Linda Bassett

Linda Bassett

Born: February 4, 1950
in Pluckley, Kent, England, UK
Linda Bassett was born in the Kentish village of Pluckley - location for the television series The Darling Buds of May (1991). She was brought up in Pimlico, South London, by her typist mother and police officer father. She became interested in acting as a child when she was frequently taken to see plays in London, most notably at the Old Vic, the famous classical theater. On leaving school, Linda went to work at the Old Vic as an usherette and catering manager, before going to read English at Leeds University. However, she dropped out after a year and became involved in a local drama group which put on plays in community-based locations, such as schools. She regards this as her theatrical schooling, having had no formal training. She made her London stage debut at the age of 32 in 1982 and, in 1991, joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. Although she was a well-regarded stage performer, it was the 1999 film version of the play East Is East (1999) (in which she had been an original stage cast member) which brought her to a larger audience and, throughout the 2000s, she has been a familiar face in a variety of films and television series. In the late 1980s, she returned to live in Pluckley.

Movies for Linda Bassett...

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Title: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Character: Queenie
Released: April 27, 2023
Type: Movie
Harold Fry is an unremarkable man who has made mistakes with all the important things: being a husband, a father and a friend. And now, well into his 60s, he is content to fade quietly into the background of life. Until, one day – Harold learns his old friend Queenie is dying. Harold leaves home, walking to his post office to send her a letter. And out of the blue, Harold decides to keep walking, all the way to her hospice, 450 miles away.
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Careful How You Go
Title: Careful How You Go
Released: January 19, 2018
Type: Movie
A darkly comic psychological horror, which visits three women as they indulge their taste for recreational cruelty.
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Title: Strike
Character: Joan Nancarrow
Released: August 27, 2017
Type: TV
A war veteran turned private detective operates out of a tiny office in London’s Denmark Street. Although wounded both physically and psychologically, his unique insight and background as a military police investigator prove crucial in solving complex crimes that have baffled the police. Based on the bestselling novels written by J.K. Rowling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
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Carnage: Swallowing the Past
Title: Carnage: Swallowing the Past
Character: Dr Yasmine Vondenburg
Released: March 19, 2017
Type: Movie
It's 2067, the UK is vegan, but older generations are suffering the guilt of their carnivorous past. Simon Amstell asks us to forgive them for the horrors of what they swallowed.
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Effie Gray
Title: Effie Gray
Character: Anna
Released: March 8, 2014
Type: Movie
A look at the mysterious relationship between Victorian art critic John Ruskin and his teenage bride Effie Gray.
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National Theatre Live: People
Title: National Theatre Live: People
Character: Iris
Released: March 21, 2013
Type: Movie
People spoil things; there are so many of them and the last thing one wants is them traipsing through one’s house. But with the park a jungle and a bath on the billiard table, what is one to do? Dorothy wonders if an attic sale could be a solution.
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Title: Spies of Warsaw
Character: Malka Rosen
Released: January 9, 2013
Type: TV
A military attaché at the French embassy is drawn into a world of abduction, betrayal and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys of Warsaw. A classic tale of spying, intrigue, and romance, based on the novels of Alan Furst and adapted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.
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Title: The Life and Adventures of Nick Nickleby
Character: Mrs. Smike
Released: November 5, 2012
Type: TV
Modern interpretation of the classic Charles Dickens tale about a young man who must support his family following the death of his father, turning to his sinister uncle for help.
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Title: Call the Midwife
Character: Phyllis Crane
Released: January 15, 2012
Type: TV
Drama following the lives of a group of midwives working in the poverty-stricken East End of London during the 1950s, based on the best-selling memoirs of Jennifer Worth.
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West Is West
Title: West Is West
Character: Ella Khan
Released: October 19, 2010
Type: Movie
Manchester, North of England, 1975. The now much diminished, but still dysfunctional, Khan family continues to struggle for survival. Sajid, the youngest Khan is deep in pubescent crisis under heavy assault both from his father's tyrannical insistence on Pakistani tradition, and from the fierce bullies in the schoolyard. So, in a last, desperate attempt to 'sort him out', his father decides to pack him off to Mrs Khan No 1 and family in the Punjab, the wife and daughters he had abandoned 35 years earlier.
