Dust on the Brain

A fresh young beauty becomes an old maid waiting for her suitor to return from the Napoleonic wars. When he returns, clearly disappointed, she disguises herself as her own niece in order to test his loyalty.

In the 1810s, an old maid poses as her own niece in order to teach her onetime beau a lesson.

Lord Loam has modern ideas about his household, he believes in treating his servants as his equals - at least sometimes. His butler, Crichton, still believes that members of the serving class should know their place and be happy there. But when the Loam family are shipwrecked on a desert island with the self-reliant Crichton and lady's maid Tweeny, the class system is put to the test.

Come Back, Africa chronicles the life of Zachariah, a black South African living under the rule of the harsh apartheid government in 1959.

Walter Lee Younger is a young man struggling with his station in life. Sharing a tiny apartment with his wife, son, sister and mother, he seems like an imprisoned man. Until, that is, the family gets an unexpected financial windfall.

In order to get back into the good graces with his wife with whom he has had a misunderstanding, a young chemistry professor concocts a wild story that he is an undercover FBI agent. To help him with his story he enlists the aid of a friend who is a TV writer. The wife swallows the story and the film's climax takes place in the sub-basements of the Empire State Building. The professor and his friend, believing themselves prisoners on an enemy submarine, patriotically try to scuttle the vessel and succeed only in rocking the building.

A disillusioned, angry university graduate comes to terms with his grudge against middle-class life and values.

Charles and Peter have passed their law degree and are looking forward to wooing a few girls in the country. For that, they need a chaperone and persuade their fellow student Ditlev to play Charles's aunt from Brazil. Ditlev has a talent for acting and takes the role very seriously, but when Charles's real aunt turns up, things get complicated.

Seven stories of marital infidelity, told from the women's point of view. A spicy satire of modern manners and mores. Newspaperwoman Sarah relates the separate stories of eight married couples. The husbands are satisfied with their lot, but the wives are not. Sarah describes a situation in which dissatisfied and bored middle-class housewives seek excitement and adventure outside their marital homes and beds.

A British housewife faces up to the harsh realities of the Second World War.

Out of hit ideas and seemingly in the twilight of his career, Broadway producer Russ Ward decides to give up the game. But when Russ lays off his nubile secretary, Ellie Brown, she shocks him with a declaration of love. Inspired, Ward commands playwright MacDonald to rewrite his latest show as a May-December romance starring Brown herself. Ward struggles to make a comeback as his ex-wife, Kathryn, plots to end his new relationship.

Danish comedy from 1958.

The cheerful, traveling musicians Flink and Villy meet sweet music in the form of two girls. Unfortunately, the chrome nut is tone deaf and chases them away. Luck smiles on them, however, because the nearby castle Bullerborg is abandoned. Flink and Villy move in - and get mixed up in a fight between a cunning lawyer, a bankrupt count and a sausage maker family.

Maria grows up in a seedy 1960s working class neighborhood, the daughter of an ambitious emigrant father and soon caught up in her own dangerously one track-minded pursuit of a violinist's career. A rich gallery of highly original characters contribute, for better and for worse, to Maria's coming of age. Based on Kirsten Thorup's critically acclaimed 1982 novel, filmed by Morten Arnfred.

A housewife sits on the stoop of her apartment building in a black neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and discusses all manner of things with her neighbors.

The misadventures of two modern-day Stone Age families, the Flintstones and the Rubbles.

Jonny Briggs centers on the exploits of a young boy, the eponymous hero, his pet dog, Razzle, and his eccentric family members.

In a working-class neighborhood outside Los Angeles, Mike and Peggy raise eight boisterous boys. There are 10 people, three bedrooms, one bathroom and everyone in it for themselves.

Leave It to Beaver is an American television situation comedy about an inquisitive and often naïve boy named Theodore "The Beaver" Cleaver and his adventures at home, in school, and around his suburban neighborhood. The show also starred Barbara Billingsley and Hugh Beaumont as Beaver's parents, June and Ward Cleaver, and Tony Dow as Beaver's brother Wally. The show has attained an iconic status in the US, with the Cleavers exemplifying the idealized suburban family of the mid-20th century.

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from 1959 to 1963. The series and several episode scripts were adapted from a 1951 collection of short stories of the same name, written by Max Shulman, who had also written a feature film adaptation of his short stories for MGM in 1953, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis. The series revolved around the life of teenager/young adult Dobie Gillis, who, along with his best friend, beatnik Maynard G. Krebs, struggles against the forces of his life - high school, the military, college, and his parents - as he aspires to attain both wealth and dates with girls. The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was produced by Martin Manulis Productions in association with 20th Century Fox Television. Creator Shulman also wrote the theme song in collaboration with Lionel Newman.

Open All Hours is a BBC sitcom written by Roy Clarke and starring Ronnie Barker as a miserly shop keeper and David Jason as his put-upon nephew who works as his errand boy.

Surfside 6 was an ABC television series which aired from 1960 to 1962. The show centered on a Miami Beach detective agency set on a houseboat and featured Troy Donahue as Sandy Winfield II; Van Williams as Kenny Madison; and Lee Patterson as Dave Thorne. Diane McBain co-starred as socialite Daphne Dutton, whose yacht was berthed next to their houseboat. Margarita Sierra also had a supporting role as Cha Cha O'Brien, an entertainer who worked at The Boom Boom Room, a popular Miami Beach hangout at the Fontainebleau Hotel, directly across the street from Surfside 6. Surfside 6 was in fact a real address in Miami Beach, where an unrelated houseboat was moored at the time; it can also be seen in the sweeping aerial establishing shot of the Fontainebleu in 1964's Goldfinger.

Upstairs: the wealthy, aristocratic Bellamys. Downstairs: their loyal and lively servants. For nearly 30 years, they share a fashionable townhouse at 165 Eaton Place in London’s posh Belgravia neighborhood, surviving social change, political upheaval, scandals, and the horrors of the First World War.

The misadventures of a cantankerous junk dealer and his frustrated son.

A bus driver and his sewer worker friend struggle to strike it rich while their wives look on with weary patience. One of the most influential situation comedy television series in American history.

Center of the Universe is a television series on CBS, which ran from October 27, 2004, until January 19, 2005. The sitcom was canceled after just 10 episodes aired. It was set in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma. John Goodman starred as John Barnett, a good-natured and successful operator of a security company. The series involved the dependency of his entire family on John for everything -- money, jobs, housing, and personal guidance in every decision. Tagline: "The world doesn't revolve around John...but his family does." A total of 15 episodes were produced.

Instead of spending her golden years lying down, the indomitable Hetty Wainthropp found her calling late in life. Combining common sense, her husband, and her pocketbook, this senior sleuth takes on all the cases the police deem too minor.

The Edgar Wallace Mysteries was a British second-feature film series, produced at Merton Park Studios for Anglo-Amalgamated. There were 46 films in the series, made between 1960 and 1965. The films were loose adaptations of Edgar Wallace's books and stories. Very few used his original titles, and there was no attempt to set them in the period in which Wallace wrote, probably to obviate the need for elaborate costumes and sets. A 1962 article in Scene magazine quotes £22,000 as the budget for an episode then in production.

Join Alan Watts in season one of On Eastern Wisdom & Modern Life. His inaugural season introduces and begins to break down our understanding of what is and what could be.