Prunella Scales
Birthday: Born in 1932-06-22 in Sutton Abinger, Surrey, England, UK
Deathday: Alive
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Prunella Margaret Rumney West Scales CBE (née Illingworth; born 22 June 1932) is an English former actor, best known for playing Sybil Fawlty, wife of Basil Fawlty (John Cleese), in the BBC comedy Fawlty Towers; for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in A Question of Attribution (Screen One, BBC 1991) by Alan Bennett (for which she was nominated for a BAFTA award); and for the documentary series Great Canal Journeys (2014–2021), in which she travels on canal barges and narrowboats with her husband, fellow actor Timothy West. Description above from the Wikipedia article Prunella Scales, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
TV Credits
Seven of One
Character:
Seven of One was a British comedy series that aired on BBC2 in 1973. Starring Ronnie Barker, 7 of One is a series of seven separate comedies that would serve as possible pilots for sitcoms. Originally it was to be called Six of One, which Barker planned to follow up with another series called Half Dozen of the Other. This was a BBC version of a similar showcase for LWT called Six Dates with Barker created in 1971....
Midsomer Murders
Character: Eleanor Bunsall
The peacefulness of the Midsomer community is shattered by violent crimes, suspects are placed under suspicion, and it is up to a veteran DCI and his young sergeant to calmly and diligently eliminate the innocent and ruthlessly pursue the guilty. ...
Bergerac
Character: Gloria Gibbins
Bergerac is a British television show set on Jersey. Produced by the BBC in association with the Seven Network, and first screened on BBC1, it stars John Nettles as the title character Detective Sergeant Jim Bergerac, a detective in Le Bureau des Étrangers, part of the States of Jersey Police....
Fawlty Towers
Character: Sybil Fawlty
Owner Basil Fawlty, his wife Sybil, a chambermaid Polly, and Spanish waiter Manuel attempt to run their hotel amidst farcical situations and an array of demanding guests....
Marriage Lines
Character:
Marriage Lines is a British television sitcom first broadcast from 1961 to 1966 which was made in black-and-white. The series gave Richard Briers and Prunella Scales, its lead stars, a significant boost in their careers. At first titled The Marriage Lines, the programme was written by Richard Waring, and was later adapted for radio....
Dalziel & Pascoe
Character:
British crime drama based on the "Dalziel and Pascoe" series of books by Reginald Hill, set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Wetherton. The unlikely duo of politically incorrect elephant-in-a-china-shop-copper Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel (pronounced Dee-ell) and his more sensitive and university educated sidekick Detective Sargent, later Detective Inspector, Peter Pascoe is always on hand to solve the classic murder mystery, while maintaining a down to earth wit and humour....
After Henry
Character:
After Henry is a British sitcom that aired on ITV from 1988 to 1992. Starring Prunella Scales and Joan Sanderson, it had started on BBC Radio 4 in 1985, finishing in 1989. It was written by Simon Brett. After Henry was made for the ITV network by Thames Television. The BBC was reluctant to produce After Henry for television, so in 1988 after the third radio series Thames Television did so. The show was surprisingly popular, attracting over 14 million viewers. A second television series was show...
Great Canal Journeys
Character: Self
To celebrate their golden wedding anniversary, actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales embark on four spectacular canal journeys, sharing a passion that they've enjoyed for decades. To start the series, Tim and Pru revisit the Kennet and Avon Canal in the West Country. Back in 1990, to promote the fully restored canal, Tim and Pru were invited to be the first boat in 42 years to travel the full length of the K&A. Almost a quarter of a century later, they navigate the 21 miles along its most pict...
Target
Character:
A crime drama set in Southampton following a team of detectives and the cases they solve....
The BBC Television Shakespeare
Character:
The BBC Television Shakespeare is a series of British television adaptations of the plays of William Shakespeare, created by Cedric Messina and produced by BBC Television. It was transmitted in the UK from 3 December 1978 to 27 April 1985 and spanned seven series. Development of the series began in 1975 when Messina saw that Glamis Castle would make a perfect location for an adaptation of Shakespeare's play As You Like It. On returning to London, he envisioned an entire series devoted exclusivel...
Mapp & Lucia
Character:
Comedy, set during the 1930s, of social rivalry between two women in a small English town. New arrival Lucia (Geraldine McEwan, as Emmeline "Lucia" Lucas) creates challenges to the established local social dominance of Miss Elizabeth Mapp (Prunella Scales)....
