Floella Benjamin
Birthday: Born in 1949-09-23 in Trinidad, British West Indies [now Trinidad and Tobago]
Deathday: Alive
Floella Benjamin, Baroness Benjamin, OBE, DL is a Trinidadian-British actress, author, television presenter, singer, businesswoman and politician. She is known as presenter of children's programmes such as Play School, Play Away and Fast Forward
TV Credits
The Sarah Jane Adventures
Character: Professor Rivers
Sarah Jane Smith is a truly remarkable woman who inhabits a world of mystery, danger and wonder; a world where aliens are commonplace and the Earth is under constant threat. A world that Maria Jackson, a seemingly ordinary girl, can only dream of – until she moves in next door. Nothing will ever be ordinary again....
Bergerac
Character: Juniper
Jim Bergerac is a detective sergeant in The Foreigners Office who likes to do things his own way. While dealing with his own personal demons Bergerac has a knack of finding trouble, and sometimes causing it....
Play School
Character:
Play School is a British children's television series produced by the BBC which ran from 21 April 1964 until 11 March 1988. Devised by Joy Whitby, it accidentally became the first ever programme to be shown on the fledgling BBC2 after a power cut halted the opening night's programming. Play School originally appeared on weekdays at 11am on BBC2 and later acquired a mid-afternoon BBC1 repeat. The morning showing was transferred to BBC1 in September 1983 when BBC Schools programming transferred to...
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....
Dixon of Dock Green
Character: Mrs. Dallas
Dixon of Dock Green was a BBC television series following the activities of police officers at a fictional Metropolitan Police station in the East End of London from 1955 to 1976. Some episodes were later remade as a BBC radio series in 2005 and 2006....
Angels
Character:
Angels is a BBC medical soap-opera which launched on 1st September 1975 and was the blue print for such medical soaps as Casualty, Holby City, plus daytime soap, Doctors. The medical soap focuses on different departments within Heath Green Hospital and was a highly successful continuing drama....
Play for Today
Character: Solicitor's Clerk
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....
Within These Walls
Character:
Within These Walls is a British television drama programme made by London Weekend Television for ITV and shown between 1974 and 1978. It portrayed life in HMP Stone Park, a fictional women's prison. Unlike the later women-in-prison TV series Prisoner and Bad Girls, Within These Walls tended to centre its storylines around the prison staff rather than the inmates. The lead character was the well-groomed, genteel governor Faye Boswell, and episodes revolved around her attempts to liberalise the p...
Fast Forward
Character:
A zany comedy sketch show for children, which took its name from the Fast Forward button on VCRs. Children's sketch comedy featuring Floella Benjamin, Andrew Secombe, Joanna Munro and Nick Wilton....
The Line of Beauty
Character: Mrs Charles
Crawl deep under the skin of Thatcher's Britain, seen through the eyes and experiences of a young, gay man, from the euphoria of falling in love to the tragedy of AIDS. A story of love, class, sex and money....
Great British Menu
Character: Self - Guest Judge
Britain's top chefs compete for the chance to cook a four-course banquet for a high-profile figure....
The One Show
Character: Self
A topical magazine-style daily television programme broadcast live on BBC One....
Ready Steady Cook
Character: Self - Contestant
Talented chefs battle it out against the clock, creating delicious dishes in 20 minutes...
Mixed Blessings
Character: Karen
Mixed Blessings is a British sitcom produced by LWT for broadcast on the ITV network between 1978 and 1980, It was created by comedy-writer Sid Green and starred Christopher Blake and Muriel Odunton. White Thomas Simpson and Black Susan Lambert are a young couple who wed without their families' knowledge, forcing them to navigate the challenges of introducing their families to their relationship. The show explores themes of cultural differences and family dynamics within the context of a mixed-...
Movie Credits
Run Fatboy Run
Character: Libby's Mum
Five years after jilting his pregnant fiancée on their wedding day, out-of-shape Dennis decides to run a marathon to win her back....
Black Joy
Character: Miriam
An innocent and unsophisticated Guyanese immigrant is exposed to the hustlin' way of life in the Brixton ghetto....
I Don't Want to Be Born
Character: First Nurse
A woman gives birth to a baby, but this is no ordinary little tyke. The child is seemingly possessed by the spirit of a freak dwarf who the mother once spurned. Cue a spate of strange deaths, the one common factor being the presence of a baby in pram at the scene......
Kids' TV: The Surprising Story
Character: Self (archive footage)
Konnie Huq celebrates the very best of British children’s television, with a dazzling array of clips from some of the most treasured programmes ever made and revealing chats with some of TV’s most beloved stars. But Konnie also tells a perhaps more surprising story: of how kids’ TV has frequently been at the forefront of social change, in terms of the stories it tells and the people who get to tell them....
Nursery Rhymes
Character: narrator
70 favourite traditional songs and rhymes presented as a pop-up book which comes to life through animation, puppetry & live performances. The beautiful visual world draws on the work of such classic children's illustrators as Arthur Rackham (Peter Pan) & John Tenniel (Alice in Wonderland). A delightful musical score by Tony & Grammy winning composer John Du Prez, features everything form Northumbrian pipes to Baroque orchestra, folk guitar, early instruments, military band, fairground organ & ...
A Hole in Babylon
Character: Norma
Three black men rob a Knightsbridge Italian restaurant. But when the police are called and the robbery becomes a siege, the men find themselves in a situation out of their control....
Coming To England
Character: Teacher
"A story of a Windrush generation girl who came to Britain in 1960 from the Caribbean. Adapted from the book Coming to England [by Floella Benjamin], which was written for children everywhere." - BBC....
The Floater
Character: Solicitor's clerk
A comedy about the law - seen from the inside. All formality and procedure on the surface but not quite so convincing when you see the works....
Rendition
Character: CIA Staffer
When an Egyptian terrorism suspect "disappears" on a flight from Africa to Washington DC, his American wife and a CIA analyst find themselves caught up in a struggle to secure his release from a secret detention facility somewhere outside the US....
Waterloo Sunset
Character: Marie-Louise
Grace leaves her old folks' home to return to her birthplace in Lambeth, a place which has changed on the surface but at its heart is still the same....