Timothy Bateson Filmography

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont

Actors: Joan Plowright, Rupert Friend, Zoe Tapper, Anna Massey, Robert Lang

Synopsis: An elderly widow and a young would-be author strike up an unlikely friendship in this comedy drama. Mrs. Palfrey (Joan Plowright) has been uneasy since the death of her husband, and she decides to move from her long-time home in Scotland to London so she can be closer to her grandson Desmond (Lorcan O'Toole Read More

Ladies in Lavender

Actors: Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Daniel Brühl, Miriam Margolyes, Natascha McElhone

Synopsis: Two sisters engage in a subtle war for the affections of a man half their age in this British comedy drama. It's 1936, and Janet Widdington (Maggie Smith) and her sister, Ursula (Judi Dench), are a pair of elderly spinsters who share a home in Cornwall on the coast of England. After a storm, the Read More

All or Nothing

Actors: Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville, Alison Garland, James Corden, Ruth Sheen

Synopsis: After a rather decided departure with his 1999 homage to Gilbert and Sullivan, Topsy-Turvy, Mike Leigh returns to his usual form for All or Nothing, a melancholy look at the day-to-day lives of a dysfunctional lower-middle class British family called the Bassetts. Timothy Spall and Lesley Manville Read More

The 10th Kingdom

Actors: Kimberly Payne Williams, John Larroquette, Scott Cohen, Daniel Lapaine, Dianne Wiest

Synopsis: This ten-hour mini-series extravaganza originally aired on February 26, 2000 on NBC, and concerns the fate of a janitor, Tony (John Larroquette), and his lovely daughter Virginia (Kimberly Williams), who mysteriously find themselves in a land where fairies, trolls, and elves live. Their attempts Read More

Merlin

Actors: Sam Neill, Isabella Rossellini, Miranda Richardson, Martin Short, Rutger Hauer

Synopsis: This four-hour fantasy miniseries, elaborating on the Arthurian legend and filmed in England and Wales, offers a portrait of the wizard Merlin (Sam Neill), following his life as a youth (Daniel Brocklebank) to his later conflicts with the evil Queen Mab (Miranda Richardson) and his love for Nimue (Isabella Rossellini Read More

The Clandestine Marriage

Actors: Nigel Hawthorne, Joan Collins, Timothy Spall, Tom Hollander, Paul Nicholls

Synopsis: In this period piece set in England in 1776, Betsy, the eldest daughter of the 'nouveau riche' Sterling family from the city, is to wed Sir John, the son of the aristocratic but poor Ogleby family from the country. However, Betsy's sister Fanny, who has secretly married her father's clerk by whom Read More

For My Baby

Actors: Alan Cumming, Juliet Aubrey, Frank Finlay, Elizabeth Spriggs, Serena Gordon

Synopsis: Scottish comedian Alan Cumming stars in this Dutch psychological drama, set in Vienna but mainly filmed in Budapest. Crazed stand-up comedian Daniel (Cumming) pleases his hospitalized mother (Hedi Temessy) by dressing to resemble his sister Hannah, who died in a Nazi concentration camp. After his Read More

Heart of Darkness

Actors: John Malkovich, Tim Roth

Synopsis: Previously the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), the dark novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, a parable about greed-inspired colonialism, was adapted into this television movie by offbeat filmmaker Nicolas Roeg. Ambitious sailor Marlow (Tim Roth) is employed by Read More

Hard Times

Actors: Richard E. Grant, Alan Bates

Synopsis: The difficult realities of life in Britain during the early Industrial Age are explored in this made-for-television adaptation of the novel by Charles Dickens. Thomas Gradgrind (Bob Peck) is a schoolteacher working in Coketown, a grim industrial town in the North of England, who believes that Read More

Old Rococo: The Life of Gioacchino Rossini

Actors: Colin Nears

Synopsis: Filmmaker Colin Nears examines the life and career of Italian opera composer Gioacchino Rossini in this documentary that ponders, among other things, the reasons why the prolific author of such beloved comic operas as The Barber of Seville suddenly gave up writing at the age of thirty-seven. By Read More

Never Come Back

Actors: Nathaniel Parker

Synopsis: Nathaniel Parker plays Desmond Thane, a young journalist in 1939 London. Much against his will, the wide-eyed Thane becomes embroiled in a murder case. Though the constabulary insists that everything is under control, Thane can't shake the feeling that something bigger is at stake. He suspicions Read More

