Graham Linehan, the genius behind the likes of The IT Crowd, Black Books, Father Ted and, more recently, Count Arthur Strong has done it again. While the rest of Planet Earth continues to endlessly debate the merits or shortcomings of the series finales of The Sopranos, Dexter and Breaking Bad while speculating on the Spring […]
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Mel Smith, English comedian, writer, film director, producer and actor, best known for his pioneering work on the sketch comedy shows Not the Nine O’Clock News and Alas Smith and Jones has died of a heart attack at the age of 60. Smith and comedy partner, Griff Rhys Jones, founded Talkback in 1981, which grew […]
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The IT Crowd, which centers around the ragtag employees of a neglected IT department housed in the basement of Reynholm Industries, is getting the band back together to give the characters a ‘proper’ goodbye. Richard Ayoade (Moss), Chris O’Dowd (Roy), Katherine Parkinson (Jen), and Matt Berry (Douglas Reynholm) will all be back with filming set […]
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Having written both Father Ted and Black Books, it’s no wonder that the Twitter universe hangs on every tweet that creator/writer/director of the IT Crowd creator, Graham Linehan, can conjure up in 140 characters or less. There was little hope back in October of 2011 of there being a fifth season of the brilliant series […]
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Today’s From the Vault segment pays tribute to those having to work retail on Black Friday. The Friday after Thanksgiving has long been hailed as the busiest shopping day of the year in America. Only in the United States can the aptly named Black Friday start at 8:00pm pm Thursday. In recent years, the competition […]
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British situation comedy series come in all shapes and sizes. There are those that litter the airwave alleys which should have been commissioned for another season but weren’t for some unexplained reason (insert Whites, Dirk Gently and Grass here), there are those that have hung around too long (insert Two Pints of Lager and a […]
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Is it bad to admit publicly that I want to hang out with Bernard Black, Manny Bianco and Fran Katzenjammer? Too late now, I guess. But, as the central figures of the Black Books series co-created by Dylan Moran and Graham Linehan, their general disdain for the outside world is oddly intriguing with Black, quite […]
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When the word came down on Friday that the brilliant Graham Linehan comedy, IT Crowd, was coming to an end after four seasons, my first thought was to take the sage advice of either Roy Trenneman (Chris O’Dowd) or Maurice Moss (Richard Ayoade) and try turning it off and on again. Unfortunately, the message was […]
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If you remember my issues yesterday with Prime Suspect, we have more for everyone on the ‘why are they re-doing this series‘ front, with the British comedy, Free Agents. Seems as though the genius of the original Channel 4 series from the producers of Spaced and Black Books which starred Stephen Mangan (Green Wing, Dirk […]
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They just don’t mix. Where would we be if the world of British comedy adhered to the real world high expectations of good customer service? Think about it. No Fawlty Towers, no Black Books and no League of Gentlemen. According to customer service gurus, Michel Roux and Mary Portas, the aforementioned British comedy series come […]
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