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Title: Grandma's House
Character: Grandma
Released: August 9, 2010
Type: TV
Sitcom about a former television presenter searching for something more meaningful to do in life.
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The Reader
Title: The Reader
Character: Ms. Brenner
Released: December 10, 2008
Type: Movie
The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.
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Title: Lark Rise to Candleford
Character: Queenie Turrill
Released: January 13, 2008
Type: TV
Set in the small hamlet of Lark Rise and the wealthier neighbouring market town, Candleford, the series chronicles the daily lives of farm-workers, craftsmen and gentry at the end of the 19th Century. Lark Rise to Candleford is a love letter to a vanished corner of rural England and a heart-warming drama series teeming with wit, wisdom and romance.
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Cass
Title: Cass
Character: Doll
Released: January 8, 2008
Type: Movie
The incredible true story of how an orphaned Jamaican baby, adopted by an elderly white couple and brought up in an all white area of London, became one of the most feared and respected men in Britain.
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Title: Sense and Sensibility
Character: Mrs. Jennings
Released: January 1, 2008
Type: TV
Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve when she falls in love with the charming but unsuitable John Willoughby, ignoring her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behavior leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Elinor, sensitive to social convention, struggles to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Will the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love?
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The English Harem
Title: The English Harem
Character: Monica Pringle
Released: December 27, 2005
Type: Movie
Tracy a young working class girl, who - against the wishes of her parents and racist ex-boyfriend - becomes one of three wives of West London Persian restaurateur, Sam.
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Colour Me Kubrick
Title: Colour Me Kubrick
Character: Trolley Lady
Released: October 6, 2005
Type: Movie
The true story of a man who posed as director Stanley Kubrick during the production of Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut, despite knowing very little about his work and looking nothing like him.
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Separate Lies
Title: Separate Lies
Character: Maggie
Released: September 16, 2005
Type: Movie
Following a traffic accident, things take a turn when the victim's identity is revealed.
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Kinky Boots
Title: Kinky Boots
Character: Mel
Released: August 30, 2005
Type: Movie
Charles Price may have grown up with his father in the family shoe business in Northampton, central England, but he never thought that he would take his father's place. Charles has a chance encounter with the flamboyant drag queen cabaret singer Lola and everything changes.
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Spivs
Title: Spivs
Character: Auntie Vee
Released: May 13, 2004
Type: Movie
Jack, Steve and Goat are East-End Spivs. They spend their time wheeling and dealing wherever and whenever they can. It's not until Jack and the others get involved with a guy called Villa, and they are landed with a big payday they have been waiting for, when they realise what a mess they are into. At the back of the lorry they have smuggled goods in, they find illegal immigrants. Most of them escape but they are left with 2 kids; a boy and a girl, and have to decide what to do with them... Are they going to look after them and feed them, clothe them, love them, etc. or are they going to leave them on the streets of East-End London?
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Title: The Brief
Character: Maureen Tyler
Released: April 25, 2004
Type: TV
Henry Farmer is a clever minded criminal practice attorney whose every day is a juggling act between surviving his messy personal life and pleading cases only he can win. Whether he's trying to keep an innocent person from going to jail or save himself from financial ruin, Henry's life is a symphony of chaos. His long list of problems includes a mountain of gambling debts, an affair with an important politician's wife, a distant son, and a sharp-tongued father who's also a judge.
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Calendar Girls
Title: Calendar Girls
Character: Cora
Released: September 2, 2003
Type: Movie
Members of a Yorkshire branch of the Women's Institute cause controversy when they pose nude for a charity calendar.
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This Little Life
Title: This Little Life
Character: Nurse Nina
Released: March 19, 2003
Type: Movie
A powerful one-off drama written by Rosemary Kay , winner of the BBC's Dennis Potter award for new screenwriting. Sadie and Richie MacGregor are thrown into the terrifying world of neo-natal intensive care when their son Luke is born prematurely. Willed on by his desperate parents, he gradually grows in strength - but as Sadie develops a unique bond with her son, her relationship with Richie begins to suffer.
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The Hours
Title: The Hours
Character: Nelly Boxall
Released: December 27, 2002
Type: Movie
"The Hours" is the story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.
