Best movies like The Importance of Being Earnest

A film of the life of the renowned musical composer, playwright, actor, dancer and singer George M. Cohan.

Raffles is an English gentleman with a secret life—he is the notorious jewel thief known as "The Amateur Cracksman." While sailing from India to England accompanied by his friend, Bunny Manners, it is rumored that the infamous cracksman is aboard ship. Raffles warns a lady passenger to keep an eye on her necklace, which is stolen soon afterward. Although a search reveals no evidence, the necklace is returned upon reaching London.

Two young gentlemen living in 1890s England use the same pseudonym ("Ernest") on the sly, which is fine until they both fall in love with women using that name, which leads to a comedy of mistaken identities...

Tennessee Williams’ twentieth century masterpiece Cat on a Hot Tin Roof played a strictly limited season in London’s West End in 2017. Following his smash hit production of A Streetcar Named Desire, Benedict Andrews’ ‘thrilling revival’ (New York Times) stars Sienna Miller alongside, Jack O’Connell and Colm Meaney. On a steamy night in Mississippi, a Southern family gather at their cotton plantation to celebrate Big Daddy’s birthday. The scorching heat is almost as oppressive as the lies they tell. Brick and Maggie dance round the secrets and sexual tensions that threaten to destroy their marriage. With the future of the family at stake, which version of the truth is real – and which will win out?

London, England, November 5th, 1892, Guy Fawkes Night. The famous playwright Oscar Wilde and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas discreetly go to a luxury brothel where the owner, Alfred Taylor, has prepared a surprise for the renowned author: a private and very special performance of his play Salome, banned by the authorities, in which Taylor himself and the peculiar inhabitants of the exclusive establishment will participate.

At the height of his fame, Oscar Wilde angers the Marquis of Queensberry by having what is believed to be a romantic relationship with Queensberry's son Lord Alfred Douglas, who is twenty years Wilde's junior. When Queensberry slanders Wilde, the artist decides to take the matter to court and brings about his own downfall.

Algernon Moncrieff is surprised to discover that his affluent friend -- whom he knows as "Ernest" -- is actually named Jack Worthing. Jack fabricated his alter ego in order to escape his country estate where he takes care of his charge, Cecily Cardew. Cecily believes that Ernest is Jack's wayward brother and is keen on his raffish lifestyle. Algernon, seeing an opportunity, assumes Ernest's identity and sneaks off to woo Cecily.

Early silent version of the Oscar Wilde play.

Lord and Lady Algy separate amicably after he breaks his promise not to gamble again on the horses. When the wife of soap magnate Brabazon Tudway, is courted by Algy's philandering elder brother, Algy tries to help his brother escape Tudway's wrath by hiding Mrs. Tudway in his apartments. Tudway discovers her there ....

Alfie Byrne is a middle-aged bus conductor in Dublin in 1963. He would appear to live a life of quiet desperation: he's gay, but firmly closeted, and his sister is always trying to find him "the right girl". His passion is Oscar Wilde, his hobby is putting on amateur theatre productions in the local church hall. We follow him as he struggles with temptation, friendship, disapproval, and the conservative yet oddly lyrical world of Ireland in the early 1960s.

The travails of a third-rate traveling theatre company and its wardrobe lady / maid who dreams of stepping in as their melodramatic production's (Flaming Women) female lead.

A playboy learns to love, while a virgin learns to live -- a queer romantic comedy set inside the restaurant industry... 'John Apple Jack' brings East and West together to create one sumptuously heart-warming dish. When John discovers his sister's fiance is Jack, his childhood crush, passions ignite and his life spirals out of control... losing his job, his playboy reputation and his underwear, all while rushing to the altar to finally confess his love!

The National Theatre's live theatrical production of Tony Kushner's two-part play 'Angels In America' about New Yorkers grappling with the AIDS crisis during the mid-1980s.

Terror lurks in the old orphanage, beneath a disused London hospital - a Seventeeth Century malevolence, the Plague Doctor, has returned to complete his evil masterpiece

National treasure and Poirot star David Suchet starred as the formidable Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s much loved masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest. Directed by Adrian Noble, (Amadeus, The King’s Speech, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) Wilde’s superb satire on Victorian manners is one of the funniest plays in the English language. Two bachelor friends, the adorable dandy Algernon Moncrieff (Philip Cumbus – regular player at Shakespeare’s Globe) and the utterly reliable John Worthing J.P., (Downton Abbey’s Michael Benz) lead double lives to court the attentions of the exquisitely desirable Gwendolyn Fairfax (Emily Barber) and Cecily Cardew (Imogen Doel). The gallants must then grapple with the riotous consequences of their deceptions, and with the formidable Lady Bracknell.

