For generations the Stoner and Smith families have lived and worked on the canals. But now this idyllic way of life is threatened - the younger generation long to break away and discover life outside the barges. Ted Stoner (Robert Griffith) dreams of living in a big town but his girlfriend, Mary Smith (Jenny Laird), is more of a traditionalist - will their very different dreams tear them apart?

Classic British crime drama directed by Basil Dearden. After being called to the scene of an armed robbery, veteran PC George Dixon (Jack Warner) is shot and killed by young criminal Tom Riley (Dirk Bogarde) while new recruit Andy Mitchell (Jimmy Hanley) can only look on in horror. With word soon getting out of the popular policeman's murder, some of the West London criminal fraternity join forces with Mitchell and his colleagues and set out on a hunt to find the killer.

First-time director Seth Holt's stylish noir drama stars George Nader as a fugitive on the run from the police. Sentenced to ten years in prison for robbing an old lady of her valuable coin collection, Canadian thief Paul Gregory (Nader) is swiftly sprung from jail by his former partner-in-crime Victor Sloane (Bernard Lee). Hoping to retrieve his ill-gotten gains, his plans are derailed when a series of double-crosses forces him to go on the run. With the police hard on his tail, Gregory finds himself crossing the Welsh countryside with socialite Bridget Howard (Maggie Smith, in her debut role) in tow.

Classic Ealing comedy. During the Second World War, the inhabitants of a small Hebridean island are wilting under a chronic shortage of whisky. When a ship is wrecked on the shore, it is discovered to contain 50,000 cases of malt, which are promptly appropriated by the menfolk of the island. All is well until an English Home Guard commander - determined to see the whisky restored to its rightful owners - calls in Her Majesty's Customs, and the islanders make frantic attempts to hide their treasured alcoholic booty!

Set during the London Blitz of 1940, Tommy Trinder stars as a kennelman who volunteers for the East End Auxiliary Fire Service. The volunteers have to work alongside the regular firemen, who resent the amateurs but who could also not have saved so many lives without them. This film was made in 1943 with the help of the National Fire Service and is now seen as a tribute to all the professionals and volunteers who put their lives at risk saving others.

William Fitch (Will Hay, in his last film) is a disbarred barrister now summoned to court to face charges of sending begging letters. Falling back on his legal skills, Fitch manages to make mincemeat of the cross examining lawyer, Claude Bobbington (Claude Hulbert), and is found not guilty. However, this lucky streak does not last for long; a madman Fitch helped put in prison years earlier has now escaped, and is out for revenge. Fitch turns to Claude for help, but the pair fail to convince the constabulary that there is a real threat to Fitch's life, and are forced to track down the convict themselves.

Classic Ealing comedy starring Alec Guinness. Captain Ambrose (Guinness) has a problem - a serious problem. Despite being descended from a famous seafaring family, he struggles on board ship because of chronic seasickness. At the end of the war, he decides to quit the waves and take a shore command. Buying the amusement arcade on the pier at Sandcastle-On-Sea, he looks for a calm life. But even on shore, he finds the waters rough. Opposition comes in the form of the local town council, which decides that all forms of gambling should be banned. From then on, Captain Ambrose faces stormy seas and all is definitely not plain sailing.

Sid James triple. In 'The Big Job' (1965), a gang of hapless crooks successfully perpetrate a robbery only to be caught after the fact. Fifteen years later they emerge from prison intent on retrieving their stolen loot - and discover that a police station has been built over its hiding place. Sylvia Syms, Dick Emery, Jim Dale and Joan Sims co-star. In 'Make Mine a Milluion' (1959), an ad-man teams up with a make-up artist in a cunning plot to advertise Bonko detergent on non-commercial television. Despite the trouble it causes, the plan proves a great success and the two chaps soon set up a pirate television station with the intention of beaming their advertisements into other company's TV shows. Again the idea proves successful - but just how long can these two go on avoiding their come-uppance? 'The Lavender Hill Mob' (1951) is a classic Ealing comedy. Nobody would ever suspect gold bullion delivery man Henry Holland (Alec Guinness) of anything other than total devotion to his job. However, with the aid of fellow lodger Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway), he gathers together a gang to carry out a heist, intending to smuggle the gold out of the country by melting it down into miniature models of the Eiffel Tower. All goes well until the consignment of models becomes muddled up with another, non-golden batch. Watch out for an early cameo by Audrey Hepburn.

Pen Tennyson directs this early Ealing Studios drama set in a Welsh coal mining valley. Paul Robeson stars as David Goliath, a charismatic African-American seaman who washes up in a small mining village in Wales. There, he finds work alongside the miners down the pit, and his magnificent singing voice attracts the attention of local choir director Dick Parry (Simon Lack), who has ambitions of winning the national choir contest on the strength of Goliath's talent. However, a mining disaster puts both of these occupations on hold, and Goliath rouses a group of activists to march to London in the hope of reopening the mine in time to serve the nation's wartime needs.

