The best Joan Hickson’s movies

An impoverished American sailor is fortunate enough to be passing the house of two rich gentlemen who have conceived the crazy idea of distributing a note worth one million pounds. The sailor finds that whenever he tries to use the note to buy something, people treat him like a king and let him have whatever he likes for free. Ultimately, the money proves to be more troublesome than it is worth when it almost costs him his dignity and the woman he loves.

Miss Marple believes she's seen a murder in a passing-by train, yet when the police find no evidence she decides to investigate it on her own.

Faced with two false confessions and numerous suspects after a despised civil magistrate is found shot in the local vicarage, Detective Inspector Slack reluctantly accepts help from Miss Marple.

A Shakespearean actor takes poetic revenge on the critics who denied him recognition.

The true story of a British effort to trick the Germans into weakening Sicily's defenses before the 1943 attack. A dead soldier is dressed as a British officer and outfitted with faked papers showing that the Allies were intending to invade occupied Greece. His body is put into the sea where it will ultimately drift ashore and the papers be passed along to German Intelligence.

A former burglar trying to go straight joins a rehabilitation scheme using much the same methods as AA. Through the process, he takes work as a department store Santa, where the endless parade of goods and money, not to mention the pretty young shop hands have him like a moth to a flame in no time flat.

During WWII, the United States set up army bases in Great Britain as part of the war effort. Against their proper sensibilities, many of the Brits don't much like the brash Yanks, especially when it comes to the G.I.s making advances on the lonely British girls. One relationship that develops is between married John, an Army Captain, and the aristocratic Helen, whose naval husband is away at war. Helen loves her husband, but Helen and John are looking for some comfort during the difficult times.

A charming and ambitious young man finds many ways to raise himself through the ranks in business and social standing - some honest, some not quite so. If he can just manage to avoid a certain very predatory woman...

French teens Paul and Michelle run away from home to a remote beach and have a baby.

Flirtatious mermaid Miranda swaps places with a schoolteacher who has gone on holiday. All is well until she falls in love with a human.

A naive but caring prison chaplain, who happens to have the same last name as an upper class cleric, is by mistake appointed as vicar to a small and prosperous country town. His belief in charity and forgiveness sets him at odds with the conservative and narrow-minded locals, and he soon creates social ructions by appointing a black dustman as his churchwarden, taking in a gypsy family, and persuading the local landowner to provide free food for the church to distribute free to the people of the town. When the congregation leaders realise the mistake and call for the Church of England to remove him, this turns out to be a very, very difficult issue - until one clergyman realises that a British project to send a man into space is in need of an astronaut...

Now old, ill, poor, and largely forgotten, William Freise-Greene was once very different. As young and handsome William Green he changed his name to include his first wife's so that it sounded more impressive for the photographic portrait work he was so good at. But he was also an inventor and his search for a way to project moving pictures became an obsession that ultimately changed the life of all those he loved.

The year is 1940 and Pilot Officer T.B. Baird arrives straight out of flight school to join a front line RAF squadron at the height of the Battle of Britain. After an unfortunate start and a drumming down from his commanding officer, Baird must balance the struggle to impress his Group Captain, regain his pride, fit in with his fellow pilots, and survive one of the most intense air battles in history.

U.S. Embassy employee Lee Cochrane and his wife, Sue, receive a shock when they discover that their 18-month-old son, Simon, has disappeared in London. He was last seen with their nanny, and the couple seemingly have no leads that might help police Detective Craig in his investigation. The media sensationalizes the incident, causing an unnecessary distraction as the couple prepares to confront the culprit face-to-face.

The first of the seven "Doctor" films, based on Richard Gordon's novels and released between 1954 and 1970. Simon Sparrow is a newly arrived medical student at St Swithin's hospital in London. Falling in with three longer-serving hopefuls he is soon immersed in the wooing, imbibing and fast sports-car driving that constitute 1950s medical training. There is, however, always the looming and formidable figure of chief surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt to remind them of their real purpose.

An uncompromising British school headmaster finds himself beset by one thing going wrong after another.

Escaping from China with a microfilm of the formula for the mysterious "Lotus X", Lord Southmere, a Queen's Messenger, is chased by a group of Chinese spies.

Travelling on the 4.50 from Paddington, Mrs McGillicuddy witnesses a murder on a passing train - but where is the body?

With a flu epidemic running rife, three new bumbling recruits are assigned to Inspector Mills police station. With help from Special Constable Gorse, they manage to totally wreck the operations of the police force and let plenty of criminals get away, even before they arrive at the station. They all have to prove themselves or else they'll be out of a job and Sergeant Wilkins will be transferred. Sub-plots include romances between Wilkins and Moon, Constable and Passworthy.