Explore TV Series

The Two of Us is an ITV comedy series produced by London Weekend Television, and starring Nicholas Lyndhurst and Janet Dibley as Ashley Phillips and Elaine Walker, an unmarried couple living together, at a time when this was becoming increasingly common in Britain, but still considered slightly controversial in some circles. While Ashley was keen for the pair to get married and would regularly propose, Elaine saw no reason to get married and was happy to keep her independence. Ashley's roguish grandfather Perce (played by Patrick Troughton, but later by Tenniel Evans after Troughton's death) was supportive of the couple, but Ashley's domineering mother (Jennifer Piercey) disapproved and constantly urged the pair to marry. Ashley's suppressed father (Paul McDowell) seemed less upset, but generally backed up his wife in the hope of a quiet life and the odd sherry.

The Little Vampire is a 13-episode children’s television series based on Angela Sommer-Bodenburg’s books The Little Vampire and The Little Vampire Moves In. The series was produced in 1985 as a Canadian-German-British co-production by Norflicks Productions Ltd. (Canada), Polyphon Film- und Fernsehgesellschaft (Germany), and TVS (United Kingdom), and first aired in 1986. It follows a young boy whose ordinary life changes after befriending a young vampire and becoming involved in a secret nocturnal world of adventure, friendship, and light-hearted supernatural escapades.

Set in a spaceship called the millennium dustbin each week the hosts would travel to different towns around the country and talk to interesting people, show cartoons and have competitions.

Every Second Counts was a game show which aired on BBC One between 8 February 1986 and 29 October 1993 and was hosted by Paul Daniels. It is based on the American game show of the same name. Produced in association with Talbot Television & Group W Productions.

A six-part story of the staff and the owner, an unscrupulous media magnate, of Sunday Register, a fictional newspaper company located on London's Fleet Street where most British national newspaper companies were located until the 1980s.

A ten-part serial based on Jeffrey Archer's 1984 novel of the same name, which follows the careers and personal lives of a quartet of fictional Parliament members from 1964 to 1991, with each vying to become Prime Minister.

Slinger's Day is a British sitcom created by Brian Cooke and produced by Thames Television for ITV. A continuation of Tripper's Day, which had come to a natural end due to a combination of star Leonard Rossiter's death and an overwhelmingly negative response, Bruce Forsyth plays a different character to Norman Tripper but fulfilling the same role, that of the manager of a Supafare supermarket with a team of incompetent eccentrics. Several cast members from Tripper's Day reprised their roles in the first series but departed in the second, allowing for new characters. Broadcast for two six-episode runs from 1986–87, Slinger's Day represented Forsyth's sole situation comedy acting role, and he remained more associated with stand-up and game shows.

The Russ Abbot Show was a British television comedy series which starred Russ Abbot and ran on the BBC from 1986 to 1991, and for 14 episodes on Granada Television from 1994 to 1995. It featured comedy performers Les Dennis, Bella Emberg, Tom Bright, Maggie Moone, Suzy Aitchison, Gordon Kennedy, Paul Shearer and Sherrie Hewson among others.

Naked Video was a BBC Scotland comedy series, broadcast between 1986 and 1991 on BBC2, the series was created by Colin Gilbert who also created A Kick Up the Eighties and Naked Radio.

Roncalli is a German television series.

Jimbo and the Jet Set is a British animated cartoon series broadcast in the 1980s, featuring the adventures of the eponymous Jimbo, a talking aeroplane. Created by Maddocks Cartoon Productions, it originally ran for 25 episodes between 1985 and 1986. The premise of the cartoon is that Jimbo was originally intended to be a Jumbo Jet, but his designer could not tell the difference between inches and centimetres, resulting in his diminutive size. If Jimbo's designer switched the imperial measurements of the Boeing 747 for metric, the result would have been an aircraft with a fuselage length of 91 ft; this would make Jimbo roughly the length of an early-series Boeing 737. The television series features various talking airport-type ground vehicles: Tommy Tow-Truck, Claude Catering, Amanda Baggage, Phil the Fuel Truck, Sammy Steps and Harry Helicopter. Other plane characters appear from time to time, such as Old Timer, a Vickers Wellington bomber who gets into the story while flying to or from an airshow. The story is based at a fictional "London Airport", under the command of an irate controller who frequently ends episodes screaming "I want words with you, Jimbo!".

