Drama Smörgåsbord - Disc 15

Drama Smörgåsbord - Disc 15

Blood Strangers

"Caroline Quentin teams up with Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith to play a mother whose world is ripped apart in a Granada TV thriller that looks at the effects of teenage prostitution on two families.

Originally this was a 2-parter, but here it is combined as a feature-length drama.
Although this was excellent, I don't think it ever got repeated. Possibily this was due to Sheridan Smith having second thoughts about the near-topless scene she was in, and so withdrawing consent, but there may have been another reason.
Caroline plays Lin Beresford, who lives happily with her two children in a picturesque town. Then her 14-year-old daughter Emma is found dying on a patch of common ground near their home. Nothing could be worst than the murder of a child, or so Lin believes until she is dealt a further terrible blow........"




Fellow Traveller
"Fellow Traveller was made in 1989 for the BBC and HBO. It's the story of how the early filmed adventure series on ITV in the 1950's were in part written by American exiles, who had fled their country rather than testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and sought clandestine work from the emerging commercial television sector in the UK. The film's lead character is Asa Kaufman who has left Hollywood for London rather than testify before the committee.
The narrative moves between London in 1954 and Hollywood at various points between 1943 and 1954, as the suicide of Asa's best friend since childhood, Hollywood star Clifford Byrne prompts him to look back at his relations with the Communist Party, the film industry's left wing, with Byrne and with Byrne's former girlfriend Sarah Aitchison (Imogen Stubbs), whom he meets again in London.
The clever script touches on the politics, paranoia and betrayal, and director Philip Saville clearly understands more than the surface complexities of this dark period."
Richard Wilson and Doreen Mantle had minor roles and this was made at the same time they were filming the first series of One Foot In The Grave. I wonder if they were using the same studios and just happened to be there already?

Imogen's Face
" Imogen has it all -- beauty, brains, a doting family, a handsome, successful husband. Life for Amanda, Imogen's not so beautiful older sister, isn't quite as good. Suddenly, Amanda must choose between loyalty and revenge when Imogen, who is expecting twins, seeks her help to hide an adulterous affair. Starring Lia Williams, Samantha Janus, John Bowe, Richard Lintern, Michael Byrne."
This was originally an ITV 3-parter but this is from an old commercial VHS release that has been combined into a 2½ hour feature-length.

The Countess Alice
This is a BBC / WGBH-Boston for Masterpiece Theatre production from 1992.
"In the 1930s, a dashing English débutante abruptly abandoned her country to marry a German aristocrat, and lived with him through the horrors of the war and defeat. After invading Russian troops executed the Count, she escaped back to England with her infant daughter. The story opens in the early 1990s with the now aged Countess Alice, who tutors students in German, and who has spent the last 45 years living off the kindness of her rich and royal relatives. The daughter has grown up to be a sour and disappointed librarian, living at home to care for her aging mother. A reporter is interested in talking to the Countess about her wild and celebrated youth, but with the Wall having just fallen, he is also interested in discussing her German past. The Countess refuses to discuss it, and has revealed little to anyone about her time in Hitler's Germany, despite her daughter's life-long pleas for information. Now that the reporter shows up asking the same questions, the tension between the two women, already strained, begins to rupture the thread of their bond when the daughter announces that, now that East Germany is reunified, she is going there to see the past for herself. Starring Wendy Hiller, Zoë Wanamaker, Duncan Bell, Patricia Quinn, Lucinda Fisher."
The first 15 seconds or so are missing and this is from old grainy video tape, but you can't pop down to your local DVD rental store and get this, so ya gotta live with it.