In An Ideal Husband, an ambitious government minister, Sir Robert Chiltern, is on an assured smooth ascent to the top. Until Mrs Cheveley appears in London with damning proof of his previous financial chicanery, that is.

A young lady who has grown up with her father being a radio DJ, becomes one herself. Falls in love and hosts a 'Romantically Speaking' show.

Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods weaves together many famous fairy tales in an allegorical story of family, love, growing up and the hazy areas between right and wrong. This production was captured by Digital Theatre live at London’s Regent’s Park Open Air theatre and was directed by Timothy Sheader. Into the Woods takes the stories of the Brothers Grimm and gives them a dark and humorous twist. The popular tales of Red Ridinghood, Jack (of Beanstalk fame), Cinderella and Rapunzel are interwoven with that of the Baker and his Wife and their quest to have a child. However this re-telling goes beyond "happily ever after" as the familiar characters find themselves in unfamiliar circumstances and hopes and dreams are questioned and revisited.

Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne are glamorous, rich, reckless…and divorced. Five years later, their love for one another is unexpectedly rekindled when they take adjoining suites of a French hotel while honeymooning with their new spouses. This chance encounter instantly reignites their passion, and they fling themselves headlong into a whirlwind of love and lust once more, without a thought for partners present or turbulences past. This Chichester Festival Theatre production of Noël Coward’s Privates Lives was filmed live at London's Gielgud Theatre.

Doctor Faustus is Christopher Marlowe's most renowned and controversial work. Famous for being the first dramatised version of the Faustus tale, the play depicts the sinister aftermath of Faustus's decision to sell his soul to the Devil's henchman in exchange for power and knowledge. In the first-ever staging of this menacing drama at the Globe Theatre, Matthew Dunster's production features Paul Hilton as the arrogant, power-hungry Faustus and Arthur Darvill as the sardonic Mephistopheles, and includes several impressive magical stunts along the way.

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the National Theatre of Great Britain presents National Theatre: 50 Years on Stage, bringing together the best British actors for a unique evening of unforgettable performances, broadcast live from London to cinemas around the world.

Grace has agreed to marry Sir Harcourt in return for his financial support of her family. At a house party in her father's place, Harcourt's son Charles also falls in love with Grace. When his father appears on the scene, he has to convince him that there is a case of mistaken identity and he is somebody else. Then Lady Gay Spanker, a married woman also visiting at the house, is persuaded by Charles to seduce his father and thus divert his attention from Grace. Much confusion and scheming ensues.

An all-black version of Oscar Wilde's play.

National Theatre Live’s 2010 broadcast of Alan Bennett’s acclaimed play The Habit of Art, with Richard Griffiths, Alex Jennings and Frances de la Tour, returns to cinemas as part of the National Theatre's 50th anniversary celebrations. Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W H Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by, amongst others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station. Alan Bennett’s play is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music. It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion’s spent: ultimately, on the habit of art.

A theatrical troupe from the west end of London loses its leading lady when she goes off to marry a rich young man from the other side of town. The rest of the play deals with the budding romance and trials and tribulations of their love, as well as the changing face of late-19th-century theatre.

Hiram Draper is an all-American self-made man with a profound distaste for everything British. Yet he must travel to London with his family. When Junior falls in love with an aristocratic girl, whose father despises Americans with equal intensity, fireworks are just about to start.

National Theatre Live is an initiative operated by the Royal National Theatre in London, which broadcasts live via satellite, performances of their productions to movie theaters, cinemas and arts centres on the world. The second production, All's Well That Ends Well, showed at a total of around 300 screens, and today, the number of venues that show NT Live productions has grown to around 700.