The first German Revolution did not break out in Berlin in 1848, but in the state of Baden. Little is known about the reasons why the Baden Revolution and its seemingly within-reach dream of unity, freedom, and democracy ultimately failed to come to fruition. The desperate struggle of the Baden folk hero and poet of freedom, Andreas Lenz, clearly shows the difficulties of implementing profound changes in a society.

The Trap Door is a claymation-style animated television series, originally shown in the United Kingdom in 1984. The plot revolves around both the daily lives and the misadventures of a group of monsters living in a castle. Although the emphasis was on humour and the show was marketed as a children's programme but also for family entertainment, the show drew much from the genres of horror and dark fantasy. The show has since become a cult favourite and remains one of the most widely recognised kids' shows of the 1980s. Digital children's channel Pop started rerunning the show in 2010.

Follows two wealthy families in Germany during the first half of the 20th century. One of them is German, the other one Jewish.

Running Scared is a British television children's drama serial produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC 1 in 1986, based on the Bernard Ashley novel and is set in Woolwich with the Woolwich Ferry featuring in a key scene. A gritty series, Running Scared deals with a teenage girl, Paula, whose life is put at risk when she uncovers evidence that could put a local criminal gang leader behind bars. The series is notable for its use of the then recently released Kate Bush pop song Running Up That Hill as its main theme tune.

Fax was a Notes and Queries show by the BBC, shown in the late 1980s. It was presented by Bill Oddie, Wendy Leavesley, Debbie Rix and Billy Butler.

Janoschs Traumstunde is an German animated children's television series that originally ran from 1986 to 1990. It is based on the works of German artist and children's book author Janosch.

Irgendwie und Sowieso is a German television series.

Ruth Patchett has it all: a large, warty body, a standard suburban home, a couple of unruly children, a dog, a cat and a guinea pig. She also has Bobbo, her unfaithful accountant husband who resents her very existence. Bobbo wants, and is wanted by, romance novelist Mary Fisher, who lives in a lighthouse by the sea. When Bobo leaves Ruth for Mary, Ruth decides that Mary doesn't know the first thing about love, and she's gonna teach her.

In 1913, young Richard Herncastle joins his Uncle Nick's magic act and is introduced to the enchanted world of the British music hall. Travelling from one city to the next, assisting at conjuring acts and disappearing acts, Richard comes to know romance, politics, and high adventure. The next year, in a true and terrifying vanishing act, the guns of August blast away that world forever.

The ChuckleHounds was a BBC Children's TV Series staring the The Chuckle Brothers as dogs.

Love me Licia is an Italian television series. It is one of the four live adpatiations of the Japanese manga Ai Shite Knight. Its sequels are "Licia dolce Licia," "Teneramente Licia," and "Balliamo e cantiamo con Licia".

While on vacation with their bickering parents in Portugal, Eva and her little brother Johnny find two strange clots of clay on a polluted beach, who can speak and move on their own. They create two octopuses out of the blue and green material and take them home to Prague, soon discovering that their new pets attract electricity and other disasters.

The Return of the Antelope was a UK TV series aired on ITV between 1986 and 1988. It was a children's fantasy series about two English children, circa 1899, who befriend a group of shipwrecked Lilliputians.

The Dangerous Brothers was a stage and TV act by anarchic comedy duo Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson, performing respectively as "Richard Dangerous" and "Sir Adrian Dangerous". Originally appearing on stage in London at the comedy club 'The Comic Strip', the characters were well developed before appearing on TV. First appearing on television on a one off 1980 BBC TV show 'Boom Boom Out Go The Lights', they were also featured in a TV short 'documentary' film 'The Comic Strip', directed by Julien Temple, before they appeared in a number of brief sketches in the TV programme Saturday Live from 1985 on.

London based petty crook Eddie Cass agrees to pick up a package and courier it across the capital. When nobody answers the door at the drop-off, Eddie opens the package and finds a woman’s severed head in a hatbox. He panics and dumps it in the River Thames. Returning home, Cass is kidnapped by the mysterious Eldridge and his heavies who inform Eddie that he has been framed for the murder.

The comedy event of the year took place in April 1986 at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London. All those taking part gave their services free in order to support the famine relief camp in Umbala in the west of Sudan. Tonight Omnibus, in collaboration with Charity Projects, presents the best comic talents in Britain today. Among those appearing: Rowan Atkinson, Frank Bruno, Kate Bush, Graham Chapman, Billy Connolly, Ronnie Corbett, Paul Eddington, Ben Elton, French and Saunders, Stephen Fry, Bob Geldof, Terry Gilliam, Lenny Henry, Howard Jones, Terry Jones, Hugh Laurie, Hank Marvin, Rik Mayall, Michael Palin, Cliff Richard, Pamela Stephenson, Spitting Image, Midge Ure, The Young Ones.