A Handful of Dust

Actors: James Wilby, Kristin Scott Thomas, Rupert Graves, Anjelica Huston, Alec Guinness

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Evelyn Waugh, Handful of Dust is set amongst Britain's aristocracy of the 1930s. At sumptuous Hetton Abbey, tradition-bound country squire James Wilby and his wife Kristin Scott Thomas open their doors to well-connected but impoverished Rupert Graves. Graves returns Wilby's Read More

Foreign Body

Actors: Victor Banerjee, Warren Mitchell, Geraldine McEwan, Denis Quilley, Amanda Donohoe

Synopsis: Victor Banerjee, the India-born star of David Lean's A Passage to India, is the central figure of director Ronald L. Neame's Foreign Body. Jobless in Calcutta, Banerjee steals money from his own father to afford passage to Britain. There he makes contact with his cousin Warren Mitchell, who Read More

Labyrinth

Actors: David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, Toby Froud, Brian Henson, Shelley Thompson, Christopher Malcolm

Synopsis: George Lucas produced and Jim Henson directed this gothic fantasy which pits living and breathing actors Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie (who, along with Trevor Jones, provides the film's music) against a motley collection of Muppet monsters. The film centers upon teenage Sarah (Connelly), who Read More

A Christmas Carol

Actors: David Warner, George C. Scott

Synopsis: Charles Dickens' classic holiday tale of one man learning the true meaning of Christmas is brought to the screen once again in this made-for-TV movie. Ebenezer Scrooge (George C. Scott) is a cynical old man whose greatest concern is money, and who regards compassion as a luxury he can't afford. On Read More

The High Road to China

Actors: Tom Selleck, Bess Armstrong, Jack Weston, Wilford Brimley, Robert Morley

Synopsis: O'Malley (Tom Selleck) is a heavy-drinking, tough biplane pilot flying the skies of China for fun and profit when Eve (Bess Armstrong) seeks him out to help her find her father before he is declared dead and she loses an inheritance to the evil Bentik (Robert Morley). O'Malley does not really want Read More

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Actors: Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi, Lesley-Anne Down, Robert Powell, John Gielgud

Synopsis: While most people are familiar only with the Lon Chaney Sr. and Charles Laughton versions of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, this 1982 TV adaptation was the fourteenth filmization of the Hugo novel. Anthony Hopkins, barely recognizable under mounds of disfiguring body makeup, plays Read More

As You Like It

Actors: Helen Mirren, Richard Pasco

Synopsis: The second presentation of the BBC/PBS 37-installment project The Shakespeare Plays was the Bard's As You Like It. The plot, borrowed from Thomas Lodge's romance tale "Rosalynde", takes place in the forest of Arden. Rosalind (Helen Mirren) is forced by various political intrigues to disguise Read More

Doctor Who: The Ribos Operation, Episode 3

Actors: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm, John Leeson, Iain Cuthbertson, Nigel Plaskitt

Synopsis: In the third episode of the four-part story "The Ribos Operation," the Doctor (Tom Baker) has located the first missing segment of the Key to Time on the planet Ribos. Unfortunately, the planet may fall into the hands of the sinister Graff Vinda-K (Paul Seed), thanks to a pair of confidence Read More

Doctor Who: The Ribos Operation, Episode 4

Actors: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm, John Leeson, Iain Cuthbertson, Nigel Plaskitt

Synopsis: In the conclusion of the four-part story "The Ribos Operation," the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Romana (Mary Tamm) must prevent the first segment of the Key to Time from falling into the proverbial "wrong hands." Their success hinges upon the Doctor's ability to pass himself off as a minion of the Read More

Autobiography of a Princess

Actors: James Mason, Madhur Jaffrey, Keith Varnier, Diane Fletcher, Timothy Bateson

Synopsis: Autobiography of a Princess represents the return to East Indian themes by the team of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory after the unsuccessful Hollywood-based The Wild Party (1973). The basic Merchant/Ivory "props", including landed gentry, old folks taking unnatural interest in the goings-on of Read More

Foreign Exchange

Synopsis: In this espionage film, an American detective becomes part of a British spy organization's attempt to free a Russian expatriate hidden away in England. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Avengers: Have Guns... Will Haggle

