Robert James
Birthday: Born in 1924-03-28 in Paisley, Scotland, UK
Deathday: 2004-07-31
TV Credits
Doctor Who
Character: Lesterson
The adventures of The Doctor, a time-traveling humanoid alien known as a Time Lord. He explores the universe in his TARDIS, a sentient time-traveling spaceship. Its exterior appears as a blue British police box, which was a common sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired. Along with a succession of companions, The Doctor faces a variety of foes while working to save civilizations, help ordinary people, and right many wrongs....
Blake's 7
Character:
A group of convicts and outcasts fight a guerrilla war against the totalitarian Terran Federation from a highly advanced alien spaceship....
Z-Cars
Character:
Z-Cars or Z Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978....
Taggart
Character:
Taggart is a Scottish detective television programme.The series revolves around a group of detectives initially in the Maryhill CID of Strathclyde Police, though various storylines have happened in other parts of the Greater Glasgow area, and as of the most recent series the team have operated out of the fictional John Street police station across the street from the City Chambers....
The Avengers
Character: Merlin
The Avengers is a British television series created in the 1960s. It initially focused on Dr. David Keel and his assistant John Steed. Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants. His most famous assistants were intelligent, stylish and assertive women: Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King. Later episodes increasingly incorporated elements of science fiction and fantasy, parody and British eccentricity....
Century Falls
Character:
The story of teenager Tess Hunter and her mother, who move to the seemingly idyllic rural village of Century Falls, only to find that it hides many powerful secrets....
Crown Court
Character:
Crown Court is an afternoon television courtroom drama produced by Granada Television for the ITV network that ran from 1972, when the Crown Court system replaced Assize courts and Quarter sessions in the legal system of England and Wales, to 1984....
Rumpole of the Bailey
Character:
Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer. It stars Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an aging London barrister who defends any and all clients, and has been spun off into a series of short stories, novels, and radio programmes....
The Scales of Justice
Character: Mr. Durrant
Not strictly TV productions, "The Scales of Justice" were cinema second features produced for Anglo Amalgamated running around 30 minutes and followed the "Scotland Yard" series of shorts also introduced by Edgar Lustgarten. Production was sporadic (presumably filling gaps in the Edgar Wallace schedule), the first three released Nov-Dec 1962, a second batch of three released Sept/Oct 1963, two more in Feb 1965, one in Dec 1965 and a final batch (in colour) Sept 1966 to March 1967. The usual Mert...
Doomwatch
Character: Barker
Doomwatch is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC, which ran on BBC 1 between 1970 and 1972. The series was set in the then present-day, and dealt with a scientific government agency led by Doctor Spencer Quist, responsible for investigating and combating various ecological and technological dangers. The series was followed by a film adaptation produced by Tigon British Film Productions and released in 1972, and a revival TV film was broadcast on Channel 5 in 1999....
Hallmark Hall of Fame
Character: Macconochie
Hallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The longest-running primetime series in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning during 1951 and continuing into 2013. From 1954 onward, all of its productions have been shown in color, although color television video productions were extremely rare in 1954. Many television movies have been shown on the program since its debut, ...
Dr. Finlay's Casebook
Character:
Dr Finlay's Casebook is a television series that was broadcast on the BBC from 1962 until 1971. Based on A. J. Cronin's novella ‘Country Doctor’, the storylines centred on a general medical practice in the fictional Scottish town of Tannochbrae during the late 1920s. Cronin was the primary writer for the show between 1962 and 1964....
No Hiding Place
Character:
No Hiding Place is a British television series that was produced at Wembley Studios by Associated-Rediffusion for the ITV network between 16 September 1959 and 22 June 1967. It was the sequel to the series Murder Bag and Crime Sheet, all starring Raymond Francis as Detective Superintendent, later Detective Chief Superintendent Tom Lockhart....
The Six Wives of Henry VIII
Character: Robert Barnes
Series of television plays written by six different authors. Each play is a lavish dramatization of the trials and tribulations surrounding Henry and his wives. Keith Michell ties the episodes together with his dignified and magnetic performance as the mighty monarch....
