The best Henry Woolf’s drama movies

1183 AD: King Henry II's three sons all want to inherit the throne, but he won't commit to a choice. They and his wife variously plot to force him. An aging and conniving King Henry II of England and Ireland plans a reunion where he hopes to name his successor. He summons the following people for the holiday at his chateau and primary residence in Chinon, Anjou, within the Angevin Empire of medieval France: his scheming but imprisoned wife, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine; his mistress, Princess Alais, whom he wishes to marry; his three sons, gay Richard the Lionheart , Geoffrey, and John, all of whom desire the throne; and the young, but crafty King Philip II of France, who is also Alais' half-brother.

Police Inspector Renko tries to solve the case of three bodies found in Moscow's Gorky Park but finds his attempts to solve the crime impeded by his superiors. Working on his own, Renko seeks out more information and stumbles across a conspiracy involving the highest levels of the government.

The film fictionalizes the real relationship between French sculptor Henri Gaudier and Polish writer Sophie Brzeska, twenty years his senior, who came to Paris, she says, for its “creative atmosphere.”

Adapted and directed by Peter Brook from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘production-in-progress US’, this long-unseen agitprop drama-doc – shot in London in 1967 and released only briefly in the UK and New York at the height of the Vietnam War – remains both thought-provoking and disturbing. A theatrical and cinematic social comment on US intervention in Vietnam, Brook’s film also reveals a 1960s London where art, theatre and political protest actively collude and where a young Glenda Jackson and RSC icons such as Peggy Ashcroft and Paul Scofield feature prominently on the front line. Multi-layered scenarios staged by Brook combine with newsreel footage, demonstrations, satirical songs and skits to illustrate the intensity of anti-war opinion within London’s artistic and intellectual community.

In Charenton Asylum, the Marquis de Sade directs a play about Jean Paul Marat's death, using the patients as actors. Based on 'The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade', a 1963 play by Peter Weiss.

Albert Steptoe and his son Harold are junk dealers, complete with horse and cart to tour the neighbourhood. They also live amicably together at the junk yard. Always on the lookout for ways to improve his lot, Harold invests his father's life savings in a greyhound who is almost blind and can't see the hare. When the dog loses a race and Harold has to pay off the debt, he comes up with another bright idea. Collect his father's life insurance. To do this his father must pretend to be dead.

Far in the distant future, Earth has become uninhabitable, forcing Mankind to colonise first Mars and then Pluto. No longer the coldest planet in the solar system, Pluto is now warmed by artificial suns. The Doctor, Leela and K9 arrive to discover the exploitation of the Megropolis people by the ruling elite, lead by the Collector. Deep in the Undercity, a small group of revolutionaries plot to overthrow the company and the Doctor is forced to fight the oppression of the people using Fire against Fire...