The Royal
Character: Red Admiral
Follows the staff and patients of a Yorkshire cottage hospital in the 60s, embroiled in tangled love lives and bitter power struggles....
Lucky Feller
Character:
Lucky Feller is a 1976 ITV sitcom written by Terence Frisby and produced by Humphrey Barclay. It featured David Jason and ran for just one series of 13 episodes. It is reported that London Weekend Television later tried to revive it in the 1990s but Jason did not agree to this as he felt at the time he was being over-exposed. About two brothers in South-East London, the basic set-up can be seen as a dry run for Only Fools and Horses, except with David Jason playing the nerdy "Rodders" part, Sh...
Dennis the Menace and Gnasher
Character: Mrs. Duffel
Dennis and Gnasher is an animated British TV series based on characters from The Beano comic, It features the daily adventures of the rebellious schoolboy Dennis the Menace and his dog Gnasher....
Dickens
Character:
Dickens was a 2002 BBC docudrama on the life of the author Charles Dickens. It was presented by Peter Ackroyd, on whose biography of Dickens it was based, and Dickens was played by Anton Lesser. It was broadcast in three hour-long episodes....
An Audience with...
Character: Self
An Audience with... is a British entertainment television show produced by London Weekend Television, in which a host, usually a singer or comedian, performs for an invited audience of celebrity guests, interspersed with questions from the audience, in a light hearted revue/tribute style....
Casualty
Character: Jocelyn Anderson
Drama series about the staff and patients at Holby City Hospital's emergency department, charting the ups and downs in their personal and professional lives....
The World of Lee Evans
Character: Mother
The World of Lee Evans was a BAFTA nominated TV show written by and starring Lee Evans and a range of actors, it followed Lee around getting stuck in tight situations and originally aired on Channel 4. The series was released on Channel 4 DVD in 2006 and features all episodes. The humour, which differs greatly from Evans' later stand-up humour, contains many elements of slapstick, and the show is similar in style to Mr. Bean. The series was a Granada Production in 1995 for Channel 4, and as Gra...
The Rector's Wife
Character: Marjorie Richardson
Three-part dramatization of the novel by Joanna Trollope. A clergyman's wife shocks the church establishment and infuriates her husband by taking a job in a supermarket. She attracts the passionate interest of three very different men: a newly-appointed archdeacon; his younger brother, a philosopher and academic; and a wealthy businessman new to the village....
Signs and Wonders
Character: Elizabeth Palmore
Claire Palmore (Jodhi May) is caught in the web of a dangerous religious cult. Her mother (Prunella Scales) hires a cult de-programmer (James Earl Jones) who must rescue her before it's too late....
Silent Witness
Character: Anne Parker
Silent Witness is a British crime thriller series focusing on a team of forensic pathology experts and their investigations into various crimes....
Loose Women
Character: Self
A panel of four women discuss topical issues, ranging from daily politics and current affairs to celebrity gossip....
Pride and Prejudice
Character: Lydia Bennet
...
Thirty-Minute Theatre
Character: Marie
Thirty-Minute Theatre is an anthology drama series of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, which was used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short running length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known. Thirty-Minute Theatre followed on from a similarly named ITV series, beginning on BBC2 in 1965 with an adaptation of the black comedy Parsons Pleasure. In 1967 BBC2 launched the UK's first colour service,...
Movie Credits
Wolf
Character: Maude Waggins
Aging publisher Will Randall is at the end of his rope when a younger co-worker snatches his job out from under his nose. But after being bitten by a wolf, Will suddenly finds himself full of youthful vigor. As he struggles to regain his position, he becomes enthralled with Laura Alden, his former boss's daughter. And, as increasingly animal-like urges begin to overwhelm him, Randall worries that he may be turning into the creature that bit him....
The Shell Seekers
Character: Dolly Keeling
Penelope Keeling, a sixty-four-year-old daughter of a famous artist, reflects on her life, and the fate and choices that defined it, when she arrives in the Mediterranean to stay with her headstrong daughter. Shifting through time, and falling into place like the pieces of a jigsaw, the truth of Penelope's rich, heartbreaking and surprising life unfolds....
Emma
Character: Miss Bates
Emma Woodhouse has a rigid sense of propriety as regards matrimonial alliances. Unfortunately she insists on matchmaking for her less forceful friend, Harriet, and so causes her to come to grief. Through the sharp words of Mr. Knightley, and the example of the opinionated Mrs. Elton, someone not unlike herself, Emma's attitudes begin to soften....
