Movies: John Shrapnel

Plagues are ravaging Thebes, and the blind fortune-teller Tieresias tells Oedipus, the King, that the gods are unhappy. The murder of the former king has gone unavenged, and Oedipus sets out to find the killer....

A jealous king jeopardizes his family, friendships and succession....

He is a respectable pillar of London society who yearns for an idyllic existence away from the noise and the smoke. She feels hemmed in by the confines of an isolated fishing village and dreams of the bright lights, and even brighter people, of the g...

An aging King invites disaster, when he abdicates to his corrupt, toadying daughters, and rejects his loving and honest one....

Greece, a land of breathtaking beauty and light. A land where science, art and inspiration from the gods combined to produce some of the world's greatest marvels of architecture and design. The ancient Greeks used buildings and structures to reflect ...

'There's absolutely no escape. No chairs or tables to hold on to, no fags to light or drinks to pour: no small talk or trivial daytime chatter. Just the naked person.'...

The dramatic story of the British expedition that made the first ascent of Everest. Combining interviews with the surviving members of the 1953 British and 1952 Swiss attempt on Everest with rare archival material, this film tells the story of the r...

Able to inspire wonder and awe in all who gazed upon them, The Seven Wonders of Ancient Rome - the Pantheon, the Aqueducts of Rome, the Via Appia, the Baths of Caracalla, Trajan's Markets, Circus Maximus and the Colosseum - were the works of great me...

Timon loves to give parties and objects to friends, but when he cannot pay his creditors, his "friends" refuse to help him, and he becomes a misanthropic hermit....

The bitter Trojan War drags on - the Greeks blame Achilles' apathy for low morale, while Troy's hero Hector challenges one of the enemy to a personal duel. And after her father exchanges Cressida for a Trojan prisoner, the war becomes personal for he...

Retired British solider Richard Hannay is recruited by British intelligence in an attempt to recover three hostages taken prisoner by a shadowy criminal organisation...

A young woman has a mental breakdown in a state institution....

Oedipus's wanderings come to an end when he finds his final resting place, as foretold by the gods. But his brother-in-law and his son each try to take him away....

On the same day a notorious crime kingpin Jimmy Vincent is released from prison, there is a daring armored car diamond heist of diamonds using his m.o....

An adventure of A J Raffles....

The film explores the background and build-up to this final flight to disaster. Using dramatic reconstruction, archive footage and exclusive interviews with leading historians and engineering experts, the special delves into the political and scienti...

Drama reconstructing the events of a strike by the schoolchildren of a Norfolk school in 1914, who refused to accept the dismissal of their teachers, Tom and Annie Higdon, who were both socialists....

Examination of the events that led to the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland....

From its sell-out run at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre comes a film version of this unique and critically acclaimed production of Hamlet with BAFTA-nominee Maxine Peake in the title role. This ground-breaking stage production, directed by Sarah...

Animated short adaptation of Hamlet featuring painted cels on glass. Originally broadcast as part of the Shakespeare: The Animated Tales series on BBC2 & S4C....