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The Martins
Title: The Martins
Character: Anthea
Released: September 14, 2001
Type: Movie
Out of work, scrounger Robert Martin lives with his dysfunctional family - long suffering wife accident prone son and pregnant teenage daughter in a shabby house next door to a giant shopping center in the London suburbs. The Martins are the family from hell! Robert dreams if winning a dream holiday for his family, and when he fails to win yet another competition he flips, out tracks down the elderly winners, ties them up in the cellar and steals their tickets!
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Don Quixote
Title: Don Quixote
Character: Housekeeper
Released: April 9, 2000
Type: Movie
Adapted from the work of Miguel de Cervantes, this is the story of a hidalgo, fanatic for chivalry novels, who loses his sanity and believing to be a knight named Don Quixote de La Mancha, decides to go on imaginary adventures along with his friend, the simple farmer Sancho Panza, who becomes his squire. On their journeys, they rescue dames in distress in honorable acts and fight giants among other perils, with Don longing to be with the love of his life, lady Dulcinea, and Sancho waiting to be rewarded with an island where he's about to become a governor.
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Lounge Act
Title: Lounge Act
Released: January 1, 2000
Type: Movie
Have you ever wondered what happens with your pet when you are not at home? A dog worried about its future, a lazy parrot and an aquarium full of fish with strong religious beliefs, show us what really happens, since they share an uncertain future with the old age of its owner.
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Beautiful People
Title: Beautiful People
Character: Sister
Released: September 16, 1999
Type: Movie
In London, during October 1993, England is playing Holland in the preliminaries of the World Cup. The Bosnian War is at its height, and refugees from the ex-Yugoslavia are arriving. Football rivals, and political adversaries from the Balkans all precipitate conflict and amusing situations. Meanwhile, the lives of four English families are affected in different ways by encounter with the refugees.
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East Is East
Title: East Is East
Character: Ella Khan
Released: May 14, 1999
Type: Movie
In 1971 Salford fish-and-chip shop owner George Khan expects his family to follow his strict Pakistani Muslim ways. But his children, with an English mother and having been born and brought up in Britain, increasingly see themselves as British and start to reject their father's rules on dress, food, religion, and living in general.
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Title: Dinnerladies
Character: Peggy
Released: November 12, 1998
Type: TV
Dinnerladies is a BBC sitcom written by and starring Victoria Wood that chronicles the antics of a group of workers in a canteen in the north of England. Bren tries to maintain a semblance of order in amongst the chaos, while dealing with the canteen supervisor, slightly sex-obsessed cancer sufferer Tony. Dolly and Jean are the bickering menopausal older women, always at odds but best friends beneath it all. Then there's thick-as-two-short-planks Anita, and the terminally uninterested Twinkle, more concerned with having a good time than anything else. Making up the motley crew are military man handyman Stan, all rules and regulations, and ditzy Philippa, who never seems to get anything right.
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Far from the Madding Crowd
Title: Far from the Madding Crowd
Character: Maryann Money
Released: May 10, 1998
Type: Movie
This powerful adaptation of Thomas Hardy's classic novel spins a story of passion and destruction set in the nineteenth century. The proud, flighty and bewitching Bathsheba Everdene finds herself entangled into the passions of three men and her impulsive nature pushes her into a web of deceit and destruction.
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Spoonface Steinberg
Title: Spoonface Steinberg
Character: Mrs. Spud
Released: March 30, 1998
Type: Movie
Television film version of Lee Hall's award-winning radio play. Spoonface is seven years old, Jewish, autistic - and terminally ill with cancer. As she tries to come to terms with the meaning of life and death, she draws inspiration from the prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps who died with dignity and their spirit unbowed.
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Title: Our Mutual Friend
Released: March 9, 1998
Type: TV
Epic Charles Dickens tale of passion, greed and betrayal. Lizzie and her father scrape a living on the banks of the Thames until one day they recover a body that links them with another world.
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The Life and Crimes of William Palmer
Title: The Life and Crimes of William Palmer
Character: Mary Thornton
Released: March 3, 1998
Type: Movie
Keith Allen plays William Palmer in this true story of a Victorian-era English surgeon who uses poison to settle scores and ward off debt. William lacks a sense of regret, even after killing his wife, brother and three of his own children.
