John Stratton
Birthday: Born in 1925-11-07 in Clitheroe, Lancashire, England, UK
Deathday: 1991-10-25
TV Credits
Doctor Who
Character: Shockeye
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....
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....
The Avengers
Character:
A quirky spy show of the adventures of eccentrically suave British Agent John Steed and his predominantly female partners. Jonathan Steed - an urbane, proper gentleman spy - teams with various assistants throughout the series' run, including Dr. David Keel, Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King, to repeatedly save the world from diabolical schemes plotted by equally diabolical evil-doers (among them robots and man-eating monsters)....
UFO
Character: John Croxley
A secret, high-technology international agency called SHADO defends Earth from alien invaders....
Backs to the Land
Character:
Backs to the Land is a British sitcom that aired on ITV from 1977 to 1978. Starring Philippa Howell, Terese Stevens and Pippa Page, Backs to the Land is set during World War II. It was written by David Climie. It was made for the ITV network by Anglia Television....
Lovejoy
Character: Professor David Hayward
The adventures of the eponymous Lovejoy, a likeable but roguish antiques dealer based in East Anglia. Within the trade, he has a reputation as a “divvie”, a person with an almost supernatural powers for recognising exceptional items as well as distinguishing genuine antique from clever fakes or forgeries....
Quatermass and the Pit
Character: Captain Potter
A team of scientists search for the origin and purpose of a mysterious capsule found on a building site....
Raffles
Character:
Raffles was a 1977 television adaptation of the A. J. Raffles stories by Ernest William Hornung. The series was produced by Yorkshire Television and written by Philip Mackie. The episodes were largely faithful adaptations of the stories in the books, though occasionally two stories would be merged to create one. In Victorian-era London, gentleman thief A. J. Raffles, a renowned cricketer, and his friend, the eager but naive Bunny Manders, test their skills in relieving the wealthy of their valu...
The First Lady
Character:
The First Lady is a British television drama produced for BBC One, starring Thora Hird as crusading local councillor Sarah Danby, set around the fictional Lancashire borough of Furness. Capitalising on the popularity of its lead actress, The First Lady was a down-to-earth series exploring the inner workings of local government....
The Wednesday Play
Character:
An anthology series of television plays which aired on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured....
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes
Character: Mallows
An anthology series produced by Thames Television, comprised of short mystery, suspense or crime adaptations featuring, as the title suggests, detectives who were literary contemporaries of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes....
Fall of Eagles
Character: Doctor
"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)....
The Expert
Character: Joe Bromfield
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...
My Cousin Rachel
Character: Nick Kendall
...
Detective
Character:
A BBC anthology series featuring adaptations of detective stories over 45 episodes in three seasons that ran from 1964 to 1969. As with many BBC programmes made before the early 1970s, many of its episodes no longer exist. Of the eighteen episodes from the first season only twelve are currently known to exist; likewise six of the sixteen editions from the second run are considered lost, and just one of the final ten survives in the archives....
Father Brown
Character:
Father Brown was a Catholic priest who doubled as an amateur detective in order to solve mysteries....
Paul Temple
Character:
Paul Temple is a British-German television series . It features Francis Matthews as Paul Temple, the fictional detective created by Francis Durbridge, who solves crimes with the assistance of his wife Steve. Paul Temple used overseas locations in France, Malta, Germany and elsewhere. T...
The Main Chance
Character: Edward Pendlebury
The Main Chance was a British television series which first aired on ITV between 1969,1970,1972 and 1975. A drama, it depicts the sudden transformation in the life of solicitor David Main who relocates from London to Leeds....
The Good Companions
Character: Jess Oakroyd
Jess Oakroyd, discontented with his home, his work and his football team, tears up his Insurance Card and disappears into the night. He intends to go to Nuneaton, but instead finds himself on the ragged edges of show business. We share with him the trials and tribulations of the Good Companions as they tour seaside towns, industrial cities and rural backwaters in their search for success and stardom....
