Projects in genres: Drama

Synopsis

Meena is twelve years old and lives in the village of Tollington 'the jewel of the Black Country' - in 1972. She is the daughter of Indian parents who have come to England to give her a better life. Her idyllic adolescence, surrounded by eccentric relatives and friends, is disrupted by the arrival in Tollington of Anita Rutter and her dysfunctional family. At 14 - blonde, aloof, beautiful, outrageous and sassy - Anita is everything Meena thinks she wants to be. Meena wheedles her way into Anita's life, but the arrival of a baby brother, teenage hormones, impending entrance exams for the posh grammar school and a motorcycling rebel without a future, threaten to turn her salad days sour. ANITE AND ME paints a comic, poignant, compassionate and colourful portrait of village life in the era of flares, power cuts, glam rock, decimalisation and Ted Heath.

Synopsis

A funny, poignant, thought-provoking story of four very different characters who set out on the longest walk of their lives and discover their true selves.



Arthur, Geoffrey and Andy first walked the 177 miles of Offa's Dyke twenty years ago when they were studying law together at university. They vowed to repeat the walk, but this time the motley crew are joined by a stranger - a forty year old wife and mother in the throes of a mid-life crisis who throws more than one spanner in the works.



As the miles pass in a haze of pouring rain, screaming rows, hilarious encounters and dodgy B&B's, our intrepid travellers discover hidden depths, long-buried antagonism and secret passions...and an unlikely friendship.

Synopsis

A native son of north Belfast, award winning playwright, Gary Mitchell, speaks the language of working-class Protestants in the unflinching realist drama that tells the story of the lifelong friendship between two Loyalists blown apart by political change.
As The Beast Sleeps is a hard-hitting film about friendship, loyalty and betrayal.
The political leadership of the UDA have placed a ban on paramilitary activity which may damage their position in the peace process. The men this affects are the young teams groomed for fighting. For some, the new rules mean a drastic change in lifestyle, a loss of stability and identity.
Kyle is caught between loyalty to the UDA and loyalty to Freddie, his best friend. Freddie wants to carry on doing what he was groomed for.
They are drawn into conflict when Kyle is reluctantly recruited to head a punishment squad to deal with renegades. When Freddie breaks the ban, personal and political loyalties collide violently.
This powerfully-acted BBC film offers a sombre reflection on the peace process.

Synopsis

The story of Tom and Penny - their love for each other, Penny's rapidly advancing cancer, and the pledge Tom has made to help Penny die. Penny has reached a point of no return. She and Tom have had a very strong relationship, habitually at ease and attracted to one another.

Synopsis

Brian and Julie, a young married couple, are about to have their first child. But far from bringing them happiness, following the birth, Julie descends into a psychotic form of postnatal disorder known as Puerperal Psychosis, an illness which affects 1 in 500 women. Her behaviour becomes increasingly bizarre and she is admitted to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. Her strange behaviour continues and she forms an attachment to a male fellow inmate.

After several weeks in the hospital and several sessions of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), Julie is no better and Brian despairs of ever getting her back. He starts to blame God for his situation and to question his beliefs and the principles of his faith. Sarah, his work colleague tries to help but her motives are not entirely unselfish and Brian has to fight against his attraction to her.

When he eventually succumbs, he is filled with remorse, especially when he discovers that Julie has returned to sanity. He decides to take action to get his life back to some sort of normality but when he goes to get Julie out of the hospital and take her home he is faced with another problem - believing she is cured but that nobody believes her, she has run away from the hospital and disappeared.

Synopsis

Frank O' Reilly is a loanshark, down on his luck as always. After a lifetime wasted pretending to be a gangster, he's got nothing to show for it except a crappy little car and a few darts trophies. He lives in the quaint little seaside town of Bognor Regis and swaggers about like he's some big-time 'face' from London. Everybody regards him as a joke except his impressionable young partner Des. Des is a posh upper middle class kid obsessed with gangster movies and boxing even though his Dad's a Chief Constable in the police and he's so crap at boxing his own cornermen bet against him when he fights.

Then one day O' Reilly and Des get sent to collect twenty grand from an eccentric Indian gambler, Singh. When Singh pays up but then gets hit by a bus as he tries to get it back the two hopeless loansharks sniff the first opportunity they've had in years.

They lie to the man who sent them, Mr Palooka, saying Singh refused to pay up before he got killed. A simple lie and now they can keep the money. What could go wrong?

Well, first, O' Reilly loses all the money when it's stolen by Singh's former girlfriend. And second, Mr Palooka's boss, the dreaded Mr Baxter (known as the 'Hardest Man in Bognor') has decided to blame them for not forcing Singh to pay up and has decreed that his two loansharks have two weeks to come up with the money.

So now our two unlikely heroes have to come up with twenty grand and of course they're well over nineteen grand short. But O'Reilly has a plan.

Synopsis

Babysitting can be a precarious business, as Josh finds out, if the girl in your care, who happens to be your friend's sister, manages to seduce you!

Synopsis

Mark Feinman has a dream; he's stranded alone on a desert island, but he doesn't know why. In a flash of inspiration he realises his dream is a premonition and immediately sets up a touring theatre company with his two friends, Hettie and Jason. Their mission: to bring a radical reinterpretation of Shakespeare's Tempest to unsuspecting audiences in Edinburgh, Paris and London.

Mark and his misfit mates are forced to sign up their actors from an assortment of petty criminals, public school boys and burger bar workers. However, the miraculous arrival of the mysterious and beautiful Anya spurs them on to new heights for the world premiere in Soho.

After a sublimely disastrous opening in London, the young hopefuls flee to Edinburgh and Paris in search of their dreams: fame, fortune, sexual adventure and a decent meal. Once on the road they find their idealism rewarded with every possible mishap and breakdown.

Having reached rock bottom, Mark makes a final stab at leadership. He announces a new booking in a glamorous Parisian venue. In the city of love and lights they find that their problems have only just begun. With no money and no roof over their heads, they may as well be marooned on a desert island.

Synopsis

Bend It Like Beckham is a British 'Teen-Comedy' about bending the rules to get what you want.

If you're 18, love Beckham and can bend a ball like him the world's your oyster, right? Wrong. If you're Jess - 18, Indian and a girl - forget it. Do you think your marriage-obsessed folks will let you play a Man's game?

If you're Jules - 18, English and a girl - what will it take to convince your mother that just because you play footie with girls doesn't mean you're a lesbian?

Both girls dream of playing professionally - that means going to the States where the girls get paid, get sponsorship and get proper respect. Jess and Jules are on their way with help from their coach, Joe, until they both fall in love with him.

Synopsis

On a sprawling estate on the outskirts of suburbia, Leanne 13, is a child who has had to grow up fast. With a mother who left years ago, her dad Jim takes it for granted that Leanne will continue the domestic duties where his wife left off.

Synopsis

The script is based on a real life miscarriage of justice that is part of Australian history.

It is 1958 in conservative Adelaide, a city that prides itself on it's peaceful, well-bred qualities. A young lawyer, David O' Sullivan, excitable and charming, is given the news that he has drawn a 'lottery prize' - a legal aid case for an aborigine who has been arrested for the rape and murder of an eight year old girl in the far west desert town of Ceduna. O' Sullivan soon concludes that the aborigine has been framed by the local police and decides he must take a stand. He finds himself pitted against Chamberlain, South Australia's Crown Prosecutor, a forbidding but tremendously charismatic character. O' Sullivan and his legal partner, Helen Devaney, embark on a 'David and Goliath' battle that threatens the world of closed ranks, hidden evidence and the establishment.

Aided by the young Rupert Murdoch, who is making a name for himself, O' Sullivan takes the case to the highest courts in the Commonwealth. Manoeuvring narratives of political manipulation, police corruption and personal crisis, this is a wonderfully compelling story of right and wrong.

Synopsis

On 30th January 1972, British soldiers shot dead 13 unarmed civilians taking part in a civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland. The event, Bloody Sunday, was a major turning point in the history of the modern Irish troubles, catapulting a low intensity conflict into a civil war, driving many young men into the ranks of the IRA and fuelling a 25 year cycle of violence.

This film tells the story of Bloody Sunday in just one day from dawn to dusk, from the arrival of thousands of troops on the streets of the besieged city to the violent collision between soldiers from the crack Paratroop Regiment and the crowds of civilian demonstrators. The film follows the march organisers and the police, British soldiers, as well as civilians from both sides of the religious sectarian divide. It focuses in particular on the stories of two young men: Ivan Cooper, an idealistic Civil Rights leader, a Protestant in a Catholic camp, who shares Martin Luther King's dream of peaceful change; and Gerry Donaghy, a 17 year old Catholic rebel, who yearns to settle down and marry his Protestant girlfriend, but who is drawn into violent confrontation with the soldiers.