First of the Ealing comedies. A bunch of crooks use a comic paper, featuring stories penned by Felix H. Wilkinson (Alastair Sim), to pass on coded messages for robberies. When the comic's readership, a bunch of East End boys, discover what's going on they go to the police. The local constabulary, however, are no help, and so the plucky lads set out to foil the robbers themselves.

Collection of feature films inspired by the Great War. In 'I Was a Spy' (1933), Martha Cnockhaert (Madeleine Carroll) works as a spy in a German hospital, acting for the allies. Aided by orderly Stephan (Herbert Marshall), Martha plots to blow up a German ammunition dump. When Martha accompanies a German Commandant to Brussels, a change in the Kaiser's movements inadvertently reveals Martha's true purpose. '1914 All Out' (1987) is a made-for-TV drama set during World War I in a quiet Yorkshire village. While the locals are enjoying a Bank Holiday cricket match, their fun is cut short when war breaks out and the men go off to fight for their country. Set in the Scottish Orkney Islands during the First World War, 'The Spy In Black' (1939) tells the story of three German spies plotting to sink the British fleet. When U-Boat Captain Hardt (Conrad Veidt) makes contact with his beautiful co-conspirator (Valerie Hobson), he falls in love with her, but she is already having an affair with the third spy in their group, Royal Navy traitor Lieutenant Ashington (Sebastian Shaw).

In World War One, Martha Cnockhaert (Madeleine Carroll) works as a spy in a German hospital, acting for the allies. Aided by orderly Stephan (Herbert Marshall), Martha plots to blow up a German ammunition dump. When Martha accompanies a German Commandant to Brussels, a change in the Kaiser's movements inadvertently reveals Martha's true purpose.

Realist drama from Ealing Studios, based on a novel by Arthur La Bern and set in London's working-class East End just after World War 2. The action unfolds over the course of one dismal, rainy Sunday. Tommy Swann (John McCallum) has escaped from Dartmoor prison and turns up at the drab East End home of his former love Rose (Googie Withers), who is now married to the staid George (Edward Chapman) with three children. Rose has a difficult decision to make: should she help Tommy, or put her marriage - and the claustrophobic domesticity it entails - first?

1930s horror starring Boris Karloff as a scientist warped by the power he gains from one of his own discoveries. When Dr Laurience (Karloff) retires to an isolated house to research the origins of the human mind and soul with a surgeon, Clare (Anna Lee), and a man confined to a wheelchair, Clayton (Donald Calthrop), he is scorned by his scientific peers. However, Laurience succeeds in discovering a means of mind-transference: the ability to swap the mental faculties of any two people and thus to take possession of the bodies of others. But will he use the power wisely?

Classic Ealing comedy. During the Second World War, the inhabitants of a small Hebridean island are wilting under a chronic shortage of whisky. When a ship is wrecked on the shore, it is discovered to contain 50,000 cases of malt, which are promptly appropriated by the menfolk of the island. All is well until an English Home Guard commander - determined to see the whisky restored to its rightful owners - calls in Her Majesty's Customs, and the islanders make frantic attempts to hide their treasured alcoholic booty!

Will Hay plays Professor Davis, the intrepid head of a correspondence college, in this wartime comedy. Davis gets wind of the fact that a Nazi spy has infiltrated an economic delegation with the intent of undermining attempts to reach a trade agreement between Great Britain and certain South American countries. The effort to expose the dastardly fellow sees Hay adopt various disguises in a steady onslaught of mistaken-identity comedy.

During World War Two, a group of English troops become cut off from their batallion while behind enemy lines in the western desert. Attacked by a German fighter plane and then caught in a sandstorm, the nine men seek refuge in a deserted tomb. However, they soon cross swords with a group of Italian soldiers in a similar situation. While the Italians lay siege to the British unit, the men plan a night-time counter-attack, but it can only be a matter of time before one side buckles under the strain...

Superior police procedural drama, with a strong cast, from 1956 that portrays solid and patient police work without any of the psychological undertones more prevalent in the 'noir' thrillers of the same period. This film follows a team of British coppers, led by Supt. Tom Halliday (Jack Hawkins), as they try to solve a complex case involving a series of burglaries.

Eccentric Sidney Stratton (Alec Guiness) is a laboratory cleaner in a textile factory, who invents a material that will neither wear out nor become dirty. Initially hailed as a great discovery, Sidney's astonishing invention is suffocated by the management when they realise that if it never wears out, people will only ever have to purchase one suit of clothing.

Charles Crichton directs this Ealing Studios thriller starring Jack Hawkins. When one of the engines on the experimental rocket-propulsion plane he is flying catches fire, test pilot John Mitchell (Hawkins) refuses to obey orders to jettison the aircraft into the Irish Sea.