25 years ago, Jane saw a man killing her mother. Today, she's a well adjusted wife and mother herself. While having a physical, she notices a doctor who looks like the killer and reports him. No one believes her - except one cop.

two-part British television thriller miniseries from 2014

Ellen gets unexpectedly pregnant just after landing a big contract for her architects' practice. She hopes to be away for the shortest time and hires someone to cover the gap. Paula is the same age as Ellen but already has a ten-year-old daughter. She made the opposite life choice, took a big chunk of her career out to dedicate herself full time to her child. As Paula shadows Ellen for the last months of her pregnancy, she seems the perfect hire - enthusiastic, personable, super-competent. But Ellen begins to worry Paula has another agenda. Paula refuses to believe Ellen when she says she plans to return in a couple of months. She's confident Ellen will change her mind when she falls in love with her baby. Ellen thinks that maybe Paula doesn't want her back. Ever. Ellen becomes increasingly disturbed by Paula's subtle manipulations at the office. She sees Paula ingratiate herself with bosses, client, even friends. Ellen begins to see her less as a support and more of a rival. But no one else sees the Paula Ellen sees. They see a bright decent woman doing her best to cover for Ellen. They all think Ellen is being paranoid, even her own husband doubts her state of mind. She is, after all, pregnant. Only Ellen can see that Paula seems more obsessed about the pregnancy than she is. And the more she voices her fears, the more she alienates everyone around her. When a terrible accident strikes the firm, Ellen cannot accept the police verdict and pursues the person she believes responsible. This psychological thriller set in Glasgow follows the paranoia of a woman who sees her identity being dismantled and can't work out whether the cause is another woman or her own baby.

In 1994, a toddler disappeared from a small Welsh village, never to be seen again. 23 years later, in London, the mother of rising cello star Matilda Gray takes her own life, without apparent reason. Among her possessions, Matilda discovers tantalising evidence, linking her mother to the Welsh girl's disappearance all those years ago. And so grief stricken Matilda travels to Wales, determined to find out who she really is, even if it means unraveling her own identity. In the process, she uncovers long buried secrets in this remote community - including one secret more bizarre, terrifying and dangerous than anything she could have imagined: Dark otherworldly forces are gathering - they have been waiting many years for Matilda to return. If every life is a story, then for most of us, it's our parents who write the opening chapters. They record and remember our early childhoods as we cannot, acting as trusted witnesses to our lives. But what if you discovered that your parent had lied to you? That almost everything they'd said about their own history, and yours, was untrue? Part supernatural thriller, part psychological horror, Requiem takes its inspiration from the psychological horror films of the late 1960s and '70s - Rosemary's Baby, Don't Look Now, and The Innocents, avoiding easy answers, and instead playing on uncertainty and ambiguity. It's also a rumination on the nature of memory, identity, and loss, hinging on a universal truth: that when a parent dies, a part of you dies with them.

2018 British 6-part television drama serial directed by Mahalia Belo

A behind-the-scenes drama and espionage thriller in Cold War-era England that centers on a journalist, a producer, and an anchorman for an investigative news programme.

Harry Perkins, steel worker and trade unionist from Sheffield, becomes Prime Minister of the UK by an overwhelming majority, partly because of corruption and public disillusionment with the Conservative Party and financial institutions of the City of London. The IMF and the military and secret services of the UK (and USA) are unhappy with the non-nuclear and neutral aspirations of his party and are supported in their fears by nationalistic media moguls. Quietly, the protagonist Harry is driven by an underlying desire to compensate for the corporate manslaughter of his granddad, "who were killed at work" when he was splashed by molten steel. Harry inherited his shaving mug, nothing more, and was originally determined to see workers participate in decision making for safety on the job. As his national-political consciousness grew he formed a wider agenda for a reinvestment in health and education as well as public ownership of public utilities. Harry maintains his drive despite sex scandals and suicide involving his colleagues and the assassination of his trusted military advisor Monty Kowalski. Harry says that "the dead [read: his grandfather, Annette Newson and Monty] ask the best questions, and we are answerable". He finds some personal support in his ex-lover Helen, a passionate advocate for alternate economic strategies, and Harry's spy in the corridors of power; Thompson, an investigative journalist. But ultimately this is a story about one man's convictions.

1988 television miniseries directed by Mick Jackson

The true story of a group of Cambridge University Students who are recruited to spy for the Soviet Union in the early 1930s.

The drama follows Alison Wilson who thinks she is a normal, happily married woman. But when her husband Alec suddenly dies, a woman turns up on her doorstep, claiming that she is the real Mrs. Wilson. Alison is determined to prove the validity of her own marriage - and Alec's love for her - but is instead led into a world of dark and troubling secrets. Alec was a British spy and a best-selling novelist and Alison is pushed to the very brink to find out the truth.

An intimate and emotional drama for BBC Two about the revolutionary Bloomsbury group.

This three episode drama from the BBC, tells the incredible true story of the assassination attempt on the double agent and spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. It sent shockwaves throughout the city of Salisbury, and left the public services to deal with an unprecedented national emergency.

Set in 1920s London, a brutal and bloodthirsty murder has stained the plush carpets of a handsome London townhouse. The victim is the glamorous and rich Emily French. All the evidence points to Leonard Vole, a young chancer to whom the heiress left her vast fortune and who ruthlessly took her life. At least, this is the story that Emily's dedicated housekeeper Janet McIntyre stands by in court. Leonard however, is adamant that his partner, the enigmatic chorus girl Romaine, can prove his innocence. Tasked with representing Leonard is his solicitor John Mayhew and King's Counsel, Sir Charles Carter KC.

The story of events surrounding the notorious divorce of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll during the 1960s.

In 1967, Susanna Kaysen had a headache and chased a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka. This landed her in the mental institution, Claymoore. Here she is diagnosed, by Dr. Melvin Potts, with borderline personality disorder. When she arrives at Claymoore, she is greeted by Nurse Valerie Owens and shown round the woman's ward. Here she meets Georgina Tuskin, a pathological liar who is fixated with The Wizard of Oz; Polly Clark, a childlike schizophrenic; Janet Webber, a sardonic anorexic patient; Daisy Randone, a girl who won't let anyone in her room, and only eats her father's chicken; and Lisa Rowe, a sociopath who controls the other patients, and makes lives hard for the nurses at Claymoore. Through the movie, Lisa gains and loses control over Susanna and we see how bad she really can be. The movie's ending shows Susanna being released from Claymoore after an 18-month stay. How does Susanna take back her control? This movie battles subjects such as mental heath, abuse, self-harm and suicide.

"All eyes will be on you," says the Austrian Empress, Maria Theresa to her youngest daughter Marie Antoinette. The film, marketed for a teen audience, is an impressionistic retelling of Marie Antoinette's life as a young queen in the opulent and eccentric court at Versailles. The film focuses on Marie Antoinette, as she matures from a teenage bride to a young woman and eventual queen of France.

Christina Ricci stars as Lizzie, a prize-winning student heading off to Harvard where she intends to study journalism and launch a career as a rock music critic. However, Elizabeth's fractured family situation including an errant father (Nicholas Campbell) and a neurotic, bitterly hypercritical mother (Jessica Lange) has led to a struggle with depression. When her all-night, drug-fueled writing binges and emotional instability alienate her roommate and best friend, Ruby (Michelle Williams), as well as both her first (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and second (Jason Biggs) boyfriends, Lizzie seeks psychiatric counseling from Dr. Diana Sterling (Anne Heche), who prescribes the wonder drug Prozac. Despite success as a writer that includes a gig writing for Rolling Stone and some mellowing out thanks to her medication, Lizzie begins to feel that the pills are running her life and faces some tough choices about her future.

Three separate but parallel stories of the U.S mortgage housing crisis of 2005 are told. Michael Burry, an eccentric ex-physician turned one-eyed Scion Capital hedge fund manager, has traded traditional office attire for shorts, bare feet and a Supercuts haircut. He believes that the US housing market is built on a bubble that will burst within the next few years. Autonomy within the company allows Burry to do largely as he pleases, so Burry proceeds to bet against the housing market with the banks, who are more than happy to accept his proposal for something that has never happened in American history. The banks believe that Burry is a crackpot and therefore are confident in that they will win the deal. Jared Vennett with Deutschebank gets wind of what Burry is doing and, as an investor believes he too can cash in on Burry's beliefs. An errant telephone call to FrontPoint Partners gets this information into the hands of Mark Baum, an idealist who is fed up with the corruption in the financial industry. Baum and his associates, who work at an arms length under Morgan Stanley, decide to join forces with Vennett despite not totally trusting him. In addition to Burry's information, they further believe that most of the mortgages are overrated by the bond agencies, with the banks collating all the sub-prime mortgages under AAA packages. Charlie Geller and Jamie Shipley, who are minor players in a $30 million start-up garage company called Brownfield, get a hold of Vennett's prospectus on the matter. Wanting in on the action but not having the official clout to play, they decide to call an old "friend", retired investment banker Ben Rickert, to help out. All three of these groups work on the premise that the banks are stupid and don't know what's going on, while for them to win, the general economy has to lose, which means the suffering of the general investor who trusts the financial institutions. That latter aspect may not sit well with Baum. Some of these assumptions may be incorrect and may be far more manipulative than they could have ever imagined, which in turn may throw curves into the process.

On the day that Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, elderly Daisy Williams (nee Fuller) is on her deathbed in a New Orleans hospital. At her side is her adult daughter, Caroline. Daisy asks Caroline to read to her aloud the diary of Daisy's lifelong friend, Benjamin Button. Benjamin's diary recounts his entire extraordinary life, the primary unusual aspect of which was his aging backwards, being diagnosed with several aging diseases at birth and thus given little chance of survival, but who does survive and gets younger with time. Abandoned by his biological father, Thomas Button, after Benjamin's biological mother died in childbirth, Benjamin was raised by Queenie, a black woman and caregiver at a seniors home. Daisy's grandmother was a resident at that home, which is where she first met Benjamin. Although separated through the years, Daisy and Benjamin remain in contact throughout their lives, reconnecting in their forties when in age they finally match up. Some of the revelations in Benjamin's diary are difficult for Caroline to read, especially as it relates to the time past this reconnection between Benjamin and Daisy, when Daisy gets older and Benjamin grows younger into his childhood years.

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Elizabeth Porteous

Scottish-born American naturalist and author (1838-1914)

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