Prunella Scales Filmography

The Human Face, Part 3: Does Beauty Matter?

Actors: John Cleese

Synopsis: The human face is what attracts and repels humans meeting other humans. This process is mysterious. This four-volume program from The Learning Channel investigates many aspects of the human face, from beauty to facial expression. John Cleese acts as narrator and host to a number of guests who Read More

The Human Face, Part 4: Famous Faces

Actors: John Cleese

Synopsis: The human face is what attracts and repels humans meeting other humans. This process is mysterious. This four-volume program from The Learning Channel investigates many aspects of the human face, from beauty to facial expression. John Cleese acts as narrator and host to a number of guests who Read More

The Human Face, Part 1: Secrets of the Face

Actors: John Cleese

Synopsis: The human face is what attracts and repels humans meeting other humans. This process is mysterious. This four-volume program from The Learning Channel investigates many aspects of the human face, from beauty to facial expression. John Cleese acts as narrator and host to a number of guests who Read More

Midsomer Murders: Beyond the Grave

Actors: John Nettles, Daniel Casey, Jane Wymark, Laura Howard, Barry Jackson

Synopsis: The 13th feature-length episode of the British detective series Midsomer Murders, "Beyond the Grave" is set in motion by a mysterious act of vandalism at the Aspen Tallow museum. When a 17th century painting is slashed to pieces, the superstitious locals believe that the damage was the handiwork Read More

Station Jim

Actors: Thomas Sangster, George Cole, Charlie Creed-Miles, Frank Finlay, Laura Fraser

Synopsis: After from escaping the clutches of his cruel master and making his way to a remote country railway station, a performing dog in Victorian England becomes a mascot for the local orphanage in this family friendly tale starring George Cole and Thomas Sangster. When the lonely but lovable pooch Read More

Stiff Upper Lips

Actors: Peter Ustinov, Prunella Scales, Georgina Cates, Samuel West, Sean Pertwee

Synopsis: This 5.7-million-dollar British comedy from writer/director Gary Sinyor satirizes the now-familiar Merchant-Ivory style of period dramas. So no one will miss the joke, the central setting is Ivory Hall, the Ivory family mansion in rural England. In 1908, young twit Edward Ivory (Samuel West) plans Read More

Midsomer Murders: Death's Shadow

Synopsis: Midsomer Murders: Death's Shadow features John Netters as Inspector Barnaby who investigates a popular stage director about a series of murders. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide Read More

Midsomer Murders: Strangler's Wood

Synopsis: Midsomer Murders: Strangler's Wood features John Netters as Inspector Barnaby who must deal with unpleasant memories while investigating the death of a woman from Brazil. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide Read More

Midsomer Murders: Blood Will Out

Synopsis: Midsomer Murders: Blood Will Out features John Netters as Inspector Barnaby who must deal with the townfolk reacting outrageously to a group of people traveling through the area. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide Read More

The Big Knights

Actors: Brian Blessed, David Rintoul, Xander Armstrong, Timothy West, Enn Reitel

Mad Cows

Actors: Anna Friel, Joanna Lumley, Anna Massey, Phyllida Law, Greg Wise

Synopsis: Mad Cows is a slapstick comedy about sex and the singles scene. Single and confused Maddy has just had a baby. The first day that she goes out with her baby, she gets arrested at Harrods for shoplifting. While in detention at the Holloway Prison's Mother and Baby Unit, she smuggles Jack out in her Read More

Dalziel and Pascoe: An Advancement of Learning

Actors: Warren Clarke, Colin Buchanan

Synopsis: In this British made-for-TV mystery, the title sleuths investigate the murder of a school principal. It's a puzzling case, because while every one knew he was dead, his body was supposedly buried in Austria. Instead, the body is accidentally unearthed beneath the memorial erected for him on the Read More

Emma

Actors: Raymond Coulthard, Olivia Williams, Kate Beckinsale, Mark Strong, Samantha Morton

Synopsis: In this made-for-TV adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel, Emma Woodhouse (Kate Beckinsale) is a clever young woman from a wealthy family who fancies herself a matchmaker and tries to find a husband for her shy friend Harriet (Samantha Morton). However, Emma's skills in bringing romances Read More

Breaking the Code

Actors: Derek Jacobi

Synopsis: Originally produced for the BBC and Masterpiece Theatre, Breaking the Code tells the life story of the famed mathematician and computer science pioneer Alan Turing, the primary designer of the Turing Machine, an early computer used to solve the German Enigma code during World War II, a solution Read More