Executive Stress is a British sitcom that aired on ITV from 1986 to 1988. Produced by Thames Television, it first aired on 20 October 1986. After three series, the last episode aired on 27 December 1988. Written by George Layton, Executive Stress stars Penelope Keith as Caroline Fairchild, a middle-aged woman who decides to go back to work. Her husband, Donald, is played by Geoffrey Palmer in the first series. However, Palmer was unable to return for the second series, so Peter Bowles played Donald in the last two series. Keith and Bowles had previously appeared in together in To the Manor Born.

Noel Edmonds' journeys around Britain and the world to take gifts and surprises to deserving people.

In a heady tale of revenge and obsession, the outlaw Zastrozzi, assisted by courtesan, Matilda, abducts his half-brother, Verezzi, and torments him into believing his lover, Julia, has been murdered. His campaign of vicious psychological abuse signals a grisly bloodbath of greed, envy, betrayal, retribution, and eternal damnation.

Having hastily left the Met before his dubious activities finally caught up with him, ex-detective Ronald King has formed the Manor Debt Collection Agency with David Castle, a young, somewhat naive martial arts expert and part-time genealogist. Castle's skills come in handy in his new line of work, as do King's old police contacts, and in their dealings with a range of duplicitous, sometimes dangerous clients the chalk-and-cheese duo somehow manages to survive on the right side of the law.

Three drama-documentary films set in a Paris art studio during a century of scandal and revolution, exploring the lives of French artists Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste Ingres, and Théodore Géricault.

Hell's Bells is a 1986 British sitcom produced by BBC Television starring Derek Nimmo as traditionalist Dean 'Selwyn' Makepeace, who finds himself consistently at loggerheads with modernising new Bishop Godfrey Hethercote.

A BBC children’s drama that premiered on 12 March 1986, The December Rose unfolds over six episodes as young chimney sweep Absalom “Barnacle” Brown (Courtney Roper‑Knight) stumbles upon a dangerous conspiracy among London’s Victorian elite and becomes the target of the menacing Inspector Creaker (Ian Hogg). Fleeing to the safety of a Thames barge, The Lady, under the care of kindly skipper Tom Gosling (Tony Haygarth), Barnacle adapts to life on the river and befriends the formidable Mrs McDipper (Judy Cornwell) and her daughter Miranda (Cathy Murphy). As Creaker’s gang closes in and a mysterious foreign vessel, The December Rose, docks with a perilous secret aboard, the story builds to a feverish climax in which Barnacle and his allies confront evil head‑on. Based on Leon Garfield’s novel, the series is rich with Dickensian characters and atmospheric location filming across Norfolk, Gloucester, Leeds and Hull

We'll Think of Something is a British sitcom that aired on ITV in 1986. Starring Sam Kelly, it was written by Geoff Rowley, who had also written episodes of Birds of a Feather and Goodnight Sweetheart. It was made by Thames Television and was directed by John Howard Davies.

The Monocled Mutineer follows the rebellion that took place at the notorious Etaples Training Camp in northern France on the eve of "The Battle of Passchendaele" in 1917. After the mutiny, the dashing Percy Toplis takes flight, dressed as a British officer, soon to embark on a love affair with beautiful young widow, Dorothy. A solder in the First World War, the real Percy Toplis was a rake, rogue and master of disguise who became the most wanted man in Britain. This controversial BBC dramatisation of high romance, hilarious impudence and savage retribution was adapted by Alan Bleasdale from the book by William Allison and John Fairley.

Mino was the eighth ZDF-Weihnachtsserie, and aired in 1986. The series was broadcast in Germany on ZDF, and consisted of 6 episodes. Broadcasting in Germany began on December 25, 1986. The series was also broadcast in Italy, and consisted of 4 episodes. Broadcasting in Italy began on December 28, 1986. The series was an Italian-German co-production. It was inspired by the Italian novel The little Alpino by Salvator Gotta.

The story of Ciro Mele, a killer with a malformed nose, and the feud between two rival clans, the Ammirata and the Palestra brothers.

An idealistic former soldier helps unite and house ethnic minorities in a run-down area of London's east end.