The Man in Room 17
Character: Leonard Fitch
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 Professionals
Character: Brownie
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...
BBC Play of the Month
Character: Alderman Joseph Helliwell
A BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983....
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Character: Insp. Lavender
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's non-Sherlock Holmes stories embodying the author's interest in boxing, the supernatural, and medical matters....
The Odd Man
Character: Bill Perrance
The first of a trilogy of police procedurals produced in the 1960s by Granada TV, linked by the presence of pompous but increasingly genial police Chief Inspector Charles Rose, The Odd Man initially dealt with the investigations of theatrical-agent-cum-detective Steve Gardiner, and his encounters with the police in the form of Chief Inspector Gordon and DS Swift. By season three, Rose takes Gardiner's place....
It's Dark Outside
Character: Fred Blane
This spin-off from The Odd Man (1962) starred William Mervyn as the acerbic Inspector Rose, who, alongside the soft-hearted pensive Det. Sgt. Swift (Keith Barron), are joined by Anthony (John Carson) and Alice Brand (June Toblin), a barrister and his journalist wife, though not for long. By the second season, the Brands and Swift departed, leaving the calm, cold Rose in prime position, supported by newcomers DS Hunter (Anthony Ainley), his girlfriend Claire (Veronica Strong), and her boozy repo...
Clayhanger
Character: Mr Boutwood
Clayhanger is a British television drama based on Arnold Bennett's novel series of the same name, published between 1910 and 1918, dramatised by Douglas Livingstone for ITV. Produced by Associated Television, the 26-episode programme is a coming-of-age story set in 19th century England. Edwin Clayhanger aspires to be an architect but is expected to join his father's printing business. His personal growth, eventual acceptance of the family business, and his romantic entanglement with Hilda Lessw...
The Mill on the Floss
Character: Uncle Deane
The Mill on the Floss is a British television drama adaptation of George Eliot's 1860 novel of the same name about the lives of rural 19th century siblings Maggie and Tom Tulliver....
Theatre 625
Character: Titus Matley
Theatre 625 is a British television drama anthology series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC2 from 1964 to 1968. It was one of the first regular programmes in the line-up of the channel, and the title referred to its production and transmission being in the higher-definition 625-line format, which only BBC2 used at the time....
Churchill's People
Character: The Prior
Churchill's People is a British anthology series based on A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill's four-volume history of Britain and its former colonies. 26 episodes were produced by the BBC and initially broadcast from 30 December 1974 to 23 June 1975....
Movie Credits
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell
Character: Adolf Klauss, Asylum Direktor
Dr Simon Helder, sentenced to an insane asylum for crimes against humanity, recognises its director as the brilliant Baron Frankenstein, the man whose work he had been trying to emulate before his imprisonment. Frankenstein utilises Helder's medical knowledge for a project he has been working on for some time. He is assembling a man from vital organs extracted from various inmates in the asylum. And the Baron will resort to murder to acquire the perfect specimens for his most ambitious project e...
The Cruel Sea
Character: Ferraby
At the start of World War II, Cmdr. Ericson is assigned to convoy escort HMS Compass Rose with inexperienced officers and men just out of training. The winter seas make life miserable enough, but the men must also harden themselves to rescuing survivors of U-Boat attacks, while seldom able to strike back. Traumatic events afloat and ashore create a warm bond between the skipper and his first officer...
The Man in the Sky
Character: Peter Hook
The efforts of test pilot John Mitchell to make a better life for his wife Mary and their two children seem doomed to failure and he blames himself. At the Conway Aero-Manufacturing Company of Wolverhampton, Mitchell is to take the company's new rocket-propulsion transport plane up for tests, fully loaded and carrying two important passengers - Ministry official Crabtree and buyer's representative Ashmore. Mitchell learns from his boss, Reg Conway, that if Ashmore does not recommend the plane, t...
The Long Arm
Character: Sergeant Ward
Scotland Yard detectives attempt to solve a spate of safe robberies across England beginning with clues found at the latest burglary in London. The film is notable for using a police procedural style made popular by Ealing in their 1950 film The Blue Lamp. It is known in the US as The Third Key....
