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The Rat Catchers

The Rat Catchers is a 1960s British television series about a top secret British Intelligence Unit who receive orders from the Prime Minister and without questions battles enemy spies, saboteurs, and other criminals in order to protect the security of Great Britain and the Western Alliance. The show centred around three major characters: Peregrine Pascale Smith, the Oxford University-educated managing director with 12 years' experience under his belt, Brigadier H. St. J. Davidson, the emotionless analytical brains behind the group, and newly-recruited Richard William Hurst, formerly a superintendent at Scotland Yard who though he was said to have gone by the book in the police force, seems to have some problems with authority now. Part of the problem is that the Brigadier refuses to tell him more than the minimum that he needs to know about the organisation. Officially he works for Smith's company: Transworld Electronics and in episode 3, he is not sure whether Smith or the Brigadier is his boss. The organisation was based at Whitehall but officially didn't exist, being denied at the highest level as they worked with the greatest secrecy. The show began with the arrival of Hurst who is out of step with the other two. Raymond Francis was originally picked for the Hurst role but changed his mind at the last minute. Many of the stories were continued, sometimes with cliff-hanger endings.

The Rat Catchers

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On the Margin

On the Margin was a British satirical comedy sketch show written and performed by Alan Bennett and a regular cast including John Sergeant, Virginia Stride, Madge Hindle and Yvonne Gilan. Guest performers included John Fortune and Jonathan Miller. The show also featured songs and poems by John Betjeman and Philip Larkin. Each episode featured a mixture of sketches, some prophesying his later television dramas such as the quasi-soap, Streets Ahead, Life and Times in NW1, and more unexpectedly, serious poetry and music slots incorporating readings by Michael Hordern and Prunella Scales with archive footage of music-hall stars. This personalised nostalgic element distinguished On the Margin from other contemporary sketch shows, with Bennett's satirical swipes at Britain, integrated with his genuine love of its cultural heritage. It was directed by Sydney Lotterby, produced by Patrick Garland and was broadcast between 9 November and 14 December 1966 on BBC 2. It was repeated twice in 1967, but the tapes were wiped in the 1970s so the main surviving evidence of the series are the scripts. However, a compilation CD of audio extracts was released in 2009.

On the Margin

7.0 N/A
North and South

Nineteen-year-old Margaret Hale has lived for almost 10 years in London with her cousin Edith and her wealthy Aunt Shaw, but when Edith marries Captain Lennox, Margaret happily returns home to the southern village of Helstone. Margaret has refused an offer of marriage from the captain's brother Henry, an up-and-coming barrister. Her life is turned upside down when her father, the local pastor, leaves the Church of England and the rectory of Helstone as a matter of conscience; his intellectual honesty has made him a dissenter.

North and South

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