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LWT DRAMA
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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. |
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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).
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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). |


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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. |
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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. |


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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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