Abandon Ship
Character: Jimmy 'Sparks' Clary
After a massive luxury liner sinks into the ocean, the ship's officer must command a rickety lifeboat, built for only nine, that is stuffed with over twenty desperate and injured passengers. As a hurricane approaches and the many wounded passengers struggle for life, difficult decisions must be made about who will remain on the boat and who must be cast to the sea in order to give others the chance to survive....
The Small Back Room
Character: Young Army Officer
As the Germans drop explosive booby-traps on 1943 Britain, the embittered expert who'll have to disarm them fights a private battle with alcohol....
Seven Days to Noon
Character: Army Mechanic
When Professor Willingdon becomes wary of the nuclear weapons he is helping build, he steals a warhead and threatens to detonate it in London in seven days unless the government begins nuclear disarmament. As Willingdon goes into hiding, Detective Folland of Scotland Yard sets out to find him. Willingdon's daughter Ann also joins the cause, hoping she can talk sense into her father before he causes a catastrophe....
Countdown to War
Character: Hacha
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....
Rik Mayall Presents: Dirty Old Town
Character: Second Tramp
A tramp called Raymond finds his life changes radically when he gets his hands on a sought-after film script....
Auntie Kathleen's Old Clothes
Character: Uncle Eddie
A boy reflects on time he spent staying with his aunt and uncle....
Strangler's Web
Character: Lewis Preston
What appears to be a cut-and-dried case of murder of an aging one time showgirl on Hampstead Heath by her lover is complicated by several factors, including a far more respectable paramour, and her insistence that a great inheritance was due her that nobody can verify....
Calculated Nightmare
Character: Harker
Two business executives are trapped for the night on a deserted office floor by a disgruntled employee who has hacked the elevator system....
The Happy Family
Character: David
When the Government decide to build a Festival of Britain exhibition site, everything goes to plan, all except the fact that the main road and the pedestrian subway into the site, are blocked by a little corner shop, which is owned and run by a Mr. Lord and his family. When the Lords refuse to be bought off, and decline the compensation offered by the authorities. the police and the bailiffs try to evict them, only to come under fire from the family, who have barricaded themselves inside the sho...
The Witches of Pendle
Character: Roger Nowell
A BBC dramatization of the Pendle witch trials of Lancashire, England that occurred in 1616....
The Challenge
Character: Rick
Jailed for his role in a gang heist and ditched by its female leader (Jayne Mansfield), a widower (Anthony Quayle) decides to keep the loot....
The Cure for Love
Character: Sam
Sergeant Jack Hardacre returns from the war to his contemptible fiancée Janey Jenkins intending to reconcile with her against all odds. But he falls in love with a charming new lodger Milly Southern instead....
Doctor Who: The Two Doctors
Character: Shockeye
Suddenly gripped by a memory of being executed in his second incarnation, the Sixth Doctor travels to Seville to save his past self and ensure his own existence in his present....
Appointment with Venus
Character: 1st R.A.F. Officer
At the outbreak of WWII the British realise they can't prevent the invasion of the Channel Islands. However, someone realises that a prize cow is on the islands and the Nazis mustn't get hold of her. This is the intrepid story of the cow-napping from under the noses of the Nazis....
Adventures in Time and Spain
Character: (archive footage)
Gary Downie, production manager on The Two Doctors, details what it is a production manager does on programmes like Doctor Who, and offers his insight into the pitfalls and problems encountered during the making of this story....
The Law Lord
Character: Mr Justice Braxton
A new government takes power with a drastically reduced majority. But the ambitious young Home Secretary has a plan to bring the legal establishment to heel and bypass Parliament altogether. Anthony Andrews says of writer and barrister John Cooper (who wrote the ITV series The Advocates): "John is writing about a world he knows intimately. It is a most original and exciting screenplay and extremely prescient in view of the current controversies surrounding the judiciary." Producer Simon Passmo...