Bill Paterson Movies

Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize-winning novel of love and betrayal amidst the Soviet Revolution is given a new interpretation for the small screen in this made-for-television adaptation. Yury Zhivago (Hans Matheson) is a young man who is sent to live with his aunt and uncle, Anna and Alexander Gromeko, (Celia Imrie and Bill Paterson) after his father takes his own life as a result of the machinations of his corrupt business partner, Victor Komarovsky (Sam Neill). As Zhivago grows to manhood and studies to be a physician, he falls in love with his cousin Tonya (Alexandra Maria Lara), but one day he sees a beautiful woman and immediately becomes deeply infatuated. Zhivago learns that the woman in question is Lara Guishar (Keira Knightley), whose mother is the lover of Komarovsky. Eventually, Zhivago marries Tonya, and Lara weds Pasha Antipov (Kris Marshall), a passionate Bolshevik. As World War I breaks out, Zhivago once again crosses paths with Lara, who has become a combat nurse and is searching for her missing husband. After Zhivago is severely wounded, Lara nurses him back to heath, and along the way the two fall deeply in love. However, after the end of the war, the reality of Zhivago's marriage to Tonya puts a halt to their romance, and the explosive impact of the Soviet Revolution changes the shape and character of the land they knew, especially when Lara discovers that her husband is not dead, but has become a powerful and calculating leader of the new regime. Doctor Zhivago had its American debut on the acclaimed PBS anthology series Masterpiece Theatre. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this downbeat drama, Cameron Colley (Jonny Lee Miller) is a journalist whose career has gone into a slump; he's working for a second-rate tabloid and is looking for a story that will help him move on to better things. Colley also has a secret: he's been having an affair with Yvonne (Keely Hawes), the wife of his close friend William (Jason Hetherington). Colley has been getting tip-offs by telephone from a man calling himself Mr. Archer, who claims to be a government intelligence agent and suggests Cameron look into a series of murders that have been occurring in London. Cameron's research suggests that the three victims were all involved in a scandal over the sale of British arms to the Middle East, but police inspector McDunn (Brian Cox) sees things a bit differently; he thinks there could be a link between the murders and a story Cameron wrote suggesting certain public figures who betray the trust of the people might be better off dead. As Cameron tries to prove he's not to blame for the killings, he wonders if someone he knows might be trying to set him up. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Director Gavin Miller adapts Scottish author Iain Banks' novel about a troubled young man striving to unearth the secrets of his family past while simultaneously sleuthing to find out what fate really befell his long-missing uncle. Prentice McHoan (Joseph McFadden) is an emotionally confused and self-destructive boy from a family that seems particularly prone to premature death. He resents his father (Bill Paterson), is deeply jealous of his handsome and witty brother, and harbors a secret crush on his pretty cousin. Six years ago, Prentice's uncle Rory went missing without a trace. While some believe Rory is simply wandering, others -- such as Prentice's mother -- suspect that he has in fact died. Though Prentice at first views his father's atheistic apathy toward the situation as a hindrance, he gradually discovers that there may be some merit to the older and wiser man's mindset. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

This third feature film version of Joseph Conrad's tragic romantic drama (the best of which remains John Cromwell's 1940 adaptation) is the one that stick's closest to the original story of a reclusive, hard-hearted fellow living on a private island in the Dutch East Indies who must protect his home, and the woman he comes to love, from two brutish villains. The story is told by a sea captain and begins at a turn-of-the century hotel in the port town of Surabaya where the Dutch entrepreneurs come to drink and wind down while listening to an all-female orchestra led by creepy conductor Sam Giancomo (Simon Callow). The joint is owned by an unpleasant, bigoted German named Schomberg (Jean Yanne) who constantly pesters the conductor to sell him Alma (Irene Jacob), the prettiest girl in the band. Eventually Sam relents, causing the frightened Alma to beseech taciturn patron Axel Heyst (Willem Dafoe) to help her escape. At first Axel refuses, but then has a change of heart and takes her with him to his lonely island where she will live with himself and his valet Wang (Ho Yi). Initially, Axel wants nothing to do with Alma, but things change and they become lovers. Meanwhile, the vengeful Schomberg plots revenge. He gets a chance to enact it with the arrival of the villainous Mr. Jones (Sam Neill) and his henchmen who turn Schomberg's bar into a gambling house. Seeing that Jones is ruthless and avaricious, Schomberg casually mentions that there is an untapped fortune lying in an abandoned mine located on Axel's island. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This four-hour, six-episode British miniseries, broadcast on Channel 4 in 1989 and in America on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre in 1990, provided the basis for Traffic, Steven Soderbergh's 2000 Oscar winner. Though Soderbergh and screenwriter Stephen Gaghan borrowed much of their plot and structure from the original, Traffik focuses on the European drug trade instead of the American one and utilizes England, Germany, and Pakistan as its major settings. One of the three primary plot strands involves Jack Lithgow (Bill Paterson), a member of the British Parliament, who discovers that his daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormond), is a heroin addict despite the fact that he leads the country's Drug Abuse Committee. In a parallel story line, Helen Rosshalde (Lindsay Duncan), the British wife of German drug smuggler Karl Rosshalde (George Kukura), must take over her husband's illegal operations after an associate turns state's evidence and Karl goes on trial. In the third interwoven segment, and the one that diverges the farthest from the plot of the American film, Pakistani poppy farmer Fazel (Jamal Shah) ingratiates himself to drug overlord Tariq Butt (Talat Hussain) in order to support his family after the Pakistani government, at the insistence of Lithgow and other British officials, cracks down on the subsistence-level farmers who supply the heroin trade with its raw materials. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