The Expert
Character: Dr Mitchell
The Expert is a British television series produced by the BBC between 1968 and 1976. The series starred Marius Goring as Dr. John Hardy, a pathologist working for the Home Office and was essentially a police procedural drama, with Hardy bringing his forensic knowledge to solve various cases. The Expert was created and produced by Gerard Glaister. The series was also one of the first BBC dramas to be made in colour, and throughout its four series had numerous high quality guest appearances by a...
Suspense
Character:
Anthology series telling suspenseful tales....
Orson Welles' Great Mysteries
Character: Mr. Granger
Orson Welles' Great Mysteries was a British television series The series was an anthology of different tales. Each episode was introduced by Orson Welles, who was the only regular actor in the series. In the opening titles, Welles would be shown in silhouette as he walked through a hallway towards the camera, smoking a cigar and outfitted in a broad-brimmed hat and a huge cloak, the outfit itself being a nod to his having provided the voice of The Shadow in the radio program. When he actually ...
Mystery and Imagination
Character:
Mystery and Imagination is a British television anthology series of classic horror and supernatural dramas. Five series were broadcast from 1966 to 1970 by the ITV network and produced by ABC and Thames Television....
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense
Character: Father Ambrey/Packard
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense was a short-lived anthology television series from Hammer Studios. Though similar in format to the 1980 series Hammer House of Horror, the Mystery and Suspense series had feature-length episodes, usually running around 70 minutes without commercials. The series was a co-production by Hammer Studios with 20th Century Fox Television, and is known in the United States as Fox Mystery Theater. Unlike 1980's Hammer House of Horror, all the episodes had American ac...
Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years
Character: Ramsay Macdonald
Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years is an 8-part 1981 drama serial based on the life of Winston Churchill, and particularly his years in enforced exile from political position during the 1920s and 30s. It was written and directed by Ferdinand Fairfax and Churchill was played by Robert Hardy. Hardy's brilliant performance as Churchill won critical acclaim and a BAFTA award in 1982. He reprised the role in The Sittaford Mystery, Bomber Harris and War and Remembrance and at the 50th anniversar...
Nicholas Nickleby
Character: Newman Noggs
Adaptation of the Dickens novel....
Secret Beneath the Sea
Character:
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Father Brown
Character:
Father Brown was a Catholic priest who doubled as an amateur detective in order to solve mysteries....
The Adventurer
Character: Le commissaire-priseur
The Adventurer is an ITC Entertainment TV adventure series created by Dennis Spooner that ran for one season from 1972 to 1973. It premiered in the UK on 29 September 1972. The show starred Gene Barry as Gene Bradley, a government agent of independent means who poses as a glamorous American movie star....
Doctor Who
Character: High Priest
The adventures of The Doctor, a time-traveling humanoid alien known as a Time Lord. He explores the universe in his TARDIS, a sentient time-traveling spaceship. Its exterior appears as a blue British police box, which was a common sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired. Along with a succession of companions, The Doctor faces a variety of foes while working to save civilizations, help ordinary people, and right many wrongs....
The Avengers
Character: Ronnie Vance
The Avengers is a British television series created in the 1960s. It initially focused on Dr. David Keel and his assistant John Steed. Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants. His most famous assistants were intelligent, stylish and assertive women: Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King. Later episodes increasingly incorporated elements of science fiction and fantasy, parody and British eccentricity....
Shackleton
Character: Sir John Scott-Keltie
A four-part drama adaptation about the life of polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. Based on Shackleton’s own journals. In 1914 Ernest Shackleton chooses to lead a team on their famous journey aboard the Endurance. When the ship is trapped and crushed by pack-ice, Shackleton and five of his men embark on a desperate 800-mile journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia....
The Crow Road
Character: Blawke
History student Prentice returns home to attend his grandmother’s funeral. As the McHoan family gathers together to mark the solemn occasion, old disagreements continue to fester and old acquaintances are renewed. Following the unexpected death of another close relative, Prentice begins to question the past: why did his Uncle Rory suddenly disappear and where did he go? Reading his Uncle Rory’s unpublished novel may provide the answers he is seeking but it also unearths some dark family secrets ...
