COBRA

The lives of the Duke of Marlborough and his wife Sarah, from their meeting in 1673 to the duke's death in 1722.

Reilly, Ace of Spies is a 1983 television miniseries dramatizing the life of Sidney Reilly, a Russian Jew who became one of the greatest spies ever to work for the British. Among his exploits, in the early 20th century, were the infiltration of the German General Staff in 1917 and a near-overthrow of the Bolsheviks in 1918. His reputation with women was as legendary as his genius for espionage.

A faithful ten part BBC adaptation of A.J. Cronin's book of the same name published in 1937 about a young Scottish doctor (Ben Cross) trying to find a place for himself in the dysfunctional medical system of Wales and England in the 1920s and early 1930s.

An eight-part dramatization of the statesman's 'darkest hours'---1929-39. As this 'Masterpiece Theatre' series opens, the ambitious Churchill's career is in dire straits. It's 1928, and Churchill---already out of favor in his own Conservative Party---is soon to be out of office as the Tory government's Chancellor of the Exchequer.

British stagings of the Bard's entire canon, performed (over six years) by a distinguished roster that included John Gielgud, Derek Jacobi, Kate Nelligan, Claire Bloom, Patrick Stewart, Ben Kingsley and Anthony Hopkins (who had the title role in a particularly memorable production of 'Othello'). This was one of the biggest and most ambitious programming ventures of its time, what one PBS official called 'the great Anglo-American alliance of the 20th century.'

The everyday life of a black family was chronicled in this dramatic series produced by the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting.