The British Film Institute unearthed a valuable piece of television history this week. Two more missing episodes of the cult comedy, At Last the 1948 Show, which was a precursor to Monty Python’s Flying Circus, have been found 48 years after they aired. Named for a joke about how long it took TV commissioners to make a […]
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From 1973 until the mid-80’s, Open All Hours, starring Ronnie Barker and David Jason as the penny-pinching South Yorkshire corner shop proprietor Albert Arkwright and his illegitimate nephew, Granville, sat atop the BBC comedy world for much of its’ existence. Ranking eighth in the 2004 Britain’s Best Sitcom poll, Open All Hours was created and […]
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40 years ago this coming Saturday, the first episode of, arguably, the best comedy series ever to be shown on telly premiered on BBC2. Fawlty Towers has long been said to have been based on the experiences of the Monty Python comedy team staying at the Gleneagles Hotel in the seaside town of Torquay. The idea came from […]
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In the United States, Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement, dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of their country. While the holiday weekend also tends to […]
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Unfortunately, we’ve all heard the endless rumors countless times before. One early idea was to have the next iteration of Blackadder set in the swingin’ 60’s featuring a Dave Clark Five-type band with a drummer by the name of Bald Rick. The most recent addition to the rumor mill that made its way around the Internets a year or so ago […]
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Don’t Panic! Regardless of whether or not Dad’s Army has ever been on your radar, the forthcoming big screen treatment that is set to hit cinemas in February 2016 is well worth a look. The original Jimmy Perry and David Croft’s British comedy followed the escapades of a group of amateur soldiers as they tried […]
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David Nobbs, the creator/writer of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, one of the classic British situation comedies of all-time, has died at the age of 80. Based on a series of novels penned by Nobbs and first broadcast in the late 1970s, the series brilliantly told the story of middle aged, middle manager, Reginald […]
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Brilliance personified in the form of the British comedy hit, Vicious, returns to PBS on Sunday, 23 August. It has been awhile but, at long last, Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Derek Jacobi are back and are as turbulent (and bitchy) as ever. The two ‘Sirs”, who star as Freddie and Stuart, an elderly couple who […]
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There are far more reasons than the law allows for the fact that I continue to believe that British telly is by far superior to its distant cousin from America. Let us, for a moment, forget about the perennial examples of Spooks vs. 24, Fawlty Towers vs. ‘insert any American comedy series here‘ or Doctor Who vs. ‘every science fiction […]
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Ok, so I might be in the midst of a mild case of ‘good old days’ syndrome when it comes to British comedy but there are days that I look at the current comedy output from the UK and long for the days when a new season of As Time Goes By, Keeping Up Appearances, […]
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