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Oscar and Lucinda
Title: Oscar and Lucinda
Character: Betty Stratton
Released: December 31, 1997
Type: Movie
After a childhood of abuse by his evangelistic father, misfit Oscar Hopkins becomes an Anglican minister and develops a divine obsession with gambling. Lucinda Leplastrier is a rich Australian heiress shopping in London for materials for her newly acquired glass factory back home. Deciding to travel to Australia as a missionary, Oscar meets Lucinda aboard ship, and a mutual obsession blossoms. They make a wager that will alter each of their destinies.
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Title: Midsomer Murders
Character: Eileen Carnack
Released: March 23, 1997
Type: TV
The peacefulness of the Midsomer community is shattered by violent crimes, suspects are placed under suspicion, and it is up to a veteran DCI and his young sergeant to calmly and diligently eliminate the innocent and ruthlessly pursue the guilty.
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Alive and Kicking
Title: Alive and Kicking
Character: Doctor
Released: November 8, 1996
Type: Movie
A passionately committed young dancer is forced to re-examine his career and life when faced with death, finding hope through an older man who becomes his lover, mentor and companion.
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Title: No Bananas
Character: Ellen Slater
Released: May 5, 1996
Type: TV
This 10-episode television miniseries, set in England during World War II, tells the story of two families, the wealthy Hamiltons and the working-class Slaters, now united through marriage.
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Mary Reilly
Title: Mary Reilly
Character: Mary's Mother
Released: February 23, 1996
Type: Movie
A housemaid falls in love with Dr. Jekyll and his darkly mysterious counterpart, Mr. Hyde.
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Haunted
Title: Haunted
Character: Madame Brontski
Released: October 27, 1995
Type: Movie
Professor David Ash exposes false spiritulists and mediums. He is invited to Edbrook to resolve the fears and torments within its secretive family. Soon after arriving Ash begins to doubt his own senses, and watching the strange behaviour of its residents does not make his task any easier. In time, he finds there's more to Edbrook than even he can debunk.
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Loved Up
Title: Loved Up
Character: Mum
Released: August 21, 1995
Type: Movie
Tells the story of a girl who, while working in a London cafe, meets a "raver" who introduces her to the drug Ecstasy and the whole British drugs scene. The girl falls in love with the raver, played splendidly by Ian Hart, but - when fired from her cafe job - she becomes involved with the seedier world of dealing.
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Title: Bramwell
Character: Maud
Released: May 1, 1995
Type: TV
The story of Eleanor Bramwell , a pioneering female doctor in the late nineteenth century, and the struggles she has with her friends, her colleagues and society. Determined to take the medical profession out of the dark ages, her strongly held opinions often draw her into conflict with the chief surgeon, a man keener on tradition than he is on progress.
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A Village Affair
Title: A Village Affair
Character: Gwen
Released: April 17, 1995
Type: Movie
An apparently happy wife in an English village has a relationship with a local aristocrat's daughter.
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Title: Kavanagh Q.C.
Character: Miss Haddon QC
Released: January 3, 1995
Type: TV
James Kavanagh QC is one of the top flight barristers in Britain. Each episode has him handling challenging cases and defendants which put his skills to the test regularly.
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In The Cold Light Of Day
Title: In The Cold Light Of Day
Character: Mrs. Loveless
Released: June 15, 1994
Type: Movie
It is the late 1930s and some British households still eagerly await the arrival of electricity. When a pylon is erected in the garden, Morris's mother can't wait to show off her Swedish lumbago belt and toaster. But Morris is gripped by a deeper passion that will change his life - one that will not be illuminated for 50 years.
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Skallagrigg
Title: Skallagrigg
Character: Susan
Released: March 9, 1994
Type: Movie
Back in the 'bad old days' when the physically and mentally disabled were locked away in institutions a legend grew of someone who could stand up to the authorities and help them. This charming story is how a group of disabled people went to chase that legend. To assist them John is forced to come to terms with his daughter and her friends.
