Clive Swift Movies

This long-running TV series features John Thaw as the morose but shrewd detective of the title, who along with his partner -- the dependable Sgt. Lewis -- investigates a variety of murderous crimes against the picturesque back-drop of Oxford, England. ~ Mark Hockley, All Movie Guide

Adapted from the one-act play by Hugh Whitemore, Pack of Lies originally aired as a "Hallmark Hall of Fame" presentation on April 26, 1987. Emmy-nominated Ellen Burstyn plays a Canadian housewife living in England, who dutifully allows a government agent (Alan Bates) into her house. The agent sets up a surveillance post in Burstyn's bedroom, ostensibly to keep close watch on a mysterious stranger. In truth, the agent is investigating Burstyn's neighbors Daniel Benzali and Terri Garr--who happen to be her best friends. Pack of Lies was based on a true story, which like its fictional counterpart coalesced into a melange of skewered ethics, deception and betrayal. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The BBC's six-hour 1985 miniseries adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1836-1837 serial novel The Pickwick Papers stars Nigel Stock, Jeremy Nicholas, Alan Parnaby, and Clive Swift, and originally aired as twelve 30-minute episodes. Familiar to generations of readers, its loosely knit, picaresque story involves Samuel Pickwick (Stock), founder of the Pickwick Club, and his decision to abandon hard work and set off on a series of adventures with friends Nathaniel Winkle (Nicholas), Augustus Snodgrass (Parnaby), and Tracy Tupman (Swift) throughout England. The episodes are numerous and varied; one of the more noteworthy involves Samuel's ongoing battle against Mrs. Bardell, embittered because he has broken his nuptial vow to her. This adaptation has been roundly hailed for capturing the comic spirit and blithe unpredictability of Dickens' original work. Milton Johns, Jo Kendall, and Freda Dowie co-star. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

The Doctor (Colin Baker) and Peri (Nicola Bryant) arrive at Tranquil Repose, a colony on the planet Necros, where the rich and famous can have their recently deceased loved ones cryogenically frozen. Unfortunately, Tranquil Repose currently houses the dormant body of Davros (Terry Molloy), creator of the dreaded Daleks -- but Davros is not quite as dormant as he seems. Written by Eric Saward, the two-part "Revelation of the Daleks" was originally telecast on March 23 and 30, 1985. This final adventure of Doctor Who's 22nd season was later re-edited as a four-chapter cliffhanger for American TV. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This disappointing, pretentious farce by writer and director Peter Ustinov, who also stars as the incompetent but powerful Abki Aga, is based on a novel by Yashar Kemal about Memed (Simon Dutton) a man who escapes into the Turkish hills with the woman he loves (Leonie Mellinger), a woman already betrothed to the nephew of the region's governor (Aga). Even though Memed joins a band of brigands he is not successful when he first tries to kill Aga, who lords it over five different villages and has a sizeable army, and so he tries again. Unfortunately, Turkey is not only the setting, but an apt descriptive term for this 105-minute film. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

