Penelope Wilton
Also Known As: Penelope Alice Wilton, Penelope Winton, Пенелопа Уилтон, 페네로프 윌튼
Biography: Dame Penelope Alice Wilton DBE(born 3 June 1946) is an English actress. She was formerly married to fellow actor Sir Ian Holm, and as she has not remarried, she retains her married style of Lady Holm. Wilton is known for starring opposite Richard Briers in the BBC sitcom Ever Decreasing Circles (1984–1989), playing Homily in The Borrowers (1992) and The Return of the Borrowers(1993), and for her role as the widowed Isobel Crawley in the ITV drama Downton Abbey (2010–2015). She also played the recurring role of Harriet Jones in Doctor Who (2005–2008) and Anne in Ricky Gervais' Netflix dark comedy After Life. Wilton has had an extensive career on stage, receiving six Olivier Award nominations. She was nominated for Man and Superman (1981), The Secret Rapture (1988), The Deep Blue Sea(1994), John Gabriel Borkman (2008) and The Chalk Garden (2009) before winning the 2015 Olivier Award for Best Actress for Taken at Midnight. Her film appearances include Clockwise (1986), Cry Freedom (1987), Blame It on the Bellboy (1992), Calendar Girls (2003), Shaun of the Dead (2004), Match Point (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012), The Girl (2012), The BFG (2016) and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (2023). Description above from the Wikipedia article Penelope Wilton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Department: Acting
Place of Birth: Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England, UK
Adult: No
Birthday: June 03, 1946
Age: 78 years old
Gender: Female
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Known For:
Shaun of the Dead
Overview: Shaun lives a supremely uneventful life, which revolves around his girlfriend, his mother, and, above all, his local pub. This gentle routine is threatened when the dead return to life and make strenuous attempts to snack on ordinary Londoners.
Genres: Horror Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2004-04-09
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Visitation
Overview: 14-year-old Maria is sent to live with Catholic nuns as her mother is dying. Her arrival at the convent turns sinister when one of her caretakers becomes enamored with her for all the wrong reasons.
Genres: Horror
Original Language: en
Release Date:
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Clockwise
Overview: School headmaster Brian Stimpson is obsessed with timeliness, order, and discipline. Brian misses his train after meticulously preparing a speech for an education conference. With no one else to turn to, he asks young former student Laura Wisely for a ride. Laura, upset over a break-up, agrees to drive him in her parents' car - which alarms her mother and father, who worry that she has run away with a married man and subsequently alert the police.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1986-03-01
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Iris
Overview: True story of the lifelong romance between novelist Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley, from their student days through her battle with Alzheimer's disease.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2001-12-14
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The History Boys
Overview: The story of an unruly class of bright, funny history students at a Yorkshire grammar school in pursuit of an undergraduate place at Oxford or Cambridge. Bounced between their maverick English master, a young and shrewd teacher hired to up their test scores, a grossly out-numbered history teacher, and a headmaster obsessed with results, the boys attempt to pass.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2006-10-02
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Calendar Girls
Overview: Members of a Yorkshire branch of the Women's Institute cause controversy when they pose nude for a charity calendar.
Genres: Drama Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2003-09-02
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The French Lieutenant's Woman
Overview: In this story-within-a-story, Anna is an actress starring opposite Mike in a period piece about the forbidden love between their respective characters, Sarah and Charles. Both actors are involved in serious relationships, but the passionate nature of the script leads to an off-camera love affair as well. While attempting to maintain their composure and professionalism, Anna and Mike struggle to come to terms with their infidelity.
Genres: Drama Romance History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1981-08-28
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Cry Freedom
Overview: A dramatic story, based on actual events, about the friendship between two men struggling against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. Donald Woods is a white liberal journalist in South Africa who begins to follow the activities of Stephen Biko, a courageous and outspoken black anti-apartheid activist.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1987-11-06
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Blame It on the Bellboy
Overview: 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.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1992-01-24
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Joseph Andrews
Overview: Lady Booby alias 'Belle', the lively wife of the fat landed squire Sir Thomas Booby, has a lusty eye on the attractive, intelligent villager Joseph Andrews, a Latin pupil and protégé of parson Adams, and makes him their footman. Joseph's heart belongs to a country girl, foundling Fanny Goodwill, but his masters take him on a fashionable trip to Bath, where the spoiled society comes mainly to see and be seen, but drowns in the famous Roman baths. When the all but grieving lady finds Joseph's Christian virtue and true love resist her lusting passes just as well as the many ladies who fancy her footman, she fires the boy. He's found and nursed by an innkeeper's maid, which stirs lusts there, again besides his honorable conduct, but is found by the good parson.
