Inside this conventionally structured biopic resides an extraordinary story of an extraordinary man. William Wilberforce was the parliamentary spokesman for a group of radicalised young Evangelists (and Quakers), who despised the money politics and corruption of late 18th Century UK politics and who fought for many reformist policies, the most notable of which was the one this film annotates, the abolition of slavery, a process that took years of political skulduggery and the slow passage of find out more...

A group of abducted Africans break free from their shackles aboard a Spanish slave ship, the Amistad, so setting the scene for a lengthy courtroom drama played out against a backdrop of 19th Century slavery. Matthew McConaughy is the noble young lawyer fighting for the slaves' freedom, while Anthony Hopkins is mesmerising as decrepit former President John Quincy Adams. Superb sets and an authentic atmosphere, and it's pretty gruesome at times too. Typically Spielberg-esque epic. find out more...

Chronicles the life and times of Nucky Thompson, the undisputed ruler of Atlantic City, who was equal parts politician and gangster.
High production values and a fine ensemble cast: HBO knows how to do TV.

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The story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, a group of 1830s Dorset farm labourers who had the effrontery to form a Trade Union to fight against their wages being lowered and who got transported to Australia for their pains. find out more...

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In the wake of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, seven men and one woman are arrested and charged with conspiring to kill the President. The lone woman charged, Mary Surratt, owns a boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and others met and planned the attack. Newly-minted lawyer, Frederick Aiken, reluctantly agrees to defend Surratt before a military tribunal. Aiken realizes his client may be innocent and that she is being used as bait in order to capture the only conspirator to have escaped a ma find out more...

Young Victoria grew up in a stifling environment surrounded by manipulative relatives and a control freak for a mother, without the rough and tumble of childhood relationships that the rest of us went through. On becoming Queen, at the tender age of 18, she was forced to mature very fast and this she did with the fortuitous love and support of arranged husband Prince Albert. This is very much their story. find out more...

In the mid-C19th William Walker operated out of Latin America as a soldier of fortune, but he was not merely a mercenary for hire, he was also a doctor, a lawyer and, most dangerous of all, an idealist. When Walker invaded Nicaragua, at the behest of robber baron Wanderbilt, he decided against handing the country over, instead declaring himself President, and sighting that America was obligated to "protect our neighbours from oppression". A glorious and bloody re-interpretation of history, ‘Walk find out more...

A vivid dramatisation of the young Abraham Lincoln, from his meagre Kentucky roots, his training as a lawyer and his eventual entrance into politics. The Young Lincoln is directed and performed with immense heart, a deserved classic by two of the greats of American cinema about one of the greats of American history. find out more...