Michael Aldridge
Birthday: Born in 1920-09-09 in Glastonbury, Somerset, England, UK
Deathday: 1994-01-10
Michael William ffolliott Aldridge was an English actor. He was known for playing Seymour in the television series Last of the Summer Wine from 1986 to 1990 and he had a long career as a character actor on stage and screen dating back to the 1930s.
TV Credits
Tales of the Unexpected
Character: Sir Basil Turton
A British television anthology of stories, often with sinister and wryly comedic undertones, and a twist at the end. With early episodes written and presented by Roald Dahl, the series featured a plethora of big name guest stars....
Inspector Morse
Character: Arthur Drysdale
Inspector Morse is a detective drama based on Colin Dexter's series of Chief Inspector Morse novels. The series starred John Thaw as Chief Inspector Morse and Kevin Whately as Sergeant Lewis, as well as a large cast of notable actors and actresses....
Last of the Summer Wine
Character: Seymour
Unencumbered by wives, jobs or any other responsibilities, three senior citizens who've never really grown up explore their world in the Yorkshire Dales. They spend their days speculating about their fellow townsfolk and thinking up adventures not usually favored by the elderly. Last of the Summer Wine premiered as an episode of Comedy Playhouse in 1973. The show ran for 295 episodes until 2010. It is the longest running comedy Britain has produced and the longest running sitcom in the world....
The Count of Monte Cristo
Character:
The Count of Monte Cristo was a 1956 ITC Entertainment/TPA television series adapted very loosely from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, adapted by Sidney Marshall. It premiered in the UK in early 1956 and ran for 39 thirty-minute episodes. The first twelve episodes were filmed in the United States, at the Hal Roach studios, with the rest being filmed at ITC's traditional home of Elstree. A 5-disc DVD set containing all thirty-nine episodes was released by Network Studio on 12 April 2010. ITC prod...
Yes, Prime Minister
Character:
James Hacker MP the Government's bumbling minister for Administrative Affairs is propelled along the corridors of power to the very pinnacle of politics - No. 10. Could this have possibly have been managed by his trusted Permanent Private Secretary, the formidably political Sir Humphrey Appleby who must move to the “Top Job” in Downing Street to support him, together with his much put upon PPS Bernard Wolley. What could possibly go wrong?...
The Chronicles of Narnia
Character: Professor Digory Kirke
Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are evacuated from London at the beginning of the Second World War, little dreaming of the magical adventures that lie ahead....
Fall of Eagles
Character: Rasputin
"Fall of Eagles" is a 13-part British television drama aired by the BBC in 1974. The series portrays historical events from 1848 to 1918, dealing with the collapse of the ruling dynasties of Austria-Hungary (the Habsburgs), Germany (the Hohenzollerns) and Russia (the Romanovs)....
Spyship
Character: Sir Peter Hillmore
When an ordinary British fishing vessel and its 36-man crew mysteriously disappears off the coast of Norway, journalist Martin Taylor is determined to find out why....
Love in a Cold Climate
Character: Uncle Matt
The unconventional lives and loves of the family of Lord Alconleigh, dominated by the eccentric, irascible Uncle Matthew. The story encompasses the economic and political crises of the Thirties and the upheavals of the Second World War....
Game, Set, and Match
Character: Silas Gaunt
Focuses on Bernard Samson (Ian Holm), beginning with his search for the "mole" that threatens the Brahms Network in East Germany. Samson is sent to Berlin to bring out a Brahms agent. He is then sent to Mexico to try to persuade a KGB major (Gottfried John) to defect, using his childhood friend Verner Volkmann's wife Zena as bait. After it appears another traitor is working at London Central, Samson himself becomes one of the prime suspects....
The Agatha Christie Hour
Character: Dr. Lavington
This ten episode program was based on ten short stories written by Agatha Christie but with wide-ranging themes. Some were romances, some had supernatural themes and a couple were adventures. The common link was that all came from the talented pen of Agatha Christie, all were entertaining and each drama was carefully crafted and well cast with many of Britain's best known actors of the time represented....
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Character: Percy Alleline
George Smiley, the aging 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....
Charters and Caldicott
Character: Caldicott
Charters and Caldicott is a 1985 BBC mystery series featuring the characters Charters and Caldicott from the film The Lady Vanishes. It featured six 50 minute episodes broadcast on BBC1 at 9.25pm on Thursdays from 10 January to 14 February 1985....