The World of Lee Evans [TV Series]

Actors: Lee Evans, Caroline Aherne, John Thomson, Prunella Scales, Tony Selby

Synopsis: This British comedy anthology consisted of four short plays, each written by and starring Lee Evans in the zany tradition of Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean. The playlets placed Evans in a variety of universally recognizable situations, enabling him to gracefully (?) segue into visual and verbal Read More

Second Best

Actors: William Hurt, Chris Cleary Miles, Keith Allen, Prunella Scales, Jane Horrocks

Synopsis: Actor William Hurt delivers one of his most acclaimed performances in this drama from Oscar-winning cinematographer-turned-director Chris Menges. Hurt stars as Graham Holt, a repressed Welsh postmaster who lives a reclusive bachelor's existence with his suicidal father (Alfred Lynch), who is in Read More

Wolf

Actors: Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, James Spader, Kate Nelligan, Richard Jenkins, Christopher Plummer

Synopsis: Jack Nicholson becomes a werewolf in this bizarre comedy-horror film directed by Mike Nichols. Nicholson plays Will Randall, a book editor with a testosterone deficit who has just been sacked at his publishing firm by a new boss, Raymond Alden (Christopher Plummer). A colleague, Stewart Swinton (James Spader Read More

The Rector's Wife

Actors: Lindsay Duncan, Stephen Dillane, Ronald Pickup, Jonathan Coy

Synopsis: The wife of a kind but uninteresting preacher is scorned by her community for supplementing the family income by taking a job at the local grocery store in this drama starring Lindsay Duncan and based on the book by Joanna Trollope. Anna Bouverie's husband has been passed over for a job promotion Read More

An Awfully Big Adventure

Actors: Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant, Georgina Cates, Alun Armstrong, Peter Firth

Synopsis: A misleading title and a different type of performance from Hugh Grant are two of the offbeat features of An Awfully Big Adventure. Virginal theatre fanatic Stella (Georgina Cates), who speaks with her dead mother by phone, joins a theatrical troupe in 1947 England headed by manipulative director Read More

My Friend Walter

Freddie as F.R.O.7

Actors: John Sessions, Billie Whitelaw, Ben Kingsley, Jenny Agutter, Brian Blessed, Nigel Hawthorne, Michael Hordern, Jonathan Pryce

Synopsis: A steamer trunk full of the voices of British acting greats (Ben Kingsley, Billie Whitelaw, Michael Hordern, Brian Blessed, and Jonathan Pryce) enliven this absurd pop-cartoon parody of the James Bond films. In a prologue taking place in a faraway time, a widowed magician-king (voice of Michael Hordern Read More

Howards End

Actors: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave, Helena Bonham Carter, James Wilby, Samuel West

Synopsis: One of the best Ismail Merchant/James Ivory films, this adaptation of E. M. Forster's classic 1910 novel shows in careful detail the injuriously rigid British class consciousness of the early 20th century. The film's catalyst is "poor relation" Margaret Schlegel (Emma Thompson), who inherits part Read More

A Question of Attribution

Actors: James Fox, Geoffrey Palmer, David Calder, Edward de Souza

Synopsis: James Fox stars as real-life British turncoat Anthony Blunt in A Question of Attribution. A highly respected art expert (he was Queen Elizabeth's personal art advisor), Blunt was also intimately involved in the Burgess-Maclean-Philby spy scandal of the 1950s. According to this 1992 adaptation of Read More

A Chorus of Disapproval

Actors: Jeremy Irons, Anthony Hopkins, Prunella Scales, Jenny Seagrove, Sylvia Syms

Synopsis: Alan Ayckbourn's riotously funny play about a small-time acting troupe in the sticks is brought to the screen by director Michael Winner. Jeremy Irons plays Guy Jones, a mild-mannered flunky for an electronics firm who finds himself transferred to the British seaside town of Scarsborough. Bereft Read More

Consuming Passions

Actors: Vanessa Redgrave, Jonathan Pryce, Tyler Butterworth, Freddie Jones, Sammi Davis

Synopsis: A British production created by Monty Python alumni, this film concerns an inept chocolate-factory executive (Tyler Butterworth) who accidentally knocks three workers into a vat. The product is an incredible hit with consumers, though one of the workers' widows (Vanessa Redgrave) is considering Read More

