Explore TV Series

World War II drama about covert organisation Lifeline helping allied airmen escape after being shot down in occupied Europe, working with the Resistance and hiding from the Gestapo.

Acclaimed blackly comic historical drama series. Set amidst a web of power, corruption and lies, it chronicles the reigns of the Roman emperors - Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and finally Claudius.

Churchill's People is a British anthology series based on A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill's four-volume history of Britain and its former colonies. 26 episodes were produced by the BBC and initially broadcast from 30 December 1974 to 23 June 1975.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a seven-part BBC2 spy drama written by Arthur Hopcraft, adapted from John le Carré's eponymous 1974 novel. The serial, which stars Alec Guinness, Alexander Knox, Ian Richardson, Michael Jayston, Bernard Hepton, Anthony Bate, Ian Bannen, George Sewell and Michael Aldridge, was broadcast from 10 September to 22 October 1979. George Smiley, the ageing master spy of the Cold War and once heir-apparent to Control, is brought back out of retirement to flush out a top level mole within the Circus. Smiley must travel back through his life and murky workings of the Circus to unravel the net spun by his nemesis Karla 'The Sandman' of the KGB and reveal the identity of the mole before he disappears.

Enemy At The Door is a British television drama series made by London Weekend Television for ITV. The series was shown between 1978 and 1980 and dealt with the German occupation of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands, during the Second World War. The programme generated a certain amount of criticism in Guernsey, particularly for being obviously filmed on Jersey despite being ostensibly set on Guernsey. The series also marked the TV debut of Anthony Head as a member of the island resistance. The theme music was by Wilfred Josephs.

Manhunt is a World War II drama series consisting of 26 episodes, produced by London Weekend Television in 1969 and broadcast nationwide.

Written and filmed to reflect the reality of life in the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines in the 1970s, most stories focus on the Captain and his fellow officers, with subplots dealing with life on the lower decks. Episodes typically featured a variety of events at sea (the Cold War, smuggling, the evacuation of civilians from crisis-hit places, etc.), as well as the personal lives of officers and ratings and the impact their personal lives had on their professional lives and duties.

A documentary series that gives a historical account of the events of World War II, from its roots in the 1920s to the aftermath and the lives it profoundly influenced.

The series follows a group of Allied pilots who crashed in occupied territories during WWII. A network of civilians and Resistance fighters, "La Filière", is in charge of helping them pass from France to Spain so they can avoid capture.

In 1945, during the final months of the Second World War, a group of soldiers perform for the Royal Artillery concert party, with comic acts and musical numbers for others prior to their departure for the frontlines. The party avoids partaking in combat duty; thus, the soldiers love being part of the outfit. Some even daydream of becoming world-famous actors when they leave the army.

Colditz is a British television series co-produced by the BBC and Universal Studios and screened between 1972 and 1974. The series deals with Allied prisoners of war imprisoned at the supposedly escape-proof Colditz Castle when designated Oflag IV-C during World War II, and their many attempts to escape captivity, as well as the relationships formed between the various nationalities and their German captors.

The series Mazarin (1978) recounts the rise of Jules Mazarin, first an Italian diplomat and later France’s chief minister after Richelieu. The story shows how he earns the trust of Anne of Austria and becomes the political mentor of the young Louis XIV. Over the course of the episodes, Mazarin faces court intrigues, the hostility of powerful nobles, and the turmoil of the Fronde, which threatens royal authority and forces him into several periods of exile. Despite pamphlets and conspiracies, he manages to restore order and prepare the emergence of the future Sun King. The series thus portrays a skilled statesman, often contested but essential in shaping absolute monarchy.

A Family at War is a British drama series created by John Finch and produced by Granada Television for ITV. It broadcast from 14 April 1970 to 16 February 1972. 52 episodes were made, all but eight in colour. Episodes numbers 25 to 32 were recorded in black and white because of the ITV Colour Strike (November 1970 — February 1971). The Ashton family struggles to deal with the harsh realities of the Second World War as their sons are sent away to fight. Those who remain at home in Liverpool live in constant fear of a knock on the door with a telegram from the War Office or the Luftwaffe bombs overhead as they sleep at night.