Raven
Character:
Raven is released on probation to live with Professor Young, an archaeologist immersed in research into Arthurian legend. He is compelled to fight a plan to build a nuclear plant on the research site, which holds many mysteries....
Mussolini: The Untold Story
Character: Matteotti
The rise and fall of Italy's fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Recounting his life with his wife, children and mistress, this biography (based on the recollections of Mussolini's eldest son, Vittorio) chronicles Il Duce's tyranny as he plunges Italy into the dark days of World War II....
The Man In Room 17
Character: Dimmock
The Man in Room 17 is a British television series which ran for two seasons in the mid-1960s, produced by the Northern ITV franchise, Granada Television. Key to the series' success was the involvement of writer/producer Robin Chapman. The show was set in Room 17 of the Department of Social Research, where former wartime agent-turned-criminologist Edwin Oldenshaw solved difficult police cases through theory and discussions with his assistants. The novelty of the series was that Oldenshaw and hi...
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes
Character: Archduke Othmar
Adaptations of mystery stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's contemporary rivals in the genre....
The Fellows
Character: Ian Dimmock
Richard Vernon and Michael Aldridge star as Home Office-appointed criminologists in this clever, humorous and highly original Granada series. Devised and co-written by the award-winning Robin Chapman – the creator of the series’ famous prequel The Man in Room 17 – The Fellows charts the continuing work and often strained relationship of Room 17’s former occupants Oldenshaw and Dimmock. Now appointed to the Peel Research Fellowship at All Saints’ College, Cambridge, they no longer simply solve c...
Reilly: Ace of Spies
Character: Orlov
Reilly, Ace of Spies is a 1983 television miniseries dramatizing the life of Sidney Reilly, a Russian Jew who became one of the greatest spies ever to work for the British. Among his exploits, in the early 20th century, were the infiltration of the German General Staff in 1917 and a near-overthrow of the Bolsheviks in 1918. His reputation with women was as legendary as his genius for espionage....
The Barchester Chronicles
Character: Sir Abraham Haphazard
Against the sumptuous background of Peterborough Cathedral and its environs, one is carried into Trollope's world of the intriguing machinations of the clerical establishment of Barchester. Backed by the authenticity of the period detail, the portrayal of all the characters accurately conveys the whole range of human emotions within the stories....
Play for Today
Character: John Bourke-White
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration....
Hadleigh
Character: George Quantock
Hadleigh was a British television series made by Yorkshire Television which originally ran from 1969 to 1976. Developed by Robert Barr, it was a sequel to the writer's earlier Gazette for the same company. The theme music was composed by Alan Moorhouse and, from series 3, Tony Hatch. James Hadleigh played by Gerald Harper, was "the perfect squire, paternalistically careful of his tenantry's welfare, beloved in the village, respected in the council." A "knight in a shining white Aston Martin V8,...
Bleak House
Character: Mr. George
Bleak House is the first BBC adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel of the same name. It was adapted by Constance Cox as an eleven-part series of half-hour episodes first transmitted from 16 October 1959. It stars Andrew Cruickshank in the role of John Jarndyce, Diana Fairfax as Esther Summerson and Colin Jeavons as Richard Carstone. The complete series still exists....
Sunday Night Theatre
Character: Sir Edward Fortrose
Sunday Night Theatre was a long-running series of televised live television plays screened by BBC Television from early 1950 until 1959. The productions for the first five years or so of the run were re-staged live the following Thursday, partly because of technical limitations in this era, and the theatrical basis of early television drama. Some of the earliest collaborations between Rudolph Cartier and Nigel Neale were produced for this series, including Arrow to the Heart and Nineteen Eighty...
Movie Credits
Chimes at Midnight
Character: Pistol
Henry IV usurps the English throne, sets in motion the factious War of the Roses and now faces a rebellion led by Northumberland scion Hotspur. Henry's heir, Prince Hal, is a ne'er-do-well carouser who drinks and causes mischief with his low-class friends, especially his rotund father figure, John Falstaff. To redeem his title, Hal may have to choose between allegiance to his real father and loyalty to his friend....