Synopsis: Much of this Avengers episode was comprised of footage from the never-seen installment "Invitation to a Killing," which was to have introduced the character of Tara King. The plot is set in motion by one Colonel Nsonga (Johnny Sekka), who has stolen 3,000 high-tech rifles in hopes of staging a Read More

The Italian Job

Actors: Michael Caine, Noël Coward, Benny Hill, Raf Vallone, Tony Beckley

Synopsis: The quintessential British caper film of the 1960s, The Italian Job is a flashy, fast romp that chases a team of career criminals throughout one of the biggest international gold heists in history. Michael Caine is Charlie Croker, a stylish robber and skirt-chaser just out of British prison. Read More

The Anniversary

Actors: Bette Davis, Sheila Hancock, Jack Hedley, James Cossins, Elaine Taylor

Synopsis: Bette Davis plays a wealthy one-eyed widow (complete with designer eye patch) who gathers her sons together once a year to celebrate the death of the husband she detested. Mama Davis couldn't be more castrating if her last name was Bobbitt: Her grown sons (it's been 10 years since daddy died) are Read More

1917

Actors: Timothy Bateson, David Leland

Twisted Nerve

Actors: Hayley Mills, Hywel Bennett, Billie Whitelaw, Phyllis Calvert, Frank Finlay

Synopsis: In a disturbing movie about psychosis, Hayley Mills plays Susan Harper, a young student who tries to help a rich, emotionally ill and sinister young man, Martin Durnley (Hywel Bennett). Martin is a schizophrenic who assumes the personality of a six-year-old boy when he is in his "nice" phase. Read More

Danger Route

Actors: Richard Johnson, Carol Lynley, Barbara Bouchet, Sylvia Syms, Diana Dors

Synopsis: British agents drop like skeets in this convoluted espionage film. Jonas Wilde (Richard Johnson) is a successful British secret agent who wants to hang up his license to kill and retire. His superior, Canning (Harry Andrews), agrees to accept his resignation if he agrees to one last case Read More

Avengers: The Correct Way to Kill

Actors: Diana Rigg

Synopsis: Steed is accused of masterminding the murders of several enemy agents. Calling a truce with the "other side," Steed tries to unmask the actual culprit (who is a member of an organization appropriately called The Third Party), with the assistant of statuesque Russian agent Olga (the always Read More

Torture Garden

Actors: Jack Palance, Burgess Meredith, Beverly Adams, Peter Cushing, Michael Bryant

Synopsis: The Torture Garden is an "omnibus" chiller, adapted from four short stories by Robert Bloch (Psycho). Each is introduced by Burgess Meredith, playing a sinister carnival barker by the name of Dr. Diabolo. The doctor's audience consists of five people, four of whom are apprised of their ultimate Read More

After the Fox

Actors: Peter Sellers, Britt Ekland, Lydia Brazzi, Paolo Stoppa, Tino Buazzelli, Victor Mature

Synopsis: With Peter Sellers as star, Neil Simon as screenwriter, and Vittorio DeSica as director, how could After the Fox miss? Miss it did, however--though the film, patchy and inconsistent though it might be, definitely has its moments. Sellers plays an Italian master thief who can't seem to stay out of Read More

The Wrong Box

Actors: John Mills, Ralph Richardson, Michael Caine, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore

Synopsis: Years before the story proper in The Wrong Box gets under way, a "tontine" is drawn up on behalf several young British boys. Each of the boys' parents had placed 1000 pounds in a pool, to be invested and expanded upon. The resultant fortune will go to the last surving member of the tontine. A Read More

The Knack ... And How to Get It

Actors: Rita Tushingham, Ray Brooks, Michael Crawford, Donal Donnelly, John Bluthal

Synopsis: Colin (Michael Crawford, who much later won a Tony Award for his role in Broadway's Phantom of the Opera) is an uptight schoolteacher whose housemate, Tolen (Ray Brooks) is a consummate womanizer. Colin imagines a long line of young women in tight white sweaters on his stairwell, waiting to get Read More

Seventy Deadly Pills

Synopsis: Children all over the city have eaten what they believed was candy. It is then discovered that it is actually a slow-acting, deadly poison. This drama centers on the efforts of the police to find these children before it is too late. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Father Came Too!

