John Mortimer

The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.

This topical debate series based on Any Questions? typically features politicians from at least the three major political parties as well as other public figures who answer pre-selected questions put to them by a carefully selected audience.

No synopsis available yet.

A monthly series of highly personal documentary films in which individuals are given a platform to discuss issues close to their heart.

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.

In 1930s fascist Italy, adolescent Luca just lost his mother. His father, a callous businessman, sends him to be taken care of by British expatriate Mary Wallace. Mary and her cultured friends - including artist Arabella, young widow Elsa, and archaeologist Georgie - keep a watchful eye over the boy. But the women's cultivated lives take a dramatic turn when Allied forces declare war on Mussolini.

The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.

This topical debate series based on Any Questions? typically features politicians from at least the three major political parties as well as other public figures who answer pre-selected questions put to them by a carefully selected audience.

No synopsis available yet.

A monthly series of highly personal documentary films in which individuals are given a platform to discuss issues close to their heart.

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.

Ruth Patchett has it all: a large, warty body, a standard suburban home, a couple of unruly children, a dog, a cat and a guinea pig. She also has Bobbo, her unfaithful accountant husband who resents her very existence. Bobbo wants, and is wanted by, romance novelist Mary Fisher, who lives in a lighthouse by the sea. When Bobo leaves Ruth for Mary, Ruth decides that Mary doesn't know the first thing about love, and she's gonna teach her.

No synopsis available yet.

In 1930s fascist Italy, adolescent Luca just lost his mother. His father, a callous businessman, sends him to be taken care of by British expatriate Mary Wallace. Mary and her cultured friends - including artist Arabella, young widow Elsa, and archaeologist Georgie - keep a watchful eye over the boy. But the women's cultivated lives take a dramatic turn when Allied forces declare war on Mussolini.

A woman reports that her young daughter is missing, but there seems to be no evidence that she ever existed.

Adapted from the work of Miguel de Cervantes, this is the story of a hidalgo, fanatic for chivalry novels, who loses his sanity and believing to be a knight named Don Quixote de La Mancha, decides to go on imaginary adventures along with his friend, the simple farmer Sancho Panza, who becomes his squire. On their journeys, they rescue dames in distress in honorable acts and fight giants among other perils, with Don longing to be with the love of his life, lady Dulcinea, and Sancho waiting to be rewarded with an island where he's about to become a governor.

An Englishman with a grudge against an insurance company for a disallowed claim fakes his own death and escapes to Spain, but is soon pursued by an insurance investigator.

John and Mary meet in a singles bar, sleep together, and spend the next day getting to know each other.

This adaptation of Laurie Lee's autobiographical novel follows a young man's maturation in the country town of Gloucestershire near the end of World War I. As young Laurie comes of age under the protective eye of his mother, he learns to live with an eccentric collection of friends, neighbours, and relatives. As he enters his teenage years, Laurie discovers women.

Suspecting that her husband might be having an affair, a wife plots to catch him in the act.

An irreverent barrister chooses to defend a young Jamaican boy accused of stabbing on the same day his only son leaves for college in America.

A young female designer is on the brink of an affair with a married male executive at the company where she works. The film tells the story of their illicit lunch hour rendezvous.

A young female designer is on the brink of an affair with a married male executive at the company where she works. The film tells the story of their illicit lunch hour rendezvous.

John Mortimer's play about the tangled love life of an East London pub landlord. A woman fighting to save her marriage needs help from friends, but is her husband's best friend the right ally? Pip and Bob, both married, are a couple of ordinary working-class blokes in an ordinary London suburb. It's just that they have also been gay lovers for years.

A successful lawyer struck with blindness in middle age continues his battles in the courtroom with the assistance of his family. As his son deals with bitter memories of their relationship, he also seeks his father's respect and love and in the process learns to love in return.

Touching comedy about a high court judge, now retired to his English countryside home, who resolves to end years of suspicion about his wife's fidelity and the true paternity of their son.

A dentist discovers his wife on the verge of having an affair with another man - a rival dentist

Film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's debut novel, 'Mary'.

A happily married couple divorce for tax purposes, but their lawyer, not knowing the real reason for their divorce, falls in love with the wife.

Francesca's upbringing has been sheltered, but her fiancé isn't slow to realise that his future mother-in-law is in a very lucrative line of business.

After nearly 40 years of waiting for his big chance, Wilfred Morgenhall is given the case of defending Herbert Fowle who is accused of murdering his wife. Despite Fowle's insistence of guilt, Moregenhall will not let go of the opportunity to plead his client as innocent and be a star in the courtroom.

These dueling one-act comedies highlight the work of playwright John Mortimer. In "The Dock Brief," an ill-prepared attorney is put to the test when his client confesses to killing his wife. In "What Shall We Tell Caroline?" a father with good intentions tries to protect his wife and daughter from the bad things in life.

Committed pacifist Tom Jordan's decision to help former President Rivera escape a military coup is a simple act of mercy that takes him and his wife to the edge of despair. It turns them into outlaws and fugitives, hunted by a vicious South American regime; yet it could also bring them together in a way they have never been before.

This play is about a couple trying to overcome the problems in making a successfull clandestine assignation. It was one of a series of playlets by John Mortimer, all named after different parts of London. This was based on a theatrical piece first performed in 1960.

A bored Rumpole, living in Florida retirement, uses an inquiry from Phyllida as a pretext to re-establish himself back in chambers.

This hilarious one-act play by John Mortimer (creator of Rumpole of the Bailey) is the story of a highly incompetent lawyer preparing to defend a man who, by his own admission, is guilty of murdering his wife. Starring Sir Michael Hordern (Gandhi, How I Won the War), two-time Tony winner George Rose (My Fair Lady), and Leueen MacGrath (who with George S. Kaufman co-wrote Silk Stockings).

A clergyman noted for his support of left-wing causes, leaves his considerable estate to a Conservative member of parliament. Adaptation of the novel by John Mortimer.

A young salesman from Trinidad tries to sell a complete set of encyclopedia to Sally Louth, a housewife living on the Chelsea-Fulham border in London.