May 4, 2009

John Mortimer on TV

The British Film Institute is this month screening a season of the late Sir John Mortimer's classic TV dramas. These stills, from works spanning his career, recall his deft mix of gentle wit and radical thinking

John Mortimer on TV: John Mortimer's The Wrong Side of the Park — In the 1960 play The Wrong Side of the Park, family life in a large Hampstead house is disturbed for ever when a charming but sinister lodger moves in Photograph: BBC

John Mortimer on TV: John Mortimer's King's Cross Lunch Hour — Pauline Collins and Joss Ackland in the 1972 play King's Cross Lunch Hour, in which an afternoon assignation in a hotel takes on Pinteresque tones Photograph: BBC

John Mortimer on TV: John Mortimer's Bermondsey — Class and gay love collide in the 1972 play Bermondsey, with Dinsdale Landon and Edward Fox as two men who continue a relationship for 18 years after meeting during national service Photograph: BBC

John Mortimer on TV: John Mortimer's Thirty Minute Theatre: Mill Hill — Peter Cook is a dentist who tries to play out his sexual fantasies with his partner's wife, Geraldine McEwan, in the 1972 comedy of manners Mill Hill Photograph: BBC

John Mortimer on TV: Leo Mckern in Rumpole of the Bailey — Leo McKern brought the mischievous Rumpole of the Bailey to life in a 1973 Play for Today. It turned into a long-running ITV series exploring life at the bar and at home with 'she who must be obeyed' Photograph: BBC

John Mortimer on TV: John Mortimer's Unity — The 1981 play Unity examines the aristocracy's collusion with fascism during the second world war. Lesley-Anne Down plays the naive Unity Mitford Photograph: BBC

John Mortimer on TV: John Mortimer — Alan Bates plays the young John Mortimer in the 1981 remake of A Voyage Round My Father, with Laurence Olivier turning in one of his last great performances for TV as his exasperating barrister father Clifford. It also features Jane Asher, and Elizabeth Sellars as his mother Photograph: Rex Features

John Mortimer on TV: Alec Guinness in Edwin — Alec Guinness plays a retired judge, Sir Fennimore Truscott QC, who wonders if an old friend fathered his beloved son, in the 1984 drama Edwin Photograph: BBC

John Mortimer on TV: John Mortimer — David Threlfall as devious MP Leslie Titmuss and Kristin Scott Thomas as Jenny Sidonia in 1991's Titmuss Regained, a satire on the Thatcher era. He convinces her to marry him by buying a manor, but a new mock Georgian shopping mall development soon spoils the honeymoon Photograph: FremantleMedia Ltd / Rex Feature

John Mortimer on TV: John Mortimer — Dramatist, novelist and barrister John Clifford Mortimer, pictured circa 1971 Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

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