The Valiant Years was a documentary produced by ABC based on the memoirs of Winston Churchill, directed by Anthony Bushell and John Schlesinger, narrated by Gary Merrill and with extracts from the memoirs voiced by Richard Burton. It ran in the United States from 1960 to 1961, in 27 30-minute episodes and was broadcast in the UK by the BBC from February to August 1961. Its incidental music was written by Richard Rodgers, who won an Emmy for it in 1962. Scriptwriters included Victor Wolfson a dramatist and writer, Quentin Reynolds, William L. Shirer an American journalist, war correspondent and historian, and Richard Tregaskis. One of the program's London-based producers was actor Patrick Macnee, just prior to his being cast as secret agent John Steed in the long-running cult TV series The Avengers.,
The Missiles of October is a 1974 docudrama made-for-television play about the Cuban missile crisis. The title evokes the book The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman about the missteps among the great powers and the failed chances to give an opponent a graceful way out, which led to the First World War. The teleplay introduced William Devane as John F. Kennedy and cast Martin Sheen as United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. The script is based on Robert Kennedy's book Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
A historical series that traces the rise and fall of the Umayyad dynasty, and follows the life of Abd al-Rahman I, founder of the Umayyad regime in Andalusia.
Mussolini seized power in Italy in 1922, after his March on Rome. He would hold it in his grasp until his death in 1945, establishing a dictatorship that lasted more than 20 years. Long considered a buffoon and a second-rate dictator, Il Duce invented fascism that was imitated by Hitler, who viewed the Italian as his political master. He wanted to transform his country into a warrior nation and promised Italians a return to the grandeur of the Roman Empire. He governed by violence and trickery and was one of the first populist leaders of modern times, leading his country into the catastrophe of the World War II. But who was Mussolini, this former teacher who came from the extreme left to become a newspaper editor and creator of the Fascist Party? Why did he ally himself with Hitler? Were the Italians really behind him? With archives and interviews with the last-surviving witnesses of the era, this portrait takes a look back at one of the most notorious dictators of the 20th century.
In 1940s Amsterdam, Jewish Council co-chairman David Cohen and his daughter Virrie have their bond tested as they pursue increasingly opposing ways of safeguarding their community under Nazi rule.
After an Allied plane carrying a top-secret WWII bombing plan is shot down behind enemy lines, a wounded survivor hides on a Japanese-occupied island while military intelligence races to recover the documents before they doom the entire operation.
Lieutenant Doronin and his troops are moved to a narrow mountain pass. The task seems simple: to defend the pass from the insurgents and not let them pass. But the 200 Russian soldiers do not expect that they will soon be facing 2000 Chechens ready for battle and will have to fight for bare survival.
Nikolay Morozov has been both a revolutionary and a terrorist in his long life. Sentenced to a lifetime of hard labour, he spent 30 years in a tsarist prison. His hair had long turned grey by the time the Second World War broke out, but when he realised his country needed him he volunteered for the army. Nikolay was 87 at the time.
Polina Lebedeva, daughter of the childless prince Alexei Petrovich Golovin, is the most enviable bride of the Yamburg district. During the ball in honor of her birthday, Alexei Petrovich dies of a heart attack. This grief is only the beginning of hard trials, destined for the girl ..