'Joe's Palace' and 'Capturing Mar (Screen and Cinema)

Two major new screenplays by the award-winning Stephen Poliakoff
made for the BBC and HBO Films and due to be broadcast in November
2007. A stellar cast led by Michael Gambon and Dame Maggie Smith
feature in these exquisite, major new films that are linked by a grand
house and memories of the past.

In Joe's Palace, the first of two screenplays, Stephen
Poliakoff explores the relationship between a reclusive billionaire
(played by Michael Gambon), and the teenage boy he employs to take care
of a grand house. This is a lavishly shot contemporary film about
loneliness and loss. In Capturing Mary, the companion film for
BBC2 set in the same exquisite empty house, Poliakoff takes his
characters into a dark and terrifying exploration of the past and its
power to capture and destroy a person's life. Dame Maggie Smith plays
the lead role.

Included also is A Real Summer, a glorious companion drama to Capturing Mary
charting the development of an unexpected friendship between a young
aristocratic woman and Mary before she enters the dangerous world of Mr
Graham's house.