LWT PROGRAMMES
[DRAMA] [ENTERTAINMENT] [COMEDY ][ARTS/CURRENT AFFAIRS] [SPORT] [LOCAL SHOWS]
LWT DRAMA
From the late 60s and early 70s, LWT's output was eclectic, ranging from If There Weren't Any Blacks (left) to The Talking Head (right) with a young John Thaw. LWT delivered on its promise to produce thought-provoking programmes but some failed to find favour with viewers.

Budgie (left), starring Adam Faith, was an early soaraway success for London Weekend, as was the political satire Mrs Wilson's Diary (Mrs Wilson was the wife of Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister of the time).


Upstairs Downstairs 
titles, season one

Upstairs Downstairs ran from 1971 until 1975, notching up 68 episodes in total. It has become one of LWT's most successful programmes and has been exported around the world. The Professionals, screened in the late 70s and early 80s, was produced for LWT by Mark One Productions and made stars of Martin Shaw (Doyle) and Lewis Collins (Bodie).


The 
Professionals titles (shortened)

Within These Walls (left) was a sort of mid-70s version of Bad Girls, starring Googie Withers as the governor of a women's prison who ruled the roost with a rod of iron. Frank Findlay (right) played the lead in A Bouquet of Barbed Wire in 1976 - a rather dark drama series focusing on infidelity and the dysfunctional relationship of a father and his daughter.
Francesca Annis was the star of Lillie, the story of the turn-of-the-20th-centry courtesan of Edward VII, Mrs Lillie Langtree. The series also featured Anton Rodgers as Lillie's put-upon husband. Jill Gascoigne broke new ground for LWT in 1981 in The Gentle Touch, (right) the first UK TV series to have a female detective as its hero.


The Gentle Touch 
titles

Made by LWT for Channel Four, Mapp and Lucia, featured two rather eccentric 1920s mesdames playing games of oneupmanship on each other. Life in an English public school was the setting for the period drama, Drummonds.
Piece of Cake followed in the footsteps of successful LWT period dramas, this time following the lives and loves of wartime flying aces. Paul Nicholas played the lead role in the hit 1988 drama Bust.
LWT built on its credentials in the genre of all-action adventure series with Dempsey and Makepeace. To Have and To Hold (right) was a serious drama charting the lives of a middle-aged couple who are forced to split-up.
Rites of passage drama Dutch Girls, made by LWT for Channel Four and then shown on the ITV network, followed the adventures of a young stag party on a trip to Amsterdam. Duty Free's Keith Barron teamed up with suave Nigel Havers in LWT's Operation Good Guys.
Francesca Annis returned in LWT's Partners In Crime in the early 1980s and Blue Money was a one-off film drama made by London Weekend for the ITV network in 1985.

poirot 1989 titles
LWT found success with its re-hash of Agatha Christie's famous Belgian detective, Poirot, played by David Suchet. London's Burning was one of ITV's big draws throughout the 1990s, due to its big-budget realism, great acting and impressive special effects.
Nigel Havers is the perfect English cad in LWT's The Charmer, left, and Jane Asher braves the Second World War in another classic period drama, Wish Me Luck.
Upstairs Downstairs stars John Alderton and Pauline Collins were reunited in LWT's Forever Green, a drama about a family who leave the rat race for the good life. Right, Nigel Havers gets bandaged up for his role in the wartime drama A Perfect Hero.


poirot 1989 titles

LWT's 1988 drama Come Home Charlie and Face Them, based on a book by R F Delderfield, was set in North Wales during the 1930s depression. Filmed on location on the Isle of Man, the plot revolves around a hapless bank clerk who falls under the spell of a latin american beauty and then gets embroiled in a bank robbery plan, which can only end in trouble.  
LWT CHILDREN'S PROGRAMMES
Two early offerings from London Weekend were The Adventures of Black Beauty and Catweazle. LWT prided itself on its different approach to children's shows - there was no specialist children's unit, each programme was produced by the relevant 'adult' department, usually Drama. This made for intelligent and engaging children's programmes.
black beauty titles

catweazle 1969  titles
Another teatime treat from London Weekend in the 1970s was Dick Turpin, a brilliantly made children's drama starring Richard O'Sullivan, Christopher Benjamin, David Daker, and Michael Deeks.  
dick turpin titles
Bonnie Langford made a big impression as the screeching Violet Elizabeth in LWT's Just William, based on the books by Richal Crompton. Lovers of seventies pop made a date with the spangly Supersonic each week. This dispensed with presenters and replaced their segments with behind the scenes shots from the production gallery.
Metal Mickey (we think he was intended to be a robotic version of the Monkee's Mickey Dolenz, or something like that anyway) ruled the Saturday teatime airwaves from 1980 to 1983. Sundays in 1987 saw the introduction of the period children's drama A Little Princess.


Metal Mickey 
titles

This is far from a fully comprehensive list of LWT's prolific programme production, but we will be adding to it in the future. We'll also be including more downloadable video clips of programme titles as and when we have time.