John Boynton Priestley OM was an English novelist, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster and social commentator. His Yorkshire background is reflected in much of his fiction. Many of his plays are structured around a time slip, and he went on to develop a new theory of time, with different dimensions that link past, present and future.
A young detective is tasked with solving the brutal murder of a powerful mayor. As he uncovers the city’s dark secrets, the case consumes him, testing his morals and driving him to the brink of insanity. With his relationships unraveling, he must confront a truth that could destroy him.
Release Date:2025-12-25
Department:Writing
Job:Original Concept
Northern England, 1912. The dinner of a wealthy family is interrupted by Inspector Goole, who only announces that a young woman has committed suicide. Then, he simply asks everyone present, one by one, if they knew her.
Release Date:2015-09-13
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
Vote Count:229
An unexpected inspector drops by a lavish party of a notable family in order to investigate the suicide of a pregnant girl. This breaks the joy and peace of the party which is meant to celebrate a couple's engagement. Everyone claims that they do not know the girl. However, the inspector does find something suspicious there with the help of a diary and a photo. An astonishing truth is gradually revealed: six of the noble family members are closely related to the girl's death.
Release Date:2015-02-19
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
Vote Count:12
A suspect is looked for by an eligible police officer after a women allegedly committed suicide...
Release Date:2010-11-10
Department:Writing
Job:Author
Vote Count:2
Adaptation of the play by J B Priestley. After a nuclear war, the nations have combined to set up a World Government. An old man who lives quietly in the country finds his peace threatened by a visit from three World Government figures.
Release Date:1994-11-26
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
According to the story of JB Prestley "Jenny Villiers." Actors of the London Theater gathered in the Green Room of Barton Spa, a kind of theater museum. The playwright Martin Civerell expresses his doubts that the theater is able to regain its former charm. Left alone in the Green Room, Civerell sees the actors of the last century and becomes a witness to the drama that happened here a hundred years ago...
Release Date:1991-08-01
Department:Writing
Job:Novel
Three married couples discover that, through a legal technicality, they are, in fact, not actually married in the eyes of the law. This was the fifth television film version of this play by J.B. Priestley made by the BBC.
Release Date:1987-12-26
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
In 1913, young Richard Herncastle joins his Uncle Nick's magic act and is introduced to the enchanted world of the British music hall. Travelling from one city to the next, assisting at conjuring acts and disappearing acts, Richard comes to know romance, politics, and high adventure. The next year, in a true and terrifying vanishing act, the guns of August blast away that world forever.
Release Date:1986-10-24
Department:Writing
Job:Novel
Episode Count:7
Vote Count:3
1919: the World War is over. Kay Conway celebrates her 21st birthday and all the family look forward with hope and confidence. Then Time begins to conjure with them and offers a dark glimpse of what the future could really bring.
Release Date:1985-04-07
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Action takes place in England during the 20 years between the two wars. The film explores the relationship in the once wealthy bourgeois family, whose members, in their own way, are experiencing the collapse of their plans and hopes.
Release Date:1984-12-27
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
An unexpected suicide prompts much speculation about honesty and theft.
Release Date:1983-05-22
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:2
A made-for-television adaptation of the J. B. Priestley play of the same title.
Release Date:1982-08-17
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Episode Count:3
Guests at a small hotel are disquieted by the insistence of a mysterious doctor that he has been there before.
Release Date:1982-03-24
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
The life of Mr. Kettle, an executive of a single bank in a small provincial English town Brickmill, is strictly organized: 7 a.m. stand up, then breakfast, at 9 a.m. work, at 13 p.m. diner, then work, at 18 p.m.- the end of a workday, then club, home, sleep. But one dull English morning almost having reached his work, he stops near a shop window, trading toys. How is Mrs. Twigg, Kettle's housekeeper amazed when she sees seem at home with bags and hears him saying that he is not intended to go to work any longer. This is the day when Mr. Kettle suddenly meets his love, and after a series of funny and tragic situations both choose a new life free and joyful.
Release Date:1981-04-25
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
Vote Count:1
Jess Oakroyd, discontented with his home, his work and his football team, tears up his Insurance Card and disappears into the night. He intends to go to Nuneaton, but instead finds himself on the ragged edges of show business. We share with him the trials and tribulations of the Good Companions as they tour seaside towns, industrial cities and rural backwaters in their search for success and stardom.
Release Date:1980-11-14
Department:Writing
Job:Novel
Episode Count:9
Alan Plater looks at the various adaptations of J.B. Priestley's 'The Good Companions', in the company of the author himself.
Release Date:1980-11-09
A lonely journalist in some West European country has a vision about the princess of his city who lived in XII century.
Release Date:1979-11-11
Department:Writing
Job:Novel
Vote Count:16
Sudden arrival of a police inspector in the middle of a bourgeois family's dinner party reveals various sordid and shameful secrets that may have contributed to the recent suicide of an impoverished young woman.
