James MacTaggart Movies
- 1974
Sarah Sutton stars as Alice in this adaptation (produced for British television) of Lewis Carroll's classic fantasy of a young girl who discovers a remarkable fantasy world on the other side of the mirror. Alice Thru the Looking Glass also features Freddie Jones as Humpty Dumpty, Brenda Bruce as the White Queen, and Raymond Mason and Anthony Collin as, respectively, Tweedledee and Tweedledum. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Brenda Bruce
- 1972
The 1972 film Robinson Crusoe is a fine animated version of the classic Daniel Defoe story of a shipwrecked sailor who has to struggle to survive on a deserted island. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi
- 1972
Scotch on the Rocks is a rarity in the realm of speculative political novels in that it was penned by a former British foreign secretary, Douglas Home (with the assistance of freelancer Andrew Osmond). Set in the near future, the plot concerned a particularly volatile Scottish separatist movement. Enlisting the participation of thousands of knife-wielding street gang members, the movement managed to expunge all British authority in Scotland. This political upheaval coincided with a mysterious wave of livestock deaths, leaving the Scottish countryside dotted with the rotting corpses of unfortunate sheep. Could this phenomenon be tied in with the separatists -- and if so, what was the real agenda of the insurgents? The hero of the piece was British PM Harvey, a character rather blatantly patterned after the author of the piece. A five-part TV adaptation of Scotch on the Rocks was seen over BBC's Scotland service in 1972, nearly 25 years before Scotland actually did declare its independence from Britain -- not by violence, but through peaceful transition of power, spurred on by the popularity of the Mel Gibson theatrical feature Braveheart. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 1970
Warren Mitchell stars in All the Way Up as a dimwitted British salesman. Though a bit shy in the brains department, Mitchell has hopes of climbing the corporate ladder. To do this, he tries to whip his addled family into a semblance of social acceptability. This being a comedy, Mitchell soon learns that his high-society aspirations are not only beyond his reach, but also not worth all the bother. All the Way Up was based on Semi-Detached, a play by David Turner. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Warren Mitchell, Pat Heywood, (more)
- 1961
The BBC anthology Storyboard consisted of six original half-hour dramas. Among the writers involved were John Wyndham, of Day of the Triffids fame. Individual titles included "The Gentleman From Paris," "The Magic Barrel," "The Middle Men," "The Long Spoon," "I'll Be Waiting," and "Tickets to Trieste." Originally telecast in 1961, Storyboard should not be confused with the much-later British series of the same name, which consisted entirely of pilots for unsold TV series. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