Genres: Romance Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1977-03-09
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Alice Through the Looking Glass
Overview: A modern adaptation of the classic children's story 'Alice through the Looking Glass', which continued on from the popular 'Alice in Wonderland' story. This time Alice is played by the mother, who falls asleep while reading the the bedtime story to her daughter. Walking through the Looking Glass, Alice finds herself in Chessland, a magical and fun world. There she meets the Red and White Queens, as well as many other amusing friends on her journey across the chessboard countryside onto become a crowned queen.
Genres: Family Fantasy TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1998-12-26
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Carrington
Overview: Painter Dora Carrington develops an intimate but extremely complex bond with writer Lytton Strachey. Though Lytton is a homosexual, he is enchanted by the mysterious Dora and they begin a lifelong friendship that has strangely romantic undertones. Eventually, Lytton and Dora decide to live together, despite the fact that the latter has fallen in love with military man Ralph Partridge, whom she plans to marry.
Genres: History Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1995-05-25
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The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Overview: British retirees travel to India to take up residence in what they believe is a newly restored hotel. Less luxurious than its advertisements, the Marigold Hotel nevertheless slowly begins to charm in unexpected ways as the residents find new purpose in their old age.
Genres: Drama Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2012-02-23
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Laughterhouse
Overview: A farmer becomes an unintentional celebrity when, because of a strike, he has to walk his 5000 geese 100 miles to market.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1984-09-01
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Tom's Midnight Garden
Overview: When Tom's brother Peter gets measles, he is sent to stay with his Uncle Alan and Aunt Gwen in a flat with no garden and an elderly landlady, Mrs Bartholomew, living upstairs. Because he may be infectious, he is not allowed to play outside and feels lonely. Without exercise he is less sleepy at night and when he hears the communal grandfather clock strangely strike 13, he investigates and finds the small back yard is now a large sunlit garden.
Genres: Family Mystery Adventure Fantasy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1999-07-02
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Rockaby
Overview: An old woman in a rocking chair listens to a disembodied voice (her own) that recounts her life and that of her mother's. When the voice stops, she calls for more.
Genres: TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2000-01-01
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Brexit Shorts: The End
Overview: After 43 years together, Helen finds out her husband is leaving.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2017-06-26
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The Girl
Overview: Director Alfred Hitchcock is revered as one of the greatest creative minds in the history of cinema. Known for his psychological thrillers, Hitchcock’s leading ladies were cool, beautiful and preferably blonde. One such actress was Tippi Hedren, an unknown fashion model given her big break when Hitchcock’s wife saw her on a TV commercial. Brought to Universal Studios, Hedren was shocked when the director, at the peak of his career, quickly cast her to star in his next feature, 1963’s The Birds. Little did Hedren know that as ambitious and terrifying as the production would be to shoot, the most daunting aspect of the film ended up coming from behind the camera.
Genres: Drama TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2012-10-22
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Landscape
Overview: A middle aged couple, housekeeper and chauffeur sit in the huge bare kitchen of a country house pursuing their own thoughts aloud in a ghastly semblance of conversation. Doollee.com
Genres: Drama TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1995-10-21
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Belle
Overview: Dido Elizabeth Bell, the illegitimate, mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy admiral, plays an important role in the campaign to abolish slavery in England.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2013-05-01
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Victoria & Albert
Overview: The passionate love story that was Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's lengthy marriage. Beginning in 1837, the year of King William IV's death and 18-year-old Victoria's ascension to the throne, the series charts the tumultuous period in 19th Century England where Victoria comes to terms with the enormous duties that lay ahead of her, while also falling deeply in love with her beloved Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The marriage and birth of their nine children are featured, as is Albert's frustration by the inactivity he experienced in the early years of his role as Prince Consort.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2001-08-26
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The Secret Rapture
Overview: Upon her father's death, a woman comes into emotional and psychological conflict with her young lover, her overbearing sister and her alcoholic stepmother.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1993-09-12
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Match Point
Overview: Chris, a former tennis player, looks for work as an instructor. He meets Tom Hewett, a wealthy young man whose sister Chloe falls in love with Chris. But Chris has his eye on Tom's fiancee Nola.
Genres: Drama Thriller Crime Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2005-10-26
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All the World's a Screen: Shakespeare on Film
Overview: An exploration into the history of Shakespeare's plays, from the silent era to the modern day featuring archive interviews with movie directors including Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Franco Zeffirelli, Kenneth Branagh and more.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2016-04-24
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The Deep Blue Sea
Overview: Hester Collyer is rescued by a neighbor after attempting suicide in the flat she shares with her young lover, ex-RAF pilot Freddie Page. The neighbors alert her husband, who arrives at the flat only to find her fully recovered...
Genres: Drama TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1994-11-12
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King Lear
Overview: King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1975-03-23
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Country
Overview: In 1945, the Carlions assemble at an English country house for a family gathering. During the event, they must determine who is to take over the family brewing empire, since the present head of the business, Sir Frederick, is getting old. The results of the 1945 general election causes a major stir, and some angry farmers occupy a barn.
Genres: Drama TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1981-10-20
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The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Overview: As the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has only a single remaining vacancy - posing a rooming predicament for two fresh arrivals - Sonny pursues his expansionist dream of opening a second hotel.
Genres: Drama Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2015-02-26
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Judi Dench: Our National Treasure
Overview: A profile of the actress from a strict Quaker upbringing in Yorkshire, through her staunch determination to make it as a thespian. There's also a look at her work in TV favourites such as A Fine Romance and As Time Goes By, where Judi's performances won her four BAFTA awards, and her tenure in the James Bond franchise.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2022-07-15
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Talking Heads 2
Overview: A series of monologues.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1998-10-06
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Victoria Wood with All the Trimmings
Overview: The comedienne stars in this festive sketch show, alongside a host of celebrity guests.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2000-12-25
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Falling
Overview: Television drama based on the novel by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Author Daisy Langrish buys a tranquil country cottage as a bolt-hole from the pressures of her busy London life, but doesn't expect her new home to come complete with a would-be suitor. The day she moves in, local gardener Henry Kent is immediately on hand to help and offer his friendship, but are his intentions sinister?
Genres: Drama Thriller
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2005-03-06
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Celebration
Overview: All the action takes place in a swish London restaurant where two coarse-grained strategy consultants are dining with their respective wives. At an adjacent table a banker and his wife banter over his recently discovered affair. But while Pinter gets a lot of laughs out of these gold-plated philistines, he also suggests they are displaced people. Shorn of any inherited values, they live in an eternal present of sex, food and conspicuous consumption. - Michael Billington, Guardian
Genres: Drama TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2007-02-26
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Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
Overview:
Genres: Drama Romance History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2025-09-10
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The BFG
Overview: An orphan little girl befriends a benevolent giant who takes her to Giant Country, where they attempt to stop the man-eating giants that are invading the human world.
Genres: Adventure Family Fantasy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2016-06-01
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Lucky Jim
Overview: A rollicking adaptation of Kingsley Amis's first novel, Lucky Jim stars Stephen Tompkinson as Jim Dixon, a luckless lecturer at a provincial British university, trying to make a splash with his pompous boss, Professor Neddy Welch (Robert Hardy). Jim is also trying to make it with the woman of his dreams, Christine Callaghan (Keeley Hawes, Othello and Wives and Daughters), while simultaneously being pursued by the woman of his nightmares, fellow lecturer Margaret Peel (Helen McCrory, Anna Karenina). One (of many) complications is that Christine is the girlfriend of Professor Welch's egotistical artist son, Bertrand. Another is that Margaret keeps attempting suicide to get Jim's attention. But despite his misadventures, Jim keeps his eyes on the prize: a leg up on the ladder to a professorship in medieval history.
Genres: Comedy Drama Romance TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2003-04-11
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The Whistle-Blower
Overview: A bank employee, Laura Tracey, places herself and her family in mortal danger after reporting irregularities in the firm's overseas accounts to the National Criminal Intelligence Service. She learns that the money belongs to South American drug cartels, and her family are immediately taken into the Witness Protection Program and relocated.
Genres: Drama Thriller Crime
Original Language: es
Release Date: 2001-04-14
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Half Broken Things
Overview: A middle aged house-sitter meets two tearaways, and together they form a surrogate family
Genres: Drama Thriller
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2007-10-28
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Margot
Overview: At the age of forty Dame Margot Fonteyn is considered to be past her best as a prima ballerina and Ninette de Valois is reducing her roles at the Royal Ballet. Then the exciting young Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev, a recent defector to the West, comes into her life and her bed and revitalizes her career. Frederick Aashton creates a new ballet for them and they become the golden couple of the ballet world. However, Margot is married to Roberto 'Tito' Arias, a Panamanian politician of dubious repute who is not sympathetic to her calling and is probably faithless. When he is shot and paralyzed for life Margot must carry on dancing well into her sixties in order to pay for his costly treatment though she still collaborates with Rudolf in the occasional ballet.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2009-11-30
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National Theatre Live: 50 Years on Stage
Overview: To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the National Theatre of Great Britain presents National Theatre: 50 Years on Stage, bringing together the best British actors for a unique evening of unforgettable performances, broadcast live from London to cinemas around the world.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2013-11-02
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Harold Pinter: A Celebration
Overview: In June 2009, a group Britain's leading actors gathered for one night only to perform a celebration of the work of Harold Pinter at the National Theatre, directed by Ian Rickson. The team who made the acclaimed Harold Pinter documentaries for BBC's Arena was there to record this unique performance.
Genres: TV Movie Drama Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2010-01-24
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The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society
Overview: Free-spirited writer Juliet Ashton forms a life-changing bond with the delightful and eccentric Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, when she decides to write about the book club they formed during the occupation of Guernsey in WWII.
Genres: Romance Drama History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2018-04-19
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Zoo
Overview: Young Tom and his misfit friends fight to save 'Buster' the baby elephant during the German air raid bombings of Belfast in 1941.
Genres: Family War History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2018-06-08
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Summerland
Overview: A woman during the Second World War opens her heart to an evacuee after initially resolving to be rid of him.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2020-07-24
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Eternal Beauty
Overview: When Jane is rejected by life, she spirals into a chaotic, schizophrenic world where love and normality collide with humorous consequences.
Genres: Comedy Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2020-08-21
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Downton Abbey
Overview: The beloved Crawleys and their intrepid staff prepare for the most important moment of their lives. A royal visit from the King and Queen of England will unleash scandal, romance and intrigue that will leave the future of Downton hanging in the balance.
Genres: Drama Romance History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2019-09-12
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Othello
Overview: Iago and a comrade-in-arms are outside the Venice home of Desdemona's father, who does not yet know that she has eloped with Othello. Iago confides to his friend -- who had hoped to marry Desdemona -- that he serves Othello to further his own ends. Venice needs Othello to protect its commercial interests in Cyprus where the Turkish fleet is headed. Desdemona insists on going to Cyprus, too. In Cyprus, Iago plots to convince Othello that Desdemona has betrayed him with Cassio. A lot more than political ambition seems to be motivating Iago.
Genres: Drama TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1981-10-04
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King Lear
Overview: King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1982-09-19
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Operation Mincemeat
Overview: In 1943, two British intelligence officers concoct Operation Mincemeat, wherein their plan to drop a corpse with false papers off the coast of Spain would fool Nazi spies into believing the Allied forces were planning to attack by way of Greece rather than Sicily.
Genres: War History Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2022-04-01
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Pride & Prejudice
Overview: A story of love and life among the landed English gentry during the Georgian era. Mr. Bennet is a gentleman living in Hertfordshire with his overbearing wife and five daughters, but if he dies their house will be inherited by a distant cousin whom they have never met, so the family's future happiness and security is dependent on the daughters making good marriages.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2005-09-16
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Mrs. Warren's Profession
Overview: Performed in 1902, after being banned by the censor for eight years, Shaw's indictment of the hypocrisy surrounding prostitution still shocked its audiences. Mrs. Warren has graduated from prostitution to opening and operating a chain of brothels throughout Europe. When her educated daughter Vivie discovers the truth about her mother's profession her reactions affect everyone around her.
Genres: Drama Comedy TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1972-10-03
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Pasmore
Overview: Colin Pasmore tests his strength against his family ties but finds them stronger than he ever imagined.
Genres: Drama TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1980-10-21
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The Strange Case of Delfina Potocka
Overview: In 1945, the new Polish government asked for the heart of Chopin previously buried in Paris. A woman called Paulina Czernika approached the government claiming to have some love letters from the composer to her great-grandmother, the Countess Delfina Potocka.
Genres: History Music Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1999-01-01
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Downton Abbey: A New Era
Overview: The Crawley family goes on a grand journey to the south of France to uncover the mystery of the dowager countess's newly inherited villa. Meanwhile, a Hollywood director seeks to film his latest production at Downton.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2022-04-27
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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Overview: Harold Fry is an unremarkable man who has made mistakes with all the important things: being a husband, a father and a friend. And now, well into his 60s, he is content to fade quietly into the background of life. Until, one day – Harold learns his old friend Queenie is dying. Harold leaves home, walking to his post office to send her a letter. And out of the blue, Harold decides to keep walking, all the way to her hospice, 450 miles away.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2023-04-27
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Able's Will
Overview: Thomas Able, once a successful writer, has not written since the war. He lies paralysed and dying. His family gather at the family home.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1977-10-05
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The Tale of Beatrix Potter
Overview: Biography based on the life of the author Beatrix Potter.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1983-01-01
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Fing!
Overview: Librarians Mr. and Mrs. Meek indulge their demanding daughter Myrtle's every wish. When she wants a Fing, they search deep in the jungle. After finding one, Myrtle faces off against a Viscount who wants the rare creature.
Genres: Adventure Fantasy
Original Language: en
Release Date:
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