Release Date:1979-09-13
Department:Writing
Job:Novel
Vote Count:5
Release Date:1978-12-31
Department:Creator
Job:Creator
Eight very different people are looking for a treasure on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean.
Release Date:1977-01-13
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
Vote Count:2
The action takes place in one of the provincial towns of England. The First World War ended. Every member of the Conway family dreams of fulfilling their hopes. However, it turns out that their mother's financial condition is extremely upset...
Release Date:1974-08-30
Department:Writing
Job:Author
Release Date:1973-01-01
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Robert and Freda Caplan are entertaining guests at their country retreat. A chance remark by one of the guests ignites a series of devastating revelations, revealing a hitherto undiscovered tangle of clandestine relationships and dark secrets, the disclosures of which have tragic consequences...
Release Date:1972-06-06
Department:Writing
Job:Story
Vote Count:8
Antonia Lynch-Gibbon, wife of upper-crust wine dealer Martin, falls in love with her husband's best friend, noted psychiatrist Palmer Anderson. While both Palmer and Antonia would like to remain in Martin's life, he has some secrets of his own — namely, a mistress called Georgie, whom his womanizing brother also desires. All the while, Palmer's sister Honor seems to know everyone's business.
Release Date:1971-01-21
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
Vote Count:10
Release Date:1970-07-09
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Release Date:1970-04-19
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
Episode Count:1
Vote Count:1
Level 7 is the deepest and the safest level in a nuclear bunker. The nerve centre of the government is based here. But how safe is it?
Release Date:1966-10-27
Department:Writing
Job:Adaptation
Release Date:1965-12-22
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Sub-Inspector Tinkari Haldar comes to the house of the Industrialist Chandra Madhab Sen to inquire about a Suicide and Mystery starts to Unfold.
Release Date:1965-02-12
Department:Writing
Job:Author
Adaptation of J. B. Priestley’s play.
Release Date:1965-02-04
Department:Writing
Job:Original Story
A German professor un-nerves the residents when he claims to have been in a small Yorkshire moors inn sometime previously.
Release Date:1964-02-05
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
An American car salesman in London becomes mixed up in a series of fatal occurrences at a secluded mansion.
Release Date:1963-10-30
Department:Writing
Job:Novel
Vote Count:57
Release Date:1963-09-28
Department:Writing
Job:Story
Vote Count:1
The Thorwald family is well-off and contented when a tragedy strikes: the father is killed in an accident. Miss Thorwald takes over the raising of her children, four girls and two boys with the youngest already fifteen years old. She manages to keep them together in spite of the fact that their economic situation deteriorates after World War I. Never one to look too critically upon her brood, the woman undergoes a moving and gradual transformation as the adult activities of her children bring home the fact that none of them are what she had once imagined.
Release Date:1962-11-16
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Release Date:1960-10-14
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
Courtroom account of the prosecution of Oscar Wilde for gross indecency with other men followed Wilde's disastrous libel charge against the Marquess of Queensberry, father of his lover Lord Alfred Douglas.
Release Date:1960-08-05
Character:Self
Intended as a light farce this comedy by Luigi Commencini is a little plodding in its story about a bank manager who has had it with his buttoned-down, boring job. One Monday he can no longer face the tedium of both his work and his life and so he stays home and rebels by playing with toys and joining in on a radio concert with his own instruments. His erratic behavior does not go unnoticed and soon a winsome psychiatrist whom he knows and secretly admires, is right there trying to help him. The newly liberated bank manager logically grasps this opportunity to press forward his innermost feelings.
Release Date:1959-07-13
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
Three long-married couples in northern England discover that their marriages are in fact invalid, causing much re-evaluation and chaos. This was the fourth television film version made by the BBC of this comedy by J. B. Priestley. It featured several actors repeating their rôles from the earlier 1951 version including Frank Pettingell, Helena Pickard and Eileen Beldon.
Release Date:1957-12-25
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
A world-class painter is taken ill and lies in the bedroom of an inn, while people down below squabble over his paintings and inheritance. The wily old man is unperturbed, even regarding the infernal trumpet sound which plays throughout.
Release Date:1957-09-15
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
The story revolves around the Dinky Doos, a provincial musical troupe living from hand to mouth.
Release Date:1957-04-22
Department:Writing
Job:Novel
An upper-crust family dinner is interrupted by a police inspector who brings news that a girl known to everyone present has died in suspicious circumstances. It seems that any or all of them could have had a hand in her death. But who is the mysterious Inspector and what can he want of them?
Release Date:1954-03-16
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:101
The United States Steel Hour is an anthology series which brought hour-long dramas to television from 1953 to 1963. The television series and the radio program that preceded it were both sponsored by the United States Steel Corporation.