James Richards is an ordinary middle-class man living a very comfortable and orderly life in London, working as a statistician. In this drama, he discovers that his safe and cozy world is rife with hidden corners and unimagined dangers. He first discovers that things are not as they seem when, through a client, he learns of a special film that has been suppressed by the British government. His search for that film leads him into the labyrinth of underground tunnels and offices which were built under the city during World War II, and he is pitted against an organized government conspiracy. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

With the notable exception of Pennies From Heaven, The Singing Detective was the best-known TV miniseries project of the iconoclastic, darkly humored Dennis Potter. A reworking of Potter's first novel Hide and Seek, the six-part series starred Michael Gambon as crime novelist Philip E. Marlow. Suffering from a hellish skin-and-nerve disease called psoriatic arthroparthy (a painful infliction which ultimately killed the real-life Potter), Marlow was confined to a hospital bed, where under the influence of numerous prescription drugs he began to imagine himself as the hard-boiled hero of his latest detective novel. While trying to solve a difficult case, Marlow continually drifted backward in time to his childhood in the Forest of Dean, occasionally bursting into song to express his emotions. As fantasy and reality merged into one, Marlow was forced into a tortuous session of self-analysis and personal discovery. Virtually everyone in the cast was seen in double and triple roles, including nominal leading ladies Alison Steadman and Joanne Whalley (aka Joanne Whalley-Kilmer). The series earned two BAFTA awards (the British equivalent of the Emmys), one for Best Actor to Michael Gambon. After its initial BBC1 run from November 16, to December 21, 1986, The Singing Detective was shown in the United States via public and cable television, where it picked up another award, the prestigious Peabody, in 1989. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this dark British comedy, a despondent businessman (Graham Chapman) decides to end it all after his wife leaves him. Unfortunately, he lacks the courage to do it to himself and so hires a professional assassin, telling him to do the deed no matter what. A short time passes and things look considerably brighter for the businessman who suddenly decides he wants to live. Unfortunately, nothing he says can convince his would be killer to stop his pursuit, and comic mayhem ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Frequent Curb Your Enthusiasm director Robert B. Weide makes his feature directorial debut with this screen adaptation of British writer Toby Young's comedic novel of the same name. When self-promoting scribe Sidney Young (Simon Pegg) accepts a position as a contributing editor for iconic fashion magazine "Sharps," his subsequent attempts to ingratiate himself with both his egotistical boss, Clayton Harding, and the superficial celebrities who populate the pages of the magazine prove disastrously hilarious. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The fortunes of a family of Hungarian Jews are followed over the course of nearly 150 years in this epic historical drama, with leading man Ralph Fiennes playing three different roles. The story begins in the late 18th century, as Aaron and Josefa Sonnenschein (the name means "Sunshine" in German) die in an explosion while making an herb tonic for sale in their village. Their son Emmanuel (David de Keyser), the only survivor of the tragedy, travels to Budapest, carrying the recipe for the medicine with him. He's able to parlay the formula into a successful business, and Emmanuel and his wife Rose (Miriam Margolyes) raise two sons, Ignatz (Ralph Fiennes), who becomes a successful lawyer, and hot-tempered Gustave (James Frain). The Sonnenscheins also make room in their home for Valerie (Jennifer Ehle), but Emmanuel and Rose become furious when Valerie becomes romantically involved with Ignatz. Eventually, Valerie and Ignatz raise two children, Istvan (Mark Strong) and Adam (Ralph Fiennes), and the family changes its name to Sors in hopes of avoiding the anti-Semitism sweeping Europe. In time, Adam goes so far as to convert to Catholicism, and he marries another Catholic, Hannah (Molly Parker). He soon begins an affair with his brother's wife, Greta (Rachel Weisz), who is unable to persuade Adam to leave as the Nazis rise to power. Adam and Hannah have only one son, Ivan, who is fated to watch his father die in a concentration camp; as Ivan grows to adulthood (now played by Ralph Fiennes), he swears revenge on the forces of fascism and embraces Communism. Ivan throws in his lot with Communist leader Andor Knorr (William Hurt), but a liaison with the wife of a party official (Deborah Kara Unger) leads Ivan to tragic consequences and a jail term. In time, Valarie and Gustave are reunited at the family's estate as the only two members of the Sonnenschein clan who survive to witness the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Hungarian director Istvan Szabo co-wrote Sunshine's original screenplay in collaboration with American playwright Israel Horovitz. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Richard Loncraine takes Shakespeare's classic tale of treachery, Richard III, and transplants it to the 1930s. Ian McKellen is Richard who, as the film opens, begins plotting against his brother Edward, who has just ascended to the throne after a bloody civil war. Richard begins by seducing and wedding Lady Anne (Kristin Scott Thomas), whom he made a widow during the war. With the help of some loyal henchmen, Richard succeeds in murdering his older brother Clarence (Nigel Hawthorne), which so upsets Edward that he dies. Eventually, the crown falls to the young Prince of Wales (Marc Williamson). Richard is assigned to be the young king's protector, but instead, he has the boy and his brother jailed in the Tower of London. Richard seizes control over the country, but his ruthless quest for power eventually makes him powerful enemies, led by Henry Richman (Dominic West), who attempt to stop him. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide