragile wife falls hopelessly in love with the husband's ex-colleague who is married to a long-suffering and emotionally and physically scarred woman. The couple soon runs off to Greece together to pursue the romance.
In the Cool of the Day
1963
6.0Soho strip club compère Sammy Lee struggles to stay one step ahead of the notorious bookie, to whom he owes £300.
The Small World of Sammy Lee
1963
6.1American and British tourists get caught up in political unrest in Haiti.
The Comedians
1967
7.0In Great Britain a reversal of African apartheid comes into place, and the country is governed by black people with whites as the subservients.
Fable
1965
7.0A white boy and a black Jamaican girl have a day out in a city where racial hostility prevails.
Jemima + Johnny
1966
1950s · 2 titles
7.0Two Scotland Yard detectives investigate the murder of a young woman of mixed race who had been passing for white. As they interview a spate of suspects -- including the girl's white boyfriend and his disapproving parents -- the detectives wade through a stubbornly entrenched sludge of racism and bigotry.
Sapphire
1959
4.7A World War II evacuee returns years later to England and finds his father in prison framed for murder.
Web of Evidence
1959
Series credits
4.3The 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
5.7Crown Court is an afternoon television courtroom drama produced by Granada Television for the ITV network that ran from 1972, when the Crown Court system replaced Assize courts and Quarter sessions in the legal system of England and Wales, to 1984.
Crown Court
1972
5.7Crown Court is an afternoon television courtroom drama produced by Granada Television for the ITV network that ran from 1972, when the Crown Court system replaced Assize courts and Quarter sessions in the legal system of England and Wales, to 1984.
Crown Court
1972
6.6Play 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
6.6Play 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
7.4Simon Templar is The Saint, a handsome, sophisticated, debonair, modern-day Robin Hood who recovers ill-gotten wealth and redistributes it to those in need.
The Saint
1962
7.4Simon Templar is The Saint, a handsome, sophisticated, debonair, modern-day Robin Hood who recovers ill-gotten wealth and redistributes it to those in need.
The Saint
1962
5.2An anthology series of television plays which aired on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured.
The Wednesday Play
1964
7.2Roguish comedy drama following the misadventures of small-time crook Arthur Daley.
Minder
1979
7.0ITV 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
7.6The lives of Bodie and Doyle, top agents for Britain's CI5 (Criminal Intelligence 5), and their controller, George Cowley. The mandate of CI5 was to fight terrorism and similar high-profile crimes. Cowley, a hard ex-MI5 operative, hand-picked each of his men. Bodie is a cynical ex-SAS paratrooper and mercenary whose nature ran to controlled violence, while his partner, Doyle, comes to CI5 from the regular police force, and is more of an open minded liberal. Their relationship is often contentious, but they are the top men in their field, and the ones to whom Cowley always assigned to the toughest cases.
The Professionals
1977
7.2Theatre 625 is a British television drama anthology series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC2 from 1964 to 1968. It was one of the first regular programmes in the line-up of the channel, and the title referred to its production and transmission being in the higher-definition 625-line format, which only BBC2 used at the time.
Theatre 625
1964
7.1BBC series based on the novels by Georges Simenon which starred Rupert Davies as Inspector Maigret, a French police detective who preferred to watch and listen in order to solve crimes. The series ran from 1960-63 on British television.
Maigret
1960
7.0Follow the swashbuckling exploits of Simon Templar, a modern-day Robin Hood of sorts.
Return of the Saint
1978
6.0A series of television plays, some original, some based on pre-existing plays or novels.
The Play on One
1988
7.6This English follows the East End working-class Garnett family, headed by patriarch Alf, a reactionary working-class man who wields racist and anti-Socialist views. His long-suffering wife Else manages to keep things in control... for the most part. Their progressive daughter Rita lives with them, as does her Irish husband Mike, who, with an array of liberal worldviews, often quarrels with his father-in-law. It inspired the American show "All In The Family" and several other international variations on the same theme.
Till Death Us Do Part
1966
10.0Pulled from actual case histories and utilizing newsreel and documented narratives, the activities of spies from various countries are depicted as far back as the American Revolution and as recent as the Cold War.
Espionage
1963
5.8The Fosters is a British sitcom created and written by Jon Watkins and Eric Monte. It showcases the early work of Lenny Henry as the budding artist son of easygoing family man Samuel Foster (Norman Beaton). The series follows the day-to-day trials of Samuel, his lively wife Pearl (both immigrants from Guyana) and their three children on a South London housing estate.
The Fosters
1976
5.8Rockliffe's Babies is a British television police procedural devised by Richard O'Keefe, and starring Ian Hogg as maverick Detective Sergeant Alan Rockliffe, who is assigned to train seven young recruits to the CID, all fresh out of uniform. Under his irascible guidance, it is hoped that they will blossom into full-blown detectives. But Rockliffe is human – so human that he makes more mistakes than the 'Babies' he's supposed to be training. A follow-up series, Rockliffe's Folly, follows Rockliffe through his relocation to Wessex, dealing with rural crimes as part of a new team of investigators. The seven episode third series proved to be the last, with many citing a change in the programme's formula for the heavy ratings decline. Many viewers stated that the success of the two Babies series came not from Rockliffe himself, but from the popular ensemble cast.
Rockliffe's Babies
1987
7.0The adventures of two married game wardens in Kenya. George Adamson and Diana Muldaur live with their adopted lioness Elsa the Lioness, where they protect the animals in the surrounding area from all sorts of danger, both natural and human.
Born Free
1974
Anthology series of six plays by writers new to television.
First Sight
1987
6.7The dissolution of an 18-year marriage, seen first from his point-of-view and then from hers.
Divorce His, Divorce Hers
1973
Drama, set in Scotland, about the world of boxing.
Winners and Losers
1989