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

Actors: Maggie Smith, Bob Hoskins, Wendy Hiller, Marie Kean, Ian McNeice

Synopsis: Judith Hearne (Maggie Smith) is a middle-aged "maiden lady" piano teacher living in 1950s Dublin. Timid and self-deprecating, Judith permits herself to yearn over her new boarding-house neighbor, hotel entrepreneur Bob Hoskins. Hoskins thinks that Judith has enough money to bankroll his latest Read More

Mapp and Lucia: Series 01

Actors: Geraldine McEwan, Prunella Scales, Nigel Hawthorne

The Wicked Lady

Actors: Faye Dunaway, Alan Bates, John Gielgud, Denholm Elliott, Prunella Scales

Synopsis: Faye Dunaway stars in Michael Winner's labored re-make of the 1945 swashbuckler, which was co-scripted by Leslie Arliss, the original director of the 1945 film. Dunaway is Lady Barbara Skelton, a lady of the royal class, who becomes a highway robber, taking up with Captain Jerry Jackson (Alan Bates Read More

Wagner

Actors: Richard Burton, Vanessa Redgrave, Laszlo Galffi, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson

Synopsis: Originally a nine-hour British miniseries, this film on the last four decades in the life of Richard Wagner may have taken its long-winded cue from the lengthy operas of the famous 19th-century German composer and musical theorist -- the Ring des Nibelungen is 14-15 hours in itself, divided into Read More

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Actors: Ben Kingsley

Synopsis: Windsor is a peaceful town on the Thames where hardly a leaf falls to disturb the silence. And then England's most notorious mischief maker, Sir John Falstaff (Richard Griffiths), arrives from London with his hooligans -- Bardolph (Gordon Gostelow), Nym (Michael Robbins), and Pistol (Nigel Terry) Read More

Fawlty Towers: The Psychiatrist

Synopsis: Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) discovers that one of his guests has smuggled an attractive young woman into his room, and Basil, more than a bit jealous, is determined to catch him red-handed. Meanwhile, Basil learns that two of his guests, Mr. and Mrs. Abbott (Basil Henson and Elspet Gray) are Read More

Fawlty Towers: Series 02

Actors: John Cleese, Prunella Scales, Andrew Sachs, Connie Booth, Ballard Berkeley

Synopsis: Originally broadcast from February 19 to October 25, 1979, the second and final season of BBC2's Fawlty Towers finds Torquay hotelier Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) continuing to insult and terrorize guests and staffers alike, while Basil's wife Sybil (Prunella Scales) proves anew that she is the most Read More

Fawlty Towers: The Kipper and the Corpse

Synopsis: Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) gets a cut-price deal on some kippers which were well past their sell-by date. Shortly after they're served with breakfast at the Fawlty Towers dining room, one of the guests dies, and Basil is certain a spoiled kipper was to blame. While a doctor assures Basil the Read More

Fawlty Towers: Basil the Rat

Synopsis: When the health department gives the Fawlty Towers kitchen a surprise inspection, Basil (John Cleese) is informed that the sanitation is far below acceptable standards and is given 24 hours to get the place ship-shape. Basil assigns his staff to give the kitchen a thorough cleaning, but when he Read More

The Boys From Brazil

Actors: Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen

Synopsis: This film of Ira Levin's novel The Boys from Brazil wastes no time in establishing the fact that several seemingly unrelated men have been mysteriously murdered. Elderly Jewish Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), brought into the case when the clues seem to point to a neo-fascist plot Read More

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Actors: Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Denholm Elliott, Joan Greenwood, Terry-Thomas

Synopsis: The concept behind the 1977 Hound of the Baskervilles involved having "underground" director Paul Morrissey bring an irreverent slant to the original Sherlock Holmes mystery. The film thus casts Peter Cook and Dudley Moore as Holmes and Watson, with such reliable British performers as Read More

Fawlty Towers: Vol. 3

Synopsis: Fawlty Towers was a half-hour British sitcom starring John Cleese as bumbling hotelier Basil Fawlty and Prunella Scales as Basil's nagging wife Sybil. This compilation consists of three episodes from the series' 1977 season: "Hotel Inspectors," "Germans," and "A Touch of Class." Featured in the Read More