A star-studded BBC film of Oscar Wilde’s glittering and controversial career before his trial for homosexual crimes and tragic fall from grace. Highlights from Oscar’s brilliant comedies such as The Importance of Being Earnest and stories such as The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Canterville Ghost are adapted and performed by a cast including Freddie Fox, Claire Skinner, Anna Chancellor and James Fleet. Wilde enthusiasts and experts, including Stephen Fry, Wilde’s grandson Merlin Holland and his latest biographers, provide revelatory accounts of how his own life informed his work. His Irish roots, his early career, his marriage and the importance of women as well as men in his life all combine in a complex and compelling characterisation and celebration that adds flesh to the bones of a man who is too often caricatured.

The British ITV channel specially broadcasts Tom Daley's latest documentary, looking back on Daley's training and life in the four years since the last Olympic Games. This is also the first time he and his fiance and Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black have framed a documentary. The two looked back on the process of meeting and falling in love, the ins and outs of Daly's difficult decision to come out, and how he returned to the platform now is all the credit of Lance. The engagement of the two was blessed by the family and the whole team, and all kinds of loving interactions were sweet and touching. And Daley's latest jumping method "Fireworks", which incorporates traditional Russian acrobatics, also appeared in the documentary. Hope to see this different firework at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Hamlet captures the Almeida Theatre's 2017 acclaimed production of William Shakespeare's great play, recorded as-live in its West End transfer on the stage of London's Harold Pinter Theatre. Robert Icke's innovative modern-dress production, featuring Andrew Scott, Juliet Stevenson, Angus Wright and Jessica Brown Findlay, has been widely acclaimed as a dazzlingly intelligent, forcefully contemporary staging. The Evening Standard hailed Andrew Scott's 'career-defining performance... he makes the most famous speeches feel fresh and unpredictable.'

Performing from within the walls of a deconsecrated Manchester church, Kenneth Branagh takes the lead role in this ambitious production of William Shakespeare's tragic tale of ambition and treachery.

On a bitterly cold London evening, schoolteacher Kyra Hollis receives an unexpected visit from her former lover, Tom Sergeant, a successful and charismatic restaurateur whose wife has recently died. As the evening progresses, the two attempt to rekindle their once passionate relationship only to find themselves locked in a dangerous battle of opposing ideologies and mutual desires.

Fierce with a pen and notorious in combat, Cyrano almost has it all - if only he could win the heart of his true love Roxane. There’s just one big problem: he has a nose as huge as his heart. Will a society engulfed by narcissism get the better of Cyrano - or can his mastery of language set Roxane’s world alight?

This 20th anniversary production of Jonathan Harvey's play about two working class teenage boys falling in love on a south east London council estate was captured by Digital Theatre live at the Arts Theatre in London's Leicester Square.

A flat in Ladbroke Grove, West London. 1952. When Hester Collyer is found by her neighbours in the aftermath of a failed suicide attempt, the story of her tempestuous affair with a former RAF pilot and the breakdown of her marriage to a High Court judge begins to emerge. With it comes a portrait of need, loneliness and long-repressed passion. Behind the fragile veneer of post-war civility burns a brutal sense of loss and longing.

The great Arthur Miller confronts the American dream in this dark and passionate tale. In Brooklyn, longshoreman Eddie Carbone welcomes his Sicilian cousins to the land of freedom. But when one of them falls for his beautiful niece, they discover that freedom comes at a price. Eddie’s jealous mistrust exposes a deep, unspeakable secret – one that drives him to commit the ultimate betrayal. The visionary Ivo van Hove directs this stunning production of Miller’s tragic masterpiece.

The ruined aftermath of a bloody civil war. Ruthlessly fighting to survive, the Macbeths are propelled towards the crown by forces of elemental darkness. Shakespeare’s most intense and terrifying tragedy, directed by Rufus Norris, sees Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff return to the National Theatre to play Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

A woman is driven to the unthinkable by her desperate desire to have a child in Simon Stone’s radical production of Lorca’s achingly powerful masterpiece.

Based on Michael Morpurgo's novel and adapted for the stage by Nick Stafford, War Horse takes audiences on an extraordinary journey from the fields of rural Devon to the trenches of First World War France.

A performance of Shakespeare's Richard II broadcast live from the Globe Theatre, London.

This stunning adaptation of Dickens' classic tale was captured live from the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End. Although Great Expectations has been adapted for film on two separate occasions, once by David Lean in 1946 and most recently by Mike Newell, it has never been produced for The West End or Broadway, widely believed to be too difficult to translate to stage. However, this Jo Clifford adaptation has been universally acclaimed as a triumph on its sellout tour of the UK head of its West End debut. In addition to the production, this version include red carpet arrivals from the February 7 premiere and behind the scenes footage exclusively for cinema audiences.