Murder by the Book
Character: Edmond Cork
Agatha Christie’s agents propose that it’s time for her to publish the manuscript she wrote thirty-five years earlier, a novel in which she finally kills off her most famous creation. And it’s not an entirely sad occasion. “That wretched little man,” she says. “He’s always been so much trouble. How is it Miss Marple has never upset me at all, not ever?” That night, who should appear at her doorstep but the wretched little man himself, Hercule Poirot? The great fictional detective and his creator...
Bullshot
Character: Prof. Rupert Fenton
The dashing Captain Hugh "Bullshot" Crummond - WWI ace fighter pilot, Olympic athlete, racing driver, part-time sleuth and all round spiffing chap - must save the world from the dastardly Count Otto van Bruno, his wartime adversary. And, of course, win the heart of a jolly nice young lady....
Turtle Diary
Character: Mr Meager
Two separate people, a man and a woman, find something very stirring about the sea turtles in their tank at the London Zoo. They meet and form an odd, but sympathetic camaraderie as they plan to steal two of the turtles and free them into the ocean....
Follow Me!
Character: Sir Philip Crouch
A strait-laced British banker hires an eccentric private detective to follow his free-spirited American wife, whom he suspects is cheating on him....
Bon Voyage
Character: Sir Colin Brand
Roddy and Lola strike up a romance on the cruise liner SS Mara as it heads to Hong Kong from San Francisco....
Nothing Venture
Character: Michael Garrod
A trio of young boys become involved in a criminal plot....
Murder in the Cathedral
Character: Second Knight
Murder in the Cathedral is a story about Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, and his struggles against temptation and personal vanity prior to his murder in the great Cathedral....
Suicide Mission
Character: English Officer
A group of Norwegians cross the North Sea in winter to deliver Allied soldiers and ammunition to their Nazi-occupied country....
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe
Character: The Professor
Four kids travel to the magical land of Narnia where they must battle an evil queen with the direction of the lion, Aslan....
A Voyage Round My Father
Character: Headmaster
A successful lawyer struck with blindness in middle age continues his battles in the courtroom with the assistance of his family. As his son deals with bitter memories of their relationship, he also seeks his father's respect and love and in the process learns to love in return....
Shanghai Surprise
Character: Mr. Burns
Glendon Wasey is a fortune hunter looking for a fast track out of China. Gloria Tatlock is a missionary nurse seeking the curing powers of opium for her patients. Fate sets them on a hectic, exotic, and even romantic quest for stolen drugs. But they are up against every thug and smuggler in Shangai....
Clockwise
Character: Prior
School headmaster Brian Stimpson is obsessed with timeliness, order, and discipline. Brian misses his train after meticulously preparing a speech for an education conference. With no one else to turn to, he asks young former student Laura Wisely for a ride. Laura, upset over a break-up, agrees to drive him in her parents' car - which alarms her mother and father, who worry that she has run away with a married man and subsequently alert the police....
Life for Ruth
Character: Harvard
John Harris finds himself ostracized and placed on trial for allowing his daughter Ruth to die. His religious beliefs forbade him to give consent for a blood transfusion that would have saved her life. Doctor Brown is determined to seek justice for what he sees as the needless death of a young girl....
The Biko Inquest
Character: Dr. Carter
Based on the official transcripts of the investigation that followed after the very suspicious notorious death in prison of one of the most important leading men of the South African anti-apartheid movement, Steven Biko....
Countdown to War
Character: Neville Chamberlain
Based on a play, the story details the dramatic negotiations between UK, France, Poland, Nazi-Germany and USSR from the day Czechoslovakia fell, until Britain's declaration of war on Germany caused by Hitler's invasion of Poland....
Under the Hammer
Character: John Bourke-White
All seems ready for a major sale of impressionist paintings to be graced by a royal visit. But panic erupts in the boardroom when the pedigree of the Van Gogh - to be sold by the Russians - is questioned. When it causes a scene between the porters, Les and Mick, a respectable firm is forced to take drastic action to save the big day....
Charlie
Character: Paul Tucker
Charlie Alexander is a private detective who gets caught up in sinister trade union machinations when he stumbles across the dying Stan Peace, a shop steward in the Distributive Worker's Union. Peace dies, but Charlie wants to know why his name was in Peace's address book. As Charlie investigates, things get murkier....
Fallen Angels
Character: Fred Sterroll
Two men go off on a golfing trip, leaving their wives to amuse themselves as best they can. The wives each receive a postcard from Maurice Duclos, a former lover both had before their marriages....