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Title: Frank Stubbs Promotes
Character: Eileen
Released: July 12, 1993
Type: TV
Frank Stubbs (Timothy Spall) is a down-at-heel ticket tout with grand ideas. He has an ambition to become a 'high class' promoter of famous and talented performers. In reality, his ambitions tend to outstrip his capabilities.
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Title: A Touch of Frost
Released: December 6, 1992
Type: TV
Jack Frost is a gritty, dogged and unconventional detective with sympathy for the underdog and an instinct for moral justice who attracts trouble like a magnet. Despite some animosity with his superintendent, Norman “Horn-rimmed Harry” Mullett, Frost and his ever-changing roster of assistants manage to solve cases via his clever mind, good heart, and cool touch.
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Title: Heartbeat
Character: Beryl Palmer
Released: April 10, 1992
Type: TV
Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines.
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A Small Dance
Title: A Small Dance
Character: Sandra Matkin
Released: November 16, 1991
Type: Movie
In the emptiness of the Lincolnshire fens, rural teenager Donna feels trapped in a joyless life with a domineering father and a dull job at the food factory. She grasps at the illusion of affection offered by a passing stranger - and must then cope in lonely terror with pregnancy.
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Let Him Have It
Title: Let Him Have It
Character: Mrs. Miles
Released: October 4, 1991
Type: Movie
In 1950s England, slow-witted Derek Bentley falls in with a group of petty criminals led by Chris Craig, a teenager with a fondness for American gangster films. Chris and Derek's friendship leads to their involvement in the true case which would forever shake England's belief in capital punishment.
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News Hounds
Title: News Hounds
Character: Virginia Lyddon
Released: September 2, 1990
Type: Movie
Every cub reporter wants a front page 'splash' and the journalists from The Brit, a top-selling daily tabloid, are no exception. They're on the trail of a sensational story and their jobs depend on it.
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Paris by Night
Title: Paris by Night
Character: Janet Swanton
Released: April 18, 1989
Type: Movie
Clara Bell is a busy Euro MP with a husband and child at home and a high powered career - but on a trip to Paris her ordered existence is overturned by a murder and a chance encounter.
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Waiting for the Moon
Title: Waiting for the Moon
Character: Gertrude Stein
Released: June 15, 1987
Type: Movie
Fictionalized portrait of one of history's great literary couples: Stein & Toklas. Summer 1930s France, Alice tends to ailing Gertrude; they visit Fernande Olivier, Guillaume Apollinaire, others; and Hemingway pops in.
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Title: Casualty
Character: Olwyn Humphries
Released: September 6, 1986
Type: TV
Drama series about the staff and patients at Holby City Hospital's emergency department, charting the ups and downs in their personal and professional lives.
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Title: The Bill
Released: October 16, 1984
Type: TV
The daily lives of the men and women at Sun Hill Police Station as they fight crime on the streets of London. From bomb threats to armed robbery and drug raids to the routine demands of policing this ground-breaking series focuses as much on crime as it does on the personal lives of its characters.
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Title: Dramarama
Released: September 12, 1983
Type: TV
Dramarama is the name of a British children's anthology series broadcast on ITV between 1983 and 1989. It tended to feature drama of a science fiction or supernatural bent. The series was created by Anna Home, then head of children's and youth programming at TVS, however production responsibilities were divided amongst most of the regional ITV franchise holders. Thus, each episode was in practice a one-off production with its own cast and crew, up to and including the executive producer. Dramarama was largely a place for new talent to prove themselves and was a launching pad for the likes of Anthony Horowitz, Paul Abbott, Kay Mellor, Janice Hally, Tony Kearney, David Tennant and Ann Marie Di Mambro. It was one of Dennis Spooner's last credits. One of Dramarama's episodes, "Dodger, Bonzo And The Rest", gained so much popularity that it was turned in to its own series the following year. It starred Lee Ross and was based around a large foster home. The episode "Blackbird Singing In The Dead of Night" was developed by Granada into the TV series Children's Ward. It was also repeated for the first time since its original broadcast on 5 January 2013, during CITV's 30th anniversary Old Skool Weekend. The Series 7 episode "Back To Front" – notable for featuring a mirror image of the Yorkshire Television logo card at the end – was repeated on 6 January 2013, again as part of CITV's 30th anniversary Old Skool Weekend.