Blake's 7
Character: Ven Glynd
A group of convicts and outcasts fight a guerrilla war against the totalitarian Terran Federation from a highly advanced alien spaceship....
The Avengers
Character: Jenkins
The Avengers is a British television series created in the 1960s. It initially focused on Dr. David Keel and his assistant John Steed. Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants. His most famous assistants were intelligent, stylish and assertive women: Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King. Later episodes increasingly incorporated elements of science fiction and fantasy, parody and British eccentricity....
The Troubleshooters
Character: Alastair McFee
The Troubleshooters is a British television series made by the BBC between 1965 and 1972, created by John Elliot. During its run, the series made the transition from black and white to colour transmissions. The series was based around an international oil company – the "Mogul" of the title. The first series was mostly concerned with the internal politics within the Mogul organisation, with episodes revolving around industrial espionage, internal fraud and negligence almost leading to an acciden...
Lord Peter Wimsey: Five Red Herrings
Character: Sir Maxwell Jamieson
Dorothy L. Sayer's amateur detective, Lord Peter Wimsey investigates and solves murder cases....
Armchair Theatre
Character: Victor Liebig
Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television from mid-1968....
The Professionals
Character: David Merlin
The lives of Bodie and Doyle, top agents for Britain's CI5 (Criminal Intelligence 5), and their controller, George Cowley. The mandate of CI5 was to fight terrorism and similar high-profile crimes. Cowley, a hard ex-MI5 operative, hand-picked each of his men. Bodie is a cynical ex-SAS paratrooper and mercenary whose nature ran to controlled violence, while his partner, Doyle, comes to CI5 from the regular police force, and is more of an open minded liberal. Their relationship is often contenti...
The Professionals
Character: Cusak
The lives of Bodie and Doyle, top agents for Britain's CI5 (Criminal Intelligence 5), and their controller, George Cowley. The mandate of CI5 was to fight terrorism and similar high-profile crimes. Cowley, a hard ex-MI5 operative, hand-picked each of his men. Bodie is a cynical ex-SAS paratrooper and mercenary whose nature ran to controlled violence, while his partner, Doyle, comes to CI5 from the regular police force, and is more of an open minded liberal. Their relationship is often contenti...
Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years
Character: Ramsay Macdonald (uncredited)
Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years is an 8-part 1981 drama serial based on the life of Winston Churchill, and particularly his years in enforced exile from political position during the 1920s and 30s. It was written and directed by Ferdinand Fairfax and Churchill was played by Robert Hardy. Hardy's brilliant performance as Churchill won critical acclaim and a BAFTA award in 1982. He reprised the role in The Sittaford Mystery, Bomber Harris and War and Remembrance and at the 50th anniversar...
Movie Credits
The Four Feathers
Character: John, the Butler
The fifth filming of the adventure classic about a British soldier in the 1880s who fights to regain his honor after being given four white feathers, symbols of cowardice....
The Trial and Torture of Sir John Rampayne
Character: Denzil Trafford
An elderly right-wing politician is kidnapped, seemingly as part of a student prank. But his captors have a more alarming agenda....
On Dangerous Ground
Character: Jack Tanner
Vusi Madlazi returns to the South African village he left as a young boy (he was organizing against apartheid, and left in fear of his life) to bury his father. He meets up with his brother Ernest, who tells him their other brother Stephen couldn't be contacted. Vusi goes to Johannesburg to find him, but at first can only find his neighbor/girlfriend, Karin, a stripper. Vusi proceeds to learn how conditions have changed since the end of apartheid, not always for the better for black men....
John Wycliffe: The Morning Star
Character: Bishop Courtenay
This affecting biography chronicles the life and times of prominent European philosopher John Wycliffe, who was the first to translate the Bible into English. The 14th century, Oxford University scholar often found himself caught between opposing theological, political and societal forces: He defended England's autonomy against the pontiff's authority and championed the indigent against the wealthy's abuses....