Release Date:1953-10-27
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
Episode Count:1
Vote Count:4
Three married couples discover that, through a legal technicality, they are, in fact, not actually married in the eyes of the law. This was the third version broadcast by the BBC of this J.B. Priestley play. It was aired live but as the BBC very rarely recorded live transmissions prior to 1953, this programme is lost.
Release Date:1951-12-25
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
George Bird is a salesman of agricultural machinery who finds out that he hasn't long to live. On his doctor's advice, he goes to an exclusive seaside resort to spend his savings on one last holiday.
Release Date:1950-05-15
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:46
The Helliwells, the Soppitts, and the Parkers, old friends gathered to celebrate their common silver anniversaries. To their dismay they learn that their marriages may not be valid. On hand are an outrageous housekeeper and a photographer. This was the second television film version of the J.B. Priestley play made by the BBC.
Release Date:1949-07-10
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Guests at an hotel become irrationally convinced that they have been there before - perhaps in a different life?
Release Date:1949-05-29
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
People from different walks of life mysteriously find themselves at the gate of an unknown city
Release Date:1944-08-21
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
Vote Count:12
The Helliwells, the Soppitts, and the Parkers, old friends gathered to celebrate their common silver anniversaries. To their dismay they learn that their marriages may not be valid. On hand are an outrageous housekeeper and a photographer.
Release Date:1943-07-12
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
An out-of-work comedian persuades a drunken nobleman to join a protest against the closing of a village hall.
Release Date:1942-08-11
Department:Writing
Job:Novel
Vote Count:6
Based on the true story of Melbourne Johns, an aircraft factory foreman sent to France to prevent the Nazis getting hold of some vital equipment.
Release Date:1942-06-22
Department:Writing
Job:Story
Vote Count:9
Wartime morale-boosting propaganda short, looking at the greatness of Britain and the efforts of all to preserve her power and integrity.
Release Date:1940-07-31
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Character:Narrator
In coastal Cornwall, England, during the early 19th Century, a young woman who's come there to visit her aunt, discovers that she's married an innkeeper who's a member of a gang of criminals who arrange shipwrecking and murder for profit.
Release Date:1939-05-11
Department:Crew
Job:Additional Dialogue
Vote Count:224
Television broadcast of Bees on the Boat-Deck by J.B. Priestley.
Release Date:1939-01-11
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
The Helliwells, the Soppitts, and the Parkers, old friends gathered to celebrate their common silver anniversaries. To their dismay they learn that their marriages may not be valid. On hand are an outrageous housekeeper and a photographer. The first play in history to ever be televised complete and unedited direct from the theatre. It is now believed to be lost. The BBC would make another television film version of this play in 1949 with several of the same actors from this film including Raymond Huntley, Ernest Butcher, Patricia Hayes, George Carney and Lloyd Pearson.
Release Date:1938-11-16
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
To rid himself of his sponging relatives a man tells them he is really a forger which causes them to leave. His wife believes he is joking, but he has in fact allowed the truth to slip out and now he is danger of being arrested.
Release Date:1936-11-16
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
Vote Count:1
A Swedish princess boards an ocean liner in Europe en route to an acting career in America and finds herself getting inconveniently attached to a bandleader returning home. To complicate matters, a blackmailer on board apparently knows she is not who she claims to be - and he has his sights set on other passengers with secrets of their own. In the meantime an escaped killer has stowed away under someone else's identity, and is killing again to cover his tracks; five international police detectives on board are heading the investigation to find him. When evidence points to the princess and bandleader, they must find the killer themselves - before he finds them.
Release Date:1936-05-22
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:14
Gutsy lass Gracie rallies fellow stall-holders at Birkenhead Market to prevent its takeover and demolition by a department store chain. She invokes the Market's foundation by Royal Charter just before an inadvertent gas leak provides an explosive climax.
Release Date:1935-08-13
Department:Writing
Job:Screenplay
Vote Count:2
An impressionistic portrait of the BBC.
Release Date:1935-07-28
Friends uncover a dark secret when they compare notes about a theft and suicide.
Release Date:1934-12-04
Department:Writing
Job:Theatre Play
Vote Count:3
When the textile mill closes, putting her out of work, Gracie finds herself experiencing all of the amusements of Blackpool.
Release Date:1934-09-13
Department:Writing
Job:Writer
Vote Count:8
Film musical taken from JB Priestley's novel about three musicians joining together to save a failing concert party, the Dinky Doos.
Release Date:1933-02-28
Department:Writing
Job:Novel
Vote Count:4
In a remote region of Wales, five travelers beset by a relentless storm find shelter in an old mansion.
Release Date:1932-10-20
Department:Writing
Job:Novel
Vote Count:266
A portrait of Raymond Chandler, creator of the Philip Marlowe mystery thrillers, by John Foster and Fred Burnley. The film portrays Chandler's life and creative attitudes in his own words. Dramatised excerpts from his letters and novels reveal conflicting aspects: the sensitive, diffident writer - and the tough, cool private eye hero. With JB Priestley.
Character:Himself