It is the start of the 14th century and Philip IV the Fair reigns supreme over France. His three sons would rule after him. Isabelle, his only daughter, is married to King Edward II of England. Under Philip's reign, France is great but its people are unhappy. Only one power dares to stand up to him: the order of the Knights Templar. When the last Grand Master of the Temple, Jacques de Molay, is burned at the stake, he curses Philip and so begins a dark period, full of blood and violence, death and tears ...

The trials and tribulations of a daring group of young pilots in the Royal Flying Corps as they prepare for battle in World War I. The lead character joins the RFC without being the right class for some of his fellow pilots.

The love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov is interwoven with the Great Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon's invading army.

The Sandbaggers is a British television drama series about men and women on the front lines of the Cold War. Set contemporaneously with its original broadcast on ITV in 1978 and 1980, The Sandbaggers examines the effect of the espionage game on the personal and professional lives of British and American intelligence specialists.

During World War One, in a small rural French village far away from the front, a gamekeeper and his wife take in children displaced by the war.

During the second world war, the Pathfinder squadrons of RAF Bomber Command were the elite. All volunteers, their dangerous task was to fly in advance of bombing raids over occupied Europe and Nazi Germany and "light up" the target with flares and incendiaries.

The adventures of Natty 'Hawkeye' Bumppo and his Indian companions, caught in a war between the French and English in upstate New York in 1757.

A Horseman Riding By is a 13-part BBC television serial produced by Ken Riddington, and adapted by Arden Winch, Alexander Baron, and John Wiles from R.F. Delderfield's 1966-68 historical novel series of the same name. Having been invalided out of the Boer War, Paul Craddock buys Shallowford, a manor house and estate in Devon, with money from his late father's scrapyard business. He soon becomes a much-respected 'Squire' determined to treat all his tenant farmers fairly, unlike his predecessor.

A dramatization of Vera Brittain's 1933 autobiography Testament of Youth—a memorial to a generation devastated by WWI—chronicles her experiences as a nurse in London and Malta and at the front lines in France. It opens with 18-year-old Vera, the genteel daughter of a paper-mill owner, nurturing "hopes of escaping from provincial young ladyhood." Her plan is to attend Oxford.

Die Abenteuer des braven Soldaten Schwejk is an Austrian television series. Schwejk is a bumbling fool (he claims to have been discharged from the army on the grounds of being a certified idiot) but manages to outwit his superiors and his arch nemesis, the secret policeman "Bretschneider" with hilarious results. Set during the first world war, it follow Schwejks adventures as a recruit in the Austro-Hungarian army.

The series describes the time of the First World War in 8 episodes based on the novel by Bernard von Brentano from the perspective of the family of a Hessian Reichstag member, an independent man of the Catholic-conservative Centre Party.

"Operation Valkyrie" was the name of an official alarm plan during the Second World War. With the help of this plan, the conspirators around Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg wanted to bring about the overthrow of Germany on July 20, 1944. The events are well known: Stauffenberg's assassination attempt failed, Adolf Hitler remained alive. In addition to the purely scenic reconstruction, this two-part, documentary-style film consists of interspersed interviews and reports with eyewitnesses and survivors who were directly involved. Everything that is available in the way of authentic testimony about July 20, 1944 is examined and documented with the highest degree of realism.

A structure-free, four-part examination of the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Each part explores a different topic, from Hitler's cult of personality in propaganda to how said propaganda was associated with pre-Nazi German cultural, spiritual, and national heritage to the Holocaust and the ideology behind it, particularly from Himmler's point of view.

Shortly before the outbreak of World War II: Leopold Trepper, a colonel in the Red Army, travels to Belgium under a false name and sets up a spy ring there. Together with his employees Viktor Sukulow-Gurewitsch, Johann Wenzel, Hillel Katz and Michail Makarow, he succeeds in establishing a spy network throughout Belgium and France in a very short time. With the help of his cover companies - a chain of raincoat shops and later the import-export company Simexco ”- Trepper can collect information from the economy and the Wehrmacht, about Atlantic Wall construction sites and railway lines, and send it to Moscow. The agents also get help from patriots who want to free their countries from the occupation by the Germans.

A documentary television series of the Nazi-Soviet War, edited from over 3.5 million feet of film taken by Soviet camera crews from the first day of the war, 22 June 1941, to the Soviet entry into Berlin in May 1945.

