Screen Two

- Season 8

(1992)

The Grass Arena is a biopic based on the autobiography of John Healy. Raised in an ultra religious family, with an abusive father, young Johnny soon learns that he has to learn to defend himself. He takes up boxing, but soon falls victim to alcoholism. His boxing career over, John takes to the Grass Arena (the park) where he lives with other alcoholics. Things only get worse, until he learns about the game of chess.

The friendship of a young boy and an old Polish emigre as they struggle to re-create 'the smallest show on earth' - a flea circus.

The true story of mysterious deaf-mute boy Joseph in France just before the revolution.

A young gay man (Brian Cox) comes out to his middle-class parents, which has repercussions for his father who has long since been trying to repress his own sexuality.

A wheeler-dealer (John Malkovich) and his girlfriend (Andie MacDowell) are stranded penniless and hotel-bound in London, with only the girl's Henry Moore statuette as collateral. She suggests they fake a burglary to collect the insurance.

Farah is an independent young British woman who manages to reconcile her modern lifestyle with her Pakistani heritage. As a Muslim in love with a married man, she can become his second wife - especially as his first marriage to Maryam seems to exist in name only. But with all three under one roof, Farah becomes increasingly insecure.

A woman dealing with inconsolable grief over the death of her partner gets another chance when he returns to Earth as a ghost.

British drama following the lives of a group of friends who met at university.

Utz, an impassioned and once wealthy nobleman, is reduced to living in a two-room flat in Stalinist Prague with his priceless collection of Meissen porcelain. Fischer, a New York art dealer, visits Prague on Utz's death to discover that the collection has vanished, a mystery that only Utz's maid Marta can explain.

A new government takes power with a drastically reduced majority. But the ambitious young Home Secretary has a plan to bring the legal establishment to heel and bypass Parliament altogether.

A semi-fictionalized account of the life of writer F.R. Leavis, his mentor Arthur Quiller Couch, and Leavis's own students at Cambridge University.

Four women rent a chateau on a remote Italian island to try to come to grips with their lives and relationships. They explore the differences in their personalities, reassess their goals, and reexamine their relationships in a sisterly fashion.

A group of old people is being frightened by mysterious phone calls.