Actors: Leslie Phillips, Stanley Baxter, Sally Smith, Ron Barker

Synopsis: In this lively British comedy, a newlywed couple's quaint country cottage becomes a nightmare of repairs as they try to fix it up themselves. They originally purchased the ramshackle pile to escape the influence of the new wife's meddlesome father. Unfortunately, the place needs more help than Read More

The Evil of Frankenstein

Actors: Peter Cushing, Peter Woodthorpe, Duncan Lamont, James Maxwell, Sandor Eles, Katy Wild, Kiwi Kingston

Synopsis: Hardly the best of Hammer Studios' Frankenstein epics, The Evil of Frankenstein is too much the mixture as before to be truly memorable. Back in business once more is Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing), who finds his fabled monster (Kiwi Kingston) frozen in a block of ice. Once the creature is Read More

Doctor in Distress

Actors: Dirk Bogarde, Samantha Eggar, Barbara Murray, Mylène Demongeot

Synopsis: After several years' absence, Dirk Bogarde returns to the popular British "Doctor" film series in Doctor in Distress. Where once Bogarde's Dr. Simon Sparrow was naive and wide-eyed, he is a bit more urbane in this edition. He even manages to offer romantic advice to his old mentor/nemesis Sir Read More

Nightmare

Actors: David Knight, Moira Redmond, Brenda Bruce, Jennie Linden, George A. Cooper

Synopsis: Legendary cinematographer (Freddie Francis) directed this Hammer horror film of madness and murder. The story concerns young Janet (Jennie Linden), a student at finishing school who is suffering from a series of recurring nightmares, having witnessed her mother stabbing her father to death. When Read More

Crooks Anonymous

Synopsis: This comedy features a 12-step Program for habitual hoods. The recovering criminal takes a job as a department store Santa, and again finds himself confronted with temptation. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Girl on the Boat

Synopsis: Norman Wisdom does to P.G. Wodehouse in Girl on the Boat what Jerry Lewis did to Gore Vidal in Visit to a Small Planet. The zany Wisdom, put in charge of his aunt's cottage during an English summer in the roaring twenties, decides to invite several of his friends to his posh new digs. Among the Read More

What a Carve-Up!

Actors: Kenneth Connor, Sidney James, Shirley Eaton, Dennis Price, Donald Pleasence

Synopsis: The original British title for No Place Like Homicide was What a Carve-Up. This level of sophistication was maintained for the film itself, a horror film parody served up by members of the Carry On gang. There's a wisp of plot about an wealthy recluse who apparently dies, then equally apparently Read More

The Golden Rabbit

Synopsis: Timothy Bateson stars as a timorous bank clerk who fancies himself a brilliant scientist. Experimenting with alchemy in his spare time, Bateson stumbles across a method of manufacturing gold. Naturally, a group of unscrupulous businessmen gets wind of Bateson's marvelous discovery, and do their Read More

It's Trad, Dad!

Actors: Helen Shapiro, Craig Douglas, Timothy Bateson, Felix Felton, Frank Thornton

Synopsis: The youthful residents of a small British town stand united in their struggle to be allowed to listen to rock & roll and jazz in this comical musical. The trouble really begins when the village mayor tries to ban the jukebox in the local coffee house. Determined to prove that modern music has Read More

Jigsaw

Actors: Jack Warner, Ronald Lewis, Yolande Donlan, Michael Goodliffe, John Le Mesurier

Synopsis: Jigsaw was based on Hilary Waugh's play Sleep Long My Love. The scene is Brighton: A woman's body is found in an isolated beach house. The local constabulary painstakingly assemble the "jigsaw" of random clues to reconstruct the woman's history and her last moments on earth, hoping this will lead Read More

Our Man in Havana

Actors: Alec Guinness, Burl Ives, Maureen O'Hara, Ernie Kovacs, Noël Coward

Synopsis: Graham Greene wrote this witty comedy inspired by Cold War paranoia. Jim Wormald (Alec Guiness) is an Englishman selling vacuum cleaners in Cuba on the cusp of the revolution. Hawthorne (Noel Coward), a British intelligence agent, is looking for information on Cuban affairs and recruits Jim to act Read More

There Was a Crooked Man

Actors: Norman Wisdom, Alfred Marks, Andrew Cruickshank, Reginald Beckwith, Susannah York