This classic series follows the events that sparked the greatest conflict of the century, capturing the drama, the excitement and the ideological juxtapositions of these crucial years. Former CBS News correspondent and commentator Eric Sevareid, one of the world's most respected figures in journalism, presents this extraordinary series featuring stunning original newsreels, soundtracks, and rare archival footage.

In Britannia in 130, a young Roman officer named Marcus Flavius Aquila and his freed slave Esca search for the Ninth Legion's gold eagle standard, which vanished with the legion 13 years earlier.

The World War I is declared. The french pioneers of aviation are requisitioned, but they try to renew with the spirit of chivalry.

Thundercloud is a 1979 British television comedy created and written by Ian Mackintosh. Produced by Yorkshire Television for ITV, it was significantly more lighthearted than Mackintosh's prior series Warship and The Sandbaggers. Lieutenant Commander ‘Monty’ Morgan – a stickler for forms – and his shipmates operate aboard the shore-based HMS Thundercloud, a secret Royal Navy station on the Yorkshire coast during World War II, apparently far enough away from HQ to merit a remarkable degree of autonomy. In fact, the Admiralty were convinced that the station was actually a destroyer in the North Sea!

The Devil's Crown was a BBC limited series which dramatised the reigns of three medieval Kings of England: Henry II and his sons Richard the Lionheart and John. It was broadcast in thirteen 55-minute episodes between 30 April and 23 July 1978. Henry Plantagenet (latterly Henry II), sees his opportunity to seize the crown of England and create a kingdom of law and order. He cuts a deal with King Stephen in which Stephen will name him his heir, excluding his sons Eustace and William in exchange for a fragile truce. Stephen's sudden death elevates Henry to the throne. He may have been King of England, but the bulk of the Angevin Empire was in France, and it was this that Henry regarded as the Jewel in his Crown, maintained through a series of political marriages and complex allegiances. Henry pays homage to Louis VII, King of the Franks, for these lands, but it is clear that Henry is the shrewder and more ambitious of the two kings, having married Louis' ex-wife Eleanor of Aquitaine.

In a France fractured by court rivalries and personal ambitions, Richelieu moves without ornament. No flourish, no glory — only the cold machinery of power. Caught between a hesitant king, a nobility dreaming of defiance, and enemies multiplying on every front, the cardinal enforces his line: centralize, control, crush resistance. The series follows a strategist who doesn’t hide behind morality. He acts to keep the State standing, even if it means breaking those who stand in his way. Espionage, secret negotiations, decisive strikes… Richelieu plays a game where mistakes are fatal, and the survival of the kingdom rests on one man willing to go further than all the others

A 1971 three-part miniseries about the birth of the Italian Republic, directed by Sandro Bolchi, Vittorio De Sica, and Ermanno Olmi

The film depicts the life of the middle-class Kempowski family in Rostock between 1939 and 1945 in great detail and closely following the novel on which it is based. In addition to describing the special events in Walter's life and in the family, there are also repeated depictions of everyday life, such as walks with his father through Rostock, at school and in youth groups, with friends and swing music, at family meals and Christmas celebrations, at church or at the cinema. Father Karl loves cigars from the company "Loeser & Wolff," which always prompts him to say "impeccable, more impeccable, Tadellöser and Wolff" when praising them.

A RAI television miniseries that reconstructs the Allied Conferences held during the World War II, from Placentia Bay (1941) to Potsdam (1945).

The Secret War was a six–part television series produced by the BBC in conjunction with the Imperial War Museum documenting various technical developments during the Second World War. It was aired during 1977 and presented by William Woollard. The programme opening music was an excerpt from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. The closing music was by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The 'seventh' episode often included with video versions of the series was not part of the original series but produced separately.

Ambitious 11-part docudrama of the life, teaching, and work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This series was produced by East-German television. The series shows important points in the life and political development of these immense figures, from Marx's birth in 1818 until Engel's death in 1895.

1976 documentary by Nicola Caracciolo about the life of Italy's King Vittorio Emanuele III

AJP Taylor, the renowned historian, appraises the performance of World War Two leaders. In this series he delivers his lectures to camera and without an autocue.