Michael Pennington

Luke Skywalker leads a mission to rescue his friend Han Solo from the clutches of Jabba the Hutt, the Emperor prepares to crush the Rebellion with a more powerful Death Star, and the Rebel fleet mounts a massive attack on the space station. Luke Skywalker confronts Darth Vader in a final climactic duel before the evil Emperor.

A look at the life of Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, with a focus on the price she paid for power.

Haunted by memories of a patient's death, a nurse takes a job at an antiquated hospital for children. Soon she learns that the kids fear a ghost that prowls the floors and will not allow anyone to leave. Amy tries to protect them and convince the other staffers of the evil that lurks there.

A monarch ordained by God to lead his people. But he is also a man of very human weakness. A man whose vanity threatens to divide the great houses of England and drag his people into a dynastic civil war that will last 100 years.

Of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Pyramid is the only one to survive. Many believe that even with our 21st-century technology, we could not build anything like it today. Based on the most up-to-date research and the latest archaeological discoveries, here is how the Pyramid came to be.

A British businessman operating in Hong Kong has feelings of inferiority and turns to murder when he faces bankruptcy.

A documentary on Soviet filmmaker Aleksandr Medvedkin, examining his tumultuous career, the rediscovery of his masterpiece Happiness, and Russia's struggles over the course of the 20th Century.

Colosseum: Rome's Arena of Death aka Colosseum: A Gladiator's Story is a 2003 BBC Television docudrama which tells the true story of Verus a gladiator who fought at the Colosseum in Rome.

Shakespeare's Richard III, performed by the English Shakespeare Company as part of the complete Historical Octology.

Shakespeare's Henry V, performed by the English Shakespeare Company as part of the complete Historical Octology.

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.

Sherlock Holmes is brought back to life by Watson's female descendant after being cryogenically frozen for eighty years.

How, in 1945, after the end of World War II and the fall of the Nazi regime, the defeated were atrociously mistreated, especially those ethnic Germans who had lived peacefully for centuries in Germany's neighboring countries, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland. A heartbreaking story of revenge against innocent civilians, the story of acts as cruel as the Nazi occupation during the war years.

Second part of an adapted version of Henry VI as performed by the English Shakespeare Company as part of the complete Historical Octology.

In prison the night before his execution, republican preacher Hugh Peter prepares to be hanged, drawn and quartered for treason

First part of an adapted version of Henry VI as performed by the English Shakespeare Company as part of the complete Historical Octology.

Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2 performed by the English Shakespeare Company as part of the complete Historical Octology.

Cymbeline, the King of Britain, is angry that his daughter Imogen has chosen a poor (but worthy) man for her husband. So he banishes Posthumus, who goes to fight for Rome. Imogen (dressed as a boy) goes in search of her husband, who meanwhile has boasted to his pal Iachimo that Imogen would never betray him. And Iachimo's determined to prove him wrong.

The story of the greatest physicists of the 20th century and the discoveries they made.

Tony Richardson's Hamlet is based on his own stage production. Filmed entirely within the Roundhouse in London (a disused train shed), it is shot almost entirely in close up, focusing the attention on faces and language rather than action.

Reflective drama of pioneering nurse, writer and noted statistician Florence Nightingale

Dino Labriola runs the small town of Montemilone in the deep south. He was elected the first Communist mayor. Now he faces the problems of a town dying on its feet. There are no jobs, the young emigrate, the old have given up hope and government aid often goes astray. While Dino is determined to fight for his town, his wife Angela sometimes feels that the struggle is not worth it. A massive dam is being built just outside Montemilone. It's a new threat to the town and to Dino's position as mayor.

Behind the façade of form-filling at the Department of Something-or-Other, careers fall and rise at the drop of an apostrophe. Will HIB's double negative be accepted, ensuring his pension prospects?

A forgotten gem made for the British arts anthology series Without Walls, this half-hour drama imagines the two 19th century impressionist painters on a modern-day talk show–-exploring their friendship and historic conflict over the Dreyfus Affair. Resembling Patrick Watson’s Witness to History in its dramatization of the past, filmmaker Paul Morrison goes one step further by creating a behind-the-scenes world around the show; and in doing so, he offers up a clever satire, as timely as ever, on the medium’s exploitation of two men who are united through art, but divided over politics. For this short piece, Morrison assembled a wonderful cast, featuring Henry Goodman (this year’s Love Gets a Room), Michael Pennington, Louise Jameson (Doctor Who) and Alison Steadman (Life is Sweet).

Play dealing with the life of British Army lieutenant Siegfried Sassoon, and his protests against the inhumanity of the First World War

One man who kept asking questions was Gideon Mantell, the amateur paleontologist who, in the early 19th century, fought to get the British scientific establishment to accept Britain had been inhabited by dinosaurs. As this dramatised documentary shows, Mantell had an uphill battle in a time when the biblical account of creation was considered literal truth and authorities such as the Reverend William Buckland were determined that science remain "the handmaid of religion".

Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 recorded live at the Grand Theatre in Swansea, performed by the English Shakespeare Company as part of the complete Historical Octology.

As in earlier Oscar Wilde biopics, this version preoccupies itself with the homosexuality scandal involving Lord Alfred Douglas and his lordship's political powerful father, the Marquis of Queensbury. Arrested for corrupting Lord Douglas' morals, Wilde spends a debilitating five years in Reading Gaol, emerging a shattered shell of his former self

A BBC dramatization of the Pendle witch trials of Lancashire, England that occurred in 1616.

A biographical documentary film about the legendary Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray, to commemorate Ray's centenary year. The film covers Ray's life and early works, focusing on the making of his first film Pather Panchali.

In an unscripted inquest, three practicing barristers interrogate actors portraying relevant figures of the 16th century in order to determine what really happened to the playwright and poet, Christopher Marlowe.

Danton's Death is arguably the most dramatic and penetrating study of revolution ever written. Georg Büchner concentrates on that moment in 1794 when the Reign of Terror, already well established, spills over into a total blood-bath. The play, adapted by director Alan Clarke and Stuart Griffiths, both highly imaginative and closely documentary, shows how the great hero of the early phase of the Revolution, Danton, sickened by the excesses of the guillotine, which he helped to create, wants to call a halt. But Robespierre and Saint-Just, leaders of the Jacobins, with a ferocious puritanical zeal, spur on 'the wild horses of the Revolution'.

The local social cricket team are up to bat and sometimes it seems they are one batsman short of of an eleven. There are good secrets and not so good secrets that come to light during the course of the day. Roger is the ultimate captain rallying his troops whilst ignoring his greatest strength, Miriam, who makes the 'fantastic' teas with or without the 'non-compulsory' help. The days builds to a climax where it seems that everything must change forever. But will it?

Shakespeare's Richard II recorded live at the Grand Theatre in Swansea, performed by the English Shakespeare Company as part of the complete Historical Octology.