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
Character: Moira O'Neill
A penniless middle-aged spinster scrapes by giving piano lessons in the Dublin of the 1950s. She makes a sad last bid for love with a fellow resident of her rundown boarding house, who imagines she has the money to bankroll the business he hopes to open....
Waltz of the Toreadors
Character: Estella Fitzjohn
General Fitzhugh, an ageing Lothario has an over-active eye for a pretty woman. Despite a long and satisfying career as a seducer extraordinaire, something always seems to get in the way of his bedding the breathtakingly lovely Ghislaine, a more-than-willing town local....
Hobson's Choice
Character: Vicky Hobson
Henry Hobson owns and tyrannically runs a successful Victorian boot maker’s shop in Salford, England. A stingy widower with a weakness for overindulging in the local Moonraker Public House, he exploits his three daughters as cheap labour. When he declares that there will be ‘no marriages’ to avoid the expense of marriage settlements at £500 each, his eldest daughter Maggie rebels....
Mr. Loveday's Little Outing
Character: Lady Moping
Satirical drama by Evelyn Waugh, adapted by Sam Hobkinson. Visiting her father Lord Moping in the county asylum, Angela meets a fellow inmate who appears far too sane to be locked up in an institution. She manages to get him released, but he returns two hours later, having achieved a terrible ambition....
Breaking the Code
Character: Sara Turing
A biography of the English mathematician Alan Turing, who was one of the inventors of the digital computer and one of the key figures in the breaking of the Enigma code, used by the Germans to send secret orders to their U-boats in World War II. Turing was also a homosexual in Britain at a time when this was illegal, besides being a security risk....
A Question of Attribution
Character: H.M.Q.
Sir Anthony Blunt, who was a Soviet agent for 25 years, is routinely questioned and gives no answers, but is knighted and works as Director of the Courtauld Institute, and presents his interrogator with a puzzle in the shape of a doubtful Titian painting. He also does art restoration work in Buckingham Palace, where he gets into an interesting conversation with HMQ....
Stiff Upper Lips
Character: Aunt Agnes
Stiff Upper Lips is a broad parody of British period films, especially the lavish Merchant-Ivory productions of the 'eighties and early 'nineties. Although it specifically targets A Room with a View, Chariots of Fire, Maurice, A Passage to India, and many other films, in a more general way Stiff Upper Lips satirises popular perceptions of certain Edwardian traits: propriety, sexual repression, xenophobia, and class snobbery....
Freddie as F.R.O.7.
Character: Queen (voice)
The story about a man-sized frog named Prince Frederic who is turned into a frog by his wicked aunt Messina and hired by British Intelligence to solve the mysterious disappearances of some of Britain's greatest monuments. Several hundred years later, Freddie is now living in modern day Paris -- a six-foot-tall amphibian with the moniker Secret Agent F.R.O.7. Messina, too, is still around causing mischief, joining forces with an arch-villain named El Supremo in a scheme to shrink Big Ben. Freddie...
A Chorus of Disapproval
Character: Hannah Ap Llewellyn
Guy Jones (Irons) moves to a small British town and joins the local amateur dramatics society as a way to meet people. However he soon finds the drama offstage far outweighs those onstage....
Consuming Passions
Character: Ethel
Adapted from a play written by two Monty Python vets, this toothy satire launches with a tragic accident at Chumley's chocolate factory when hapless manager Ian Littleton (Tyler Butterworth) accidentally knocks several employees into a huge chocolate vat. The tragic mishap at the chocolate factory results in candy lovers getting an unexpected 'extra' in their sweets....
What the Butler Saw
Character: Mrs Prentice
White golliwogs, cross-dressing coppers, bellboy rapists, insanity, incest, and Winston Churchill’s giant member all play their part in this BBC production of Joe Orton’s farcical, bitingly satirical 1969 play, in which the head psychiatrist of a lunatic asylum, when trying to conceal the attempted molestation of his new secretary from his wife, only succeeds in making himself (and everyone else) look completely round the bend....
The Phone Call
Character: Joan
Heather is a shy lady who works in a helpline call centre. When she receives a phone call from a mystery man, she has no idea that the encounter will change her life forever....
Fawlty Towers Revisited
Character: Herself
Fawlty Towers Revisited features the 80-minute, 30th anniversary retrospective TV special on one of the world’s funniest and best-loved comedies, as well as an additional 10 minutes of behind-the-scenes stories and recollections from recent interviews with Fawlty Towers’ cast and crew....
An Ideal Husband
Character: Lady Markby
Rising politician Robert Chiltern once sold secret information and is now being blackmailed by Laura Cheveley. She has proof, and it will damage his career and marriage severely. Chiltern calls in the help of his friend Arthur Goring....
Second Best
Character: Margery
The difficult relationship between a british postal officer and his adoptive son....
50 Years of BBC Two Comedy
Character: Self
Documentary charting and celebrating five decades of often groundbreaking, boundary-pushing comedy from BBC Two....
Dirty Beasts
Character: Narrator
Roald Dahl, that master of wicked humour, has created a ghastly menagerie of dirty beasts - all doing the most extraordinary and unmentionable things, in irreverent and absurdly comic verse. Including Crocky-Wock, the crocodile, who every Saturday has six young children for his lunch and how Miss Milky Daisy, the cow, punished a very rude man....
Revolting Rhymes
Character: Narrator
Six of the best-loved nursery rhymes retold, with some extremely amusing twists, by the master of the comic and blood-curdling, Roald Dahl....
The Wicked Lady
Character: Lady Kingsclere
Caroline is to be wed to Sir Ralph and invites her sister Barbara to be her bridesmaid. Barbara seduces Ralph, however, and she becomes the new Lady, but despite her new wealthy situation, she gets bored and turns to highway robbery for thrills. While on the road she meets a famous highwayman, and they continue as a team, but some people begin suspecting her identity, and she risks death if she continues her nefarious activities....
Run For Your Wife
Character: Woman in Pub
John Smith has been happily involved in a bigamous marriage for five years. He lives with Stephanie in Finsbury and Michelle in Stockwell. Fortunately, for John, he's a taxi driver which involves varying shift work! Simple? Well, when John unwittingly becomes a have-a-go hero and the Finsbury and Stockwell police forces discover something suspicious in their paperwork, John's happy bubble is about to be burst. The action of the movie takes place during the next hectic 24 hours as John, with the ...
Fawlty Towers: Re-Opened
Character: Self / Sybil Fawlty
30 years after Fawlty Towers (1975) ended, Stephen Fry narrates a documentary about the making of this classic sitcom....
The Littlest Horse Thieves
Character: Mrs. Sandman
When the owner of a Yorkshire coal-mine decides to mechanize to increase profits, the mine's pit ponies are scheduled to be destroyed. So, three children plan to steal them to keep them safe. But when they're caught, it's up to the mine owners and the miners themselves to decide what's right....
An Audience with Alf Garnett
Character:
In front of a celebrity audience Johnny Speight's bigoted comic creation Alf Garnett (played by Warren Mitchell) vents his spleen on all manner of sensitive subjects. He makes political correctness take a back seat as he gives his opinions on race relations, football, life, the government, sex, drugs and much more....
Room at the Top
Character: Council Office Worker (uncredited)
An ambitious young accountant schemes to wed a wealthy factory owner's daughter, despite falling in love with a married older woman....
The Ghost of Greville Lodge
Character:
Teenager James Greville has lived in children's homes his whole life, so he is surprised when a Great Uncle invites him to his country manor for a holiday. While exploring the sprawling Greville Lodge he soon discovers that it has many secrets....
Beyond The Pale
Character: Milly
Milly and her friends have been going on holiday together ever since they've known each other. This summer they return to one of their favourite haunts, a beautiful Irish country hotel. It's a place full of fond memories for all of them, but on this occasion their sense of ease and comfort is destroyed when a terrible secret is revealed....
Doris and Doreen
Character: Doris Rutter
A series of pink forms has Doris and Doreen fearing for their cushy jobs....
What Every Woman Wants
Character: Mary
Young couple Mark and Jane are forced to thrash out marital problems in a borrowed room in Jane’s parents’ tiny house. Meanwhile, Jane’s cousin, Jim - back from the war in Korea - and Mark’s involvement in left-wing politics place further strain on the relationship. Can grandfather help?...
An Awfully Big Adventure
Character: Rose
Liverpool. 1947. Right after World War II, a star struck naive teenage girl joins a shabby theatre troupe in Liverpool. During a winter production of Peter Pan, the play quickly turns into a dark metaphor for youth as she becomes drawn into a web of sexual politics and intrigue and learns about the grown-up world of the theater....
What the Pythons Did Next...
Character: Self
A look at the careers of John Cleese, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam in the years after Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969)....
Natural Causes
Character: Celia Bryce
Comedy thriller. Walter Bryce hires the professional services of the sinister Vincent to eliminate his rich, neurotic wife, Celia. All this to achieve a place in the sun with his secretary Angie. What seems to be a neat idea goes wrong when Vincent becomes involved on a personal level....
Fair Game
Character: Marjorie
It is 1970, there is World Cup and General Election fever. Marco, a wealthy Italian has come to England to discover his true identity. Carl, a student is torn between canvassing for the Labour party, watching the World Cup or going on a walking holiday with his girlfriend Ellie. Their paths cross in Preston library and the three take an epic journey across the Pennines....
Howards End
Character: Aunt Juley
A saga of class relations and changing times in an Edwardian England on the brink of modernity, the film centers on liberal Margaret Schlegel, who, along with her sister Helen, becomes involved with two couples: wealthy, conservative industrialist Henry Wilcox and his wife Ruth, and the downwardly mobile working-class Leonard Bast and his mistress Jackie....
Horrid Henry: The Movie
Character: Great Aunt Greta
When Henry fails yet again to hand in his homework for the umpteenth time, he has no idea that this will set off a chain of events which will see him forming an unlikely alliance with Moody Margaret, the infuriating girl next door, and his irritating little brother Perfect Peter, outwitting corrupt School Inspectors and toppling an evil Headmaster, winning a talent contest and facing his ultimate nemesis with no way out....
The Boys from Brazil
Character: Mrs. Harrington
Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman discovers a sinister and bizarre plot to rekindle the Third Reich....
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Character: Glynis
The death of Sir Charles Baskerville is blamed on a curse that has followed the Baskerville family for two hundred years. Sherlock Holmes is out to uncover the truth about a hound who roams the moors, waiting to attack the heir to the Baskerville estate....
Mad Cows
Character: Dr. Minny Stinkler
When her TV star husband Alex decides to divorce her so that he can start a career in politics, newly single mother Maddy goes shoplifting and ends up in jail. Losing custody of her infant child, Maddy hatches a scheme to break out of prison with the assistance of her friend Gillian, who's avoiding the law herself for credit card fraud. Now Maddy has to find the couple who have adopted her son and avoid falling in love with selfish Alex all over again....
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Character: Mistress Page
When Sir John Falstaff decides that he wants to have a little fun he writes two letters to a pair of Window wives: Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. When they put their heads together and compare missives, they plan a practical joke or two to teach the knight a lesson. But Mistress Ford's husband is a very jealous man and is pumping Falstaff for information of the affair. Meanwhile the Pages' daughter Anne is beseiged by suitors....
My Friend Walter
Character: Aunt Ellie
Bess Throckmorton, a farmer's daughter from Devon, encounters an ancient relative who soon reveals himself to be the ghost of Sir Walter Raleigh, determined to escape the Tower of London once and for all and return to Devon. When Sir Raleigh learns that a pair of dastardly brothers have designs on his ancestors' farm, he devises a plan to thwart them....
The Tale of Little Pig Robinson
Character: Fleecy Flock
Adapted from the Beatrix Potter story tells the story of the pignap of Little Pig Robinson by Captain Barnabus Butcher who fools Robinson into believing he is being taken on a trip to visit the land of the Bong tree; the truth of the matter is more sinister....
Home Cooking
Character: Judith
The abused neglected wife of a loutish hotelier begins to suspect that her husband is the serial rapist that has been terrorizing the area....
Sub Rosa
Character: Madame
Sub Rosa observes the 8 year old Tilda, she lives with her grandmother who runs a flower shop. The young girl roams around freely and discovers a world of indecent activities lurking behind the flower store walls....
When We Are Married
Character: Annie Parker
Three married couples discover that, through a legal technicality, they are, in fact, not actually married in the eyes of the law. This was the fifth television film version of this play by J.B. Priestley made by the BBC....
Absurd Person Singular
Character: Marion Brewster-Wright
A movie in three acts following three couples who, over three years, each host a Christmas party. The camera stays in the kitchen and we are treated to Ayckbourn's beautifully detailed look at middle class life....
Slimming Down
Character: Mrs. Shrigley
Mr. Shrigley, a small businessman dealing in office equipment, believes that the recession happens to other people. Unfortunately he is wrong, and, when it catches up with him, he comes up with a plan for some unusual cutbacks....
The Achurch Letters
Character: Florence Farr
1889: young Bernard Shaw falls under the spell of actress Janet Achurch. An important and highly charged relationship develops....
Bosses From Hell
Character:
John Cleese training video about bosses....
Communicators From Hell
Character:
John Cleese training video....