Synopsis: In this British comedy, an amiable demolitions expert finds himself entangled with a band of criminals masquerading as doctors. In this guise, the thieves attempt to build a tunnel between the hospital and the bank next door. The expert successfully blows open the vault, and the criminals escape Read More

The Shakedown

Actors: Terence Morgan, Hazel Court, Donald Pleasence, Bill Owen, Robert Beatty

Synopsis: This is a routine tale about the vice squad versus pornographer and blackmailer Augie Cortona (Terence Morgan). After the petty criminal gets out of prison, he discovers his old partners in crime are not interested in him anymore, and the prostitution ring he once bossed is controlled by someone Read More

Devil's Bait

Synopsis: In this suspenseful drama a baker accidentally whips up a batch of bad bread and must somehow find it before people begin to die. He enlists the aid of a police sergeant and together they begin their desperate search. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Mouse That Roared

Actors: Peter Sellers, Jean Seberg, David Kossoff, William Hartnell, Timothy Bateson, Leo McKern

Synopsis: The economy of the teeny-tiny European duchy of Grand Fenwick is threatened when an American manufacturer comes up with an imitation of Fenwick's sole export, its fabled wine. Crafty prime minister Count Mountjoy (Peter Sellers) comes up with a plan: Grand Fenwick will declare war on the United Read More

The Unstoppable Man

Synopsis: In this suspenseful crime drama, a canny American businessman living in London devises an ingenious plan to get his kidnapped son back. First he sends the required ransom. As per his plan, the abductors begin fighting amongst themselves for the loot. The death of one crook leaves behind invaluable Read More

Yesterday's Enemy

Actors: Stanley Baker, Guy Rolfe, Leo McKern, Gordon Jackson, David Oxley

Synopsis: The scene is Burma during World War II. A small British brigade led by Stanley Baker comes upon a Burmese village controlled by the Japanese. The brigade wipes out the enemy, whereupon Baker discovers that the late Japanese commandant has a coded map secreted on his person. When a Burmese prisoner Read More

Tread Softly Stranger

Synopsis: In this crime drama, two crooked brothers, an embezzler and a gambler, find themselves in deep trouble when the embezzler steals from a steel mill so he can buy his lover fancy clothes. During the theft, he kills a night guard. This spawns an investigation by the slain watchman's son who locates a Read More

Richard III

Actors: Cedric Hardwicke, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Nicholas Hannen, Claire Bloom, Ralph Richardson, Alec Clunes

Synopsis: Laurence Olivier was the director, co-screenwriter (with Alan Dent), and star of this robust adaptation of Shakespeare's drama, which, as Bruce Eder has written, "was the final, crowning glory of the British studio system and the end of the great cycle of British films aimed at international Read More

White Corridors

Actors: Googie Withers, Gerard Heinz, James Donald, Godfrey Tearle, Barry Jones

Synopsis: White Corridors was based on Yeoman Hospital, a novel by Helen Ashton. Told episodically, the story concentrates on the day-to-day activities in a busy hospital, where research pathologist Neil Marriner (James Donald) conducts experiments in the hopes of curing diseases impervious to penicillin. Read More

The Guinea Pig

Actors: Richard Attenborough, Sheila Sim, Bernard Miles, Cecil Trouncer, Robert Flemyng

Synopsis: Not a film about scientific research, The Guinea Pig (US title: The Outsider) is the story of an incipient "affirmative action" program. An impoverished young British boy wins a scholarship. As part of a sociological experiment, he becomes the first product of his "class" to be accepted in a Read More

Vice Versa

Synopsis: Written and directed by Peter Ustinov, Vice Versa is a one-joke fantasy comedy which manages to hold up almost to the very end. Anthony Newley plays the funloving son of stuffy stockbroker Roger Livesy. Father and son come into possession of a magic stone, and place a wish upon it. The result Read More

Nicholas Nickleby

Actors: Jill Balcon, Derek Bond, Cedric Hardwicke, Sally Ann Howes, Fay Compton, Alfred Drayton, Sybil Thorndike, Cyril Fletcher, Mary Merrall

Synopsis: Though it pales in comparison to the Royal Shakespeare Company's epic staging of the original novel in the early 1980s, this compact adaptation of Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby is most entertaining on its own terms. Derek Bond plays the title character, a resourceful young Britisher forced to protect Read More