Anthony Sher and Harriet Walter star in a highly-acclaimed screen version of William Shakespeare's classic story of tyranny and ambition. On the stage this Royal Shakespeare Company presentation was universally lauded. Following sell-out seasons at Statford's Swan Theatre and in London, the production played Japan and in the United States, where The New York Times praised director Gregory Doran's interpretation as a "harrowing and disturbingly funny parable for the dawn of the 21st century". To make this compelling screen version, Gregory Doran worked with all of the original cast and filmed at London's Roundhouse. Brilliantly shot by director of photography Ernie Vincze, the production uses the edgy techniques of fly-on-the-wall documentaries. The effect is raw, intimate and strikingly dynamic.

A 2010 broadcast of Hamlet returns to cinemas as part of the NT's 50th anniversary celebrations. Following his celebrated performances at the National Theatre in Burnt by the Sun, The Revenger's Tragedy, Philistines and The Man of Mode, Rory Kinnear plays Hamlet in a dynamic new production of Shakespeare’s complex and profound play about the human condition, directed by Nicholas Hytner. He is joined by Clare Higgins (Gertrude), Patrick Malahide (Claudius), David Calder (Polonius), James Laurenson (Ghost/Player King) and Ruth Negga (Ophelia).

Hardcastle, a man of substance, looks forward yo acquainting his daughter with his old pal's son with a view to marriage. But thanks to playboy Lumpkin, he's mistaken by his prospective son-in-law Marlow for an innkeeper, his daughter for the local barmaid. The good news is, while Marlow can barely speak to a woman of quality he's a charmer with those of a different stamp. And so, as Hardcastle's indignation intensifies, Miss Hardcastle's appreciation for her misguided suitor soars. Misdemeanours multiply, love blossoms, mayhem ensues. One of the great, generous-hearted and ingenious comedies of the English language, Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer offers a celebration of chaos, courtship and the dysfunctional family.

Following the record-breaking success of Coldplay’s Music Of The Spheres Live Broadcast from Argentina to cinemas worldwide last October, the band return to the big screen in this brand new, definitive director's cut of the show, also available in ScreenX, 4DX and 4DX Screen formats. Filmed during Coldplay’s sold out, ten night run at Buenos Aires’ River Plate stadium, this spectacular concert film features remixed sound and stunning visuals captured by BAFTA-winning and Grammy-nominated director Paul Dugdale, including a host of previously-unseen footage.Lights, lasers, fireworks and LED wristbands fill the screen in a concert that The Times has heralded as “the greatest live music show ever”. Alongside classic hits such as Yellow, Fix You, Viva La Vida, My Universe and A Sky Full Of Stars, the film features stellar guest appearances including Jin of BTS with the live debut of his record-breaking single The Astronaut.

Experience the stunning spectacle of Coldplay’s record-breaking Music Of The Spheres world tour at your local cinema with this spectacular worldwide live broadcast of the band’s sold out concert at Buenos Aires’ River Plate stadium directly from Argentina in a stadium bursting with lights, lasers, fireworks and LED wristbands - all of which combine to make Coldplay’s concerts such a joyful and life-affirming experience.

Taped live at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Valery Gergiev conducts this landmark production of Giuseppe Verdi's operatic masterpiece. This opera premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1862, and is performed here in its original St. Petersburg version using reconstructions of the magnificent painted scenery.

Live from the Royal Opera 2008. David McVicar’s powerful 2008 production of Strauss's opera – based on a play by Oscar Wilde – takes the controversial and disturbing film 120 Days of Sodom as its visual reference. The action is set in a debauched palace, which has suggestions of Nazi Germany. Strauss’s ravishing and voluptuous score adds to the sexual alchemy that is conjured by an international cast led by Nadja Michael in the title role. Salome is filmed for the big screen with High Definition cameras and recorded in true surround sound.

A cowboy comes to the aid of a lady rancher threatened by Mexican bandits who believe there is a treasure buried on her land.

Featuring a 40-piece orchestra and international stars of the stage and screen, My Favorite Things: The Rodgers & Hammerstein 80th Anniversary Concert was filmed on 12 December 2023 at London’s newly restored Theatre Royal Drury Lane – the same venue that premiered the original West End productions of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific and The King and I.