As indicated by its title, this British miniseries concentrated on the years between the two world wars, when the eminent Winston Churchill (Robert Hardy) was politically out of favor in his own country. Acutely aware of the danger looming in a newly re-armed Germany, Churchill vainly tried to warn his fellow Britishers that Hitler was not a man to be trusted. It was only after the benighted PM Neville Chamberlain (Eric Porter) saw the promise of "Peace in Our Time" blow up in his face that Churchill was ensconced in his proper position as leader of his nation. First telecast in the U.K. in 1981, Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years aired in the U.S. two years later. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on a novel by David Garnett, Sailor's Return is a British Victorian-era domestic drama, with plenty of domesticity and precious little drama. Tom Bell stars as a sailor who returns to his home village with his new bride (Shope Soleinde). The bride is black; the village is aghast. Struggling against the prejudice of the townsfolk and his own doubts about the wisdom of his union, Bell opens a pub. No distributor wanted to have anything to do with Sailor's Return, a dilemma due less to the film's subject matter than to its production ineptitudes. The film finally got its first showing on British television, two years after its completion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Man at the Top was a theatrical-film spin-off of a popular British TV series, inspired by the earlier movies Room at the Top and Life at the Top. Kenneth Haigh starred in the series as Joe Lampton, the successful but emotionally empty business executive portrayed in the earlier films by Laurence Harvey. In Man at the Top, Lampton (Haigh again) endures a crisis of conscience. He knows that his pharmaceutical firm is about to market an untested and possibly dangerous drug. He is also bound by ties of familial loyalty: His boss (Harry Andrews) happens to be his father-in-law. Nanette Newman, a busy doe-eyed ingenue of the 1960s, is quietly effective as the middle-aged Mrs. Lampton. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Alfred Hitchcock entered the 1970s with his commercial reputation virtually in tatters, a far cry from his stature at the start of the 1960s. Then, he'd been in the middle of the massively successful trio of movies, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds, and was a ubiquitous presence on television thanks to his anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents -- but the series ended, and he'd suffered three expensive box-office failures in a row, Marnie, Torn Curtain, and Topaz, in the second half of the 1960s. He redeemed himself with Frenzy, however, which marked his return not only to England for the first time in 20 years but also to the subject matter with which he'd started his career in thrillers back in 1926 -- murder, and a hunt for a serial killer in London. As the latest female victim of the "Necktie Murderer" is found in the Thames, raped and strangled, we meet Richard Blaney (Jon Finch), a bitter, belligerent ex-Royal Air Force officer who can't seem to find his way in life. He drinks too much and holds grudges too easily, and has an explosive temper, which is very near the surface as he's just lost his job. We also meet his girlfriend, a barmaid (Anna Massey); his ex-wife, a professional matchmaker (Barbara Leigh-Hunt); and his best friend, Covent Garden fruit seller Bob Rusk (Barry Foster). Their connection to the necktie murders will be clear to us in the first 30 minutes of the movie and, not coincidentally, completely misinterpreted by the police, as Chief Inspector Oxford (Alec McCowan) and his men tighten a circle around the wrong man, who rapidly runs out of options and allies.

The chase and suspense are classic Hitchcock, favorably recalling a dozen of his earlier movies, from The Lodger and The 39 Steps through Saboteur and Spellbound to Dial M for Murder and North by Northwest, with some new twists and the added energy afforded by the extensive use of actual London locations. There's also a good deal more sex and nudity here than Hitchcock was ever allowed to use in his earlier movies, owing to the relaxation of "decency" standards that had taken place in the years leading up to this production. The suspense derives from multiple interlocking and overlapping layers of uncertainty -- when will each of the two men, suspect and murderer, slip? (And which will slip first?) When and how will the police realize their mistake, and will it be in time to save the innocent man? Amid the straightforward storytelling and thriller elements, Hitchcock manages to slip in a few bravura cinematic moments, the best of them a pullback shot down a flight of stairs into a busy street as the killer invites his next victim into his home, as well as a scene aboard a truck, with a murderer desperately wrestling with a corpse hidden in a sack of potatoes. Frenzy was adapted from Arthur La Bern's novel Goodbye Picadilly, Farewell Leicester Square by mystery aficionado Anthony Shaffer, but for all of that and its decidedly modern trappings of sex and violence, it bears the indelible stylistic stamp of Alfred Hitchcock. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

British director Peter Hall's 1968 filmization of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, starring the Royal Shakespeare Company, is faithful to the text and to the main plot, which involves the "bewitching" of several groups of mortals by a covey of mischievous invisible fairies. So why did critics complain? Hall's handling of Shakespeare's prose and iambic pentameter didn't bother the purists as much as the director's visual choices. Hall was criticized for staging the film in a typically rainy British winter rather than the mid-Summer alluded to in the play's title. The director responded by pointing out that the fairies, led by Oberon and Titania, were deliberately toying with the expectations and sensibilities of the Mortals -- thus, it made sense to confuse the "human" characters by playing havoc with the weather. Other stylistic alterations included updating the story to the 19th century, and the near-nudity of Judi Dench as Titania. Most of the film is shot in close-up (most effectively during the soliloquies of Diana Rigg, as Helena), not so much to hide budgetary deficiencies as to play better on television. Also featuring Ian Holm (as Puck) Barbara Jefford, Helen Mirren, Michael Jayston, Paul Rogers, Ian Richardson and David Warner, this Midsummer Night's Dream premiered in the U.S. on the CBS TV network on Sunday evening, February 9, 1969. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Duane Huey's The Funny Blokes of British Comedy features Lenny Henry presenting a series of clips of some of the most famous comics in British television. Included are Fawlty Towers clips featuring John Cleese, scenes from Father Ted with Ardal O'Hanlon, and memorable moments from Black Adder starring Rowan Atkinson ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide