American computer whiz Luke Williams meets elderly Lavinia Fullerton on a London-bound train. She reveals she's discovered the identity of a serial killer in her village and is going to report it to Scotland Yard. When she is murdered after disembarking the train, Williams vows to pursue the case himself.

As a young child, Frederic had been apprenticed to a pirate by mistake when he should have been apprenticed to a pilot. Now, having reached his 21st year, Frederic's indentures are at last over and he happily leaves the service of the pirates. When Frederic meets the beautiful Mabel, one of the many daughters (or wards in Chancery) of Major-General Stanley, they fall in love and decide to marry. However, complications arise when the pirates decide to marry the rest of the Major-General's daughters, themselves - and Frederic's birthdate turns out to be not all it seems.

A tongue-in-cheek "behind the scenes" look at the Comic Strip comedy club in the early 1980s, which gave rise to 'The Comic Strip Presents'

An ordinary young boy called Nikolas sets out on an extraordinary adventure into the snowy north in search of his father who is on a quest to discover the fabled village of the elves, Elfhelm. Taking with him a headstrong reindeer called Blitzen and a loyal pet mouse, Nikolas soon meets his destiny in this magical and endearing story that proves nothing is impossible…

A young single mother has to convince the authorities that she is a fit parent.

Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption.

In the autumn of 1773, the English writer Samuel Johnson visits the Hebrides, or Western Isles, off the North-West coast of Scotland. With him are his friend, the Scotsman James Boswell, and his black servant Francis Barber. Staying with a series of hosts, including elderly Jacobite heroine Flora McDonald, Johnson and Boswell encounter traditional Scottish hospitality at first-hand, all the time arguing about politics (and in Boswell's case losing his head over every pretty woman he meets). Meanwhile, Francis and another black servant they encounter provide evidence of the new consciousness emerging in Britain's soon-to-be-independent American colonies.

A new student at a British public school forms a secret society centered around cooking and midnight feasting with other school misfits and outcasts.

Glen, a complete stranger, appears at the door of Elizabeth Carter, a middle-aged woman, and claims to be the illegitimate son she gave away at birth.

A repressed night-school teacher, secretly homosexual, struggles to cope with his demanding, eccentric mother.