Cold Comfort Farm
Character: Mr. McKnag
In this adaptation of the satirical British novel, Flora Poste, a plucky London society girl orphaned at age 19, finds a new home with some rough relatives, the Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm. With a take-charge attitude and some encouragement from her mischievous friend, Mary, Flora changes the Starkadders' lives forever when she settles into their rustic estate, bringing the backward clan up to date and finding inspiration for her novel in the process....
Mary, Queen of Scots
Character: John Knox
Mary Stuart, who was named Queen of Scotland when she was only six days old, is the last Roman Catholic ruler of Scotland. She is imprisoned at the age of 23 by her cousin Elizabeth Tudor, the English Queen and her arch adversary. Nineteen years later the life of Mary is to be ended on the scaffold and with her execution the last threat to Elizabeth's throne has been removed. The two Queens with their contrasting personalities make a dramatic counterpoint to history....
Ike
Character: Capt. Burns
Eisenhower the military man is the focus of this mini-series, his relationships with the other wartime leaders, and, very discreetly, his personal relationship with his driver, Kay Summersby....
Thirteen to Centaurus
Character: Dr. Kersh
Interstellar travel at sub-light speeds: the enormous distances, isolation from human culture and the aching loneliness of space are enough to drive the strongest personality insane. Better to block all memories of human contact and to program the 12-strong crew to accept only the reality they can see and touch within their spacecraft. But a child born on "the Station" becomes insistent on learning the truth about 'Outside'....
John Diamond
Character: David Jones
William Jones runs away from home, haunted by the memory of his father. To lay this ghost, he must search the back streets of London for a man called Diamond....
Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks
Character: Lesterson
Following the Doctor's regeneration into a new, younger body, the TARDIS lands at an Earth colony on the planet Vulcan in the far future. Mistaken for an official Earth Examiner, the Doctor discovers that a scientist called Lesterson is attempting to reactivate two inanimate, subservient Daleks found in a crashed space rocket. The colonists refuse to heed the Doctor's dire warnings that the Daleks are dangerous....
Around the World in Eighty Days
Character: Extra (uncredited)
Based on the famous book by Jules Verne the movie follows Phileas Fogg on his journey around the world. Which has to be completed within 80 days, a very short period for those days....
Orkney
Character: Spence
Three stories reflecting life in the Orkney Islands, two set in the past, and one in the present....
Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter
Character: Pointer
When several young girls are found dead, left hideously aged and void of blood, Dr Marcus suspects vampirism. He enlists the help of the Vampire Hunter. Mysterious and powerful, Kronos has dedicated his life to destroying the evil pestilence. Once a victim of its diabolical depravity, he knows the vampire's strengths and weaknesses as well as the extreme dangers attached to confronting the potent forces of darkness....
Soft Top Hard Shoulder
Character: Campbell
Eight years ago, Gavin, the artistic son of a Scots-Italian ice-cream dynasty, turned his back on Glasgow and moved south to London to make his name illustrating children's books. Now, frustrated and broke, his Uncle Sal appears with an offer. Gavin's father has sold the family business and to get his share of the proceeds, Gavin must return home for his father's birthday party. Swayed by the money, he sets off north and picks up a hitchhiker with a secret. Their journey is difficult but ultimat...
Doctor Who: The Masque of Mandragora
Character: High Priest
An alien intelligence hitches a ride onboard the TARDIS to 15th century Italy, where a deranged astrologer attempts to harness its power....
The Bridal Path
Character: Inspector
Based on a novel by Nigel Tranter, The Bridal Path is a light-hearted look at the somewhat unfortunate results that can come of the continued marrying of fairly close cousins in a restricted and remote community. Set in the Hebrides off Scotland, the story tells how Ewan MacEwan leaves the isle of Eorsa in search of the perfect wife, but finally returns to marry Katie....
And the Wall Came Tumbling Down
Character: Father Ambrey
Workmen digging in a building discover the remains of a 300 year-old devil cult....
The Monkey's Paw
Character: Mr. Granger
An old army sergeant, back in England after long service in India, shows some old friends a strange possession he's acquired - a monkey's paw which can make wishes come true....