There’s something about British comedy over the course of time that makes you wonder how two people could ever hook-up much less cross paths. You know, those like Basil and Sybil Fawlty who are constantly at each others throats but you get the sense that neither of them would survive without the other. The same […]
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You’d think, given the recent headline grabbing events surrounding the filming of Top Gear, there would be a memo circulating with instructions around BBC Broadcasting House that Jeremy Clarkson’s name mustn’t be mentioned at the BBC. When that happens, life and art will officially blur as evidenced in the case of the new series of the […]
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Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway has been a staple of British Television for over 15 years. Returning in 2016 for their 13th series, the live variety show is hosted by Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, a.k.a. Ant & Dec. Their shows have not only been a fixture on British television since 1994 when they […]
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The ITV comedy satire series, Newzoids, is no Spitting Image but, then again, not much is. Not to say, in any way, that it’s not funny. It’s just a different show and a different time. While it will, undoubtedly, suffer from endless comparisons, Newzoids deserves a chance given the fact that satire is much harder in […]
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Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise had a professional partnership that lasted for more than 4 decades, from 1941 until Eric Morcambe’s death in 1984. One of the most famous Morecambe and Wise routines from their annual Christmas show was their comic parody of Gene Kelly’s ‘Singing in the Rain’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3GqaQkhuYw This week’s Tellyspotting #TBT happens […]
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Ever have ‘one of those days’? I’m guessing the answer might just be yes when you factor in ‘one of those days’ probably had an April 15 date attached to it in years past. You know, Tax Day. The day that, before the brilliant invention of e-filing, you sat in what seemed to be an endless […]
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David Mitchell has signed on to star as William Shakespeare in a BBC sitcom pilot by Ben Elton (Blackadder, The Thin Blue Line). Focusing on the playwright’s life before he became famous, the storyline for Upstart Crow, according to the BBC, revolves around a purloined play, a wise wife, a stroppy teen and the underhand […]
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Britain’s Royal Mail rolled out a long-overdue collection of stamps celebrating British comedy greats on Wednesday, April 1. Thankfully, this was no April Fools Day joke. The brilliant set features British comedy greats from the 1950s to the modern day, from Norman Wisdom and Morecambe and Wise to Spike Milligan and Victoria Wood. Stamps featuring […]
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With the mysterious script chronicled in the book, Fawlty Towers – A Worshiper’s Companion, a lost, never-before-broadcast 13th episode of the classic British comedy, Fawlty Towers, has been discovered. Swedish author, Lars Holger Holm, admits that he viewed the mysterious 13th episode in 1999 in the London flat of an individual from the Editorial Department who worked […]
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Even though it was 1975, it seems like it was just yesterday that I was standing in line at the Esquire Theatre in Dallas for the ‘world premiere’ of this unknown film called Monty Python and the Holy Grail. After about an hour in line, they handed each of us coconuts and moved us inside. […]
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