Fawlty Towers: Vol. 4

Synopsis: Fawlty Towers was a half-hour British sitcom starring John Cleese as bumbling hotelier Basil Fawlty and Prunella Scales as Basil's nagging wife Sybil. This compilation consists of three episodes from the series' 1977 season: "Builders," "The Wedding Party" and "The Psychiatrist." Advocates of Read More

Fawlty Towers: Vol. 1

Synopsis: Fawlty Towers was a half-hour British sitcom starring John Cleese as bumbling hotelier Basil Fawlty and Prunella Scales as Basil's nagging wife Sybil. This compilation consists of three episodes from the series' 1977 season: "Communication Problems," "The Anniversary," and "Basil the Rat." The Read More

Fawlty Towers: Vol. 2

Synopsis: Fawlty Towers was a half-hour British sitcom starring John Cleese as bumbling hotelier Basil Fawlty and Prunella Scales as Basil's nagging wife Sybil. This compilation consists of three episodes from the series' 1977 season: "Gourmet Night", "Waldorf Salad," and "The Kipper and the Corpse". Read More

The Littlest Horse Thieves

Actors: Alastair Sim, Peter Barkworth, Maurice Colbourne, Susan Tebbs, Geraldine McEwan

Synopsis: The Littlest Horse Thieves is a Walt Disney Production. Set in early 20th-century England, the film concerns three Yorkshire children who take pity on the ponies that are used as beasts of burden in the coal mines. The kids "liberate" the ponies with the help of a sympathetic groom. This action Read More

Fawlty Towers: Series 01

Actors: John Cleese, Prunella Scales, Andrew Sachs, Connie Booth, Ballard Berkeley

Synopsis: Terminally rude hotelier Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) and his garrulous, supremely unhelpful wife Sybil (Prunella Scales) open the doors of their Torquay inn to a wide variety of hapless customers as Fawlty Towers launches its first season on BBC2. Originally telecast on September 19, 1975, the Read More

The Apple Cart

Fawlty Towers [TV Series]

Actors: John Cleese, Prunella Scales, Andrew Sachs, Connie Booth, Brian Hall

Synopsis: " 'Nutter' runs small hotel" is the terse-but-true description given by an English catalog to the weekly comedy series Fawlty Towers. Created by John Cleese, the series stars Cleese as Basil Fawlty, the insufferable--and insufferably inept--owner-manager of a tenth-rate British hotel. Co-starring Read More

Waltz of the Toreadors

Actors: Peter Sellers, Dany Robin, Margaret Leighton, John Fraser, Cyril Cusack

Synopsis: Fitzjohn (Peter Sellers) is a retired general who is miserable at home with his shrewish wife Emily (Margaret Leighton). He dreams of younger days when he enjoyed the platonic company of the beautiful Ghislaine (Dany Robin). After many years, she shows up at his door and expresses her desire to Read More

Room at the Top

Actors: Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears, Donald Wolfit, Donald Houston, Ambrosine Phillpotts

Synopsis: Ruthless young working-class Englishman Laurence Harvey takes a job in a North Country village controlled by millionaire Donald Wolfit. Harvey resents Wolfit's class consciousness and vows to rise to the top by wooing the millionaire's daughter, Heather Sears. Meanwhile he has an affair with Read More

What Every Woman Wants

Actors: William Sylvester, Elsy Albiin, Patric Doonan, Dominic Roche

Synopsis: What Every Woman Wants!, at least according to this British comedy-drama, is a roof over her head. Elsy Albin and Patric Doonan play Jane and Mark, a newlywed couple with no home of their own. Forced to live with Jane's parents, the young marrieds are never permitted a moment's privacy. Read More

Hobson's Choice

Actors: Charles Laughton, John Mills, Brenda de Banzie, Daphne Anderson, Prunella Scales

Synopsis: A "Hobson's Choice," as any slang expert will tell you, is no choice at all. In this 1953 filmization of Harold Brighouse's 1915 play Hobson's Choice, hero John Mills finds after several reels of evidence to the contrary that he does have a choice over how he'll conduct his life after all. Mills Read More

Scotch on the Rocks

Actors: Ronald Squire

Synopsis: A small Scottish island has never paid its mandatory road tax. This brings forth an investigating committee of Parliament members, including the formidable Ronald Squire. The committee heads to the delinquent Hebridean isle, where they succumb to the easygoing charm of the residents. Cowritten by Read More

Fawlty Towers: The Germans

Roald Dahl's Dirty Beasts