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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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. […]
Read more
Even though they had me at ‘starring Patrick Stewart’, the fact that the new Starz scripted comedy series, Blunt Talk, comes from the mind palace of series creator Jonathan Ames (Bored to Death), who will also executive produce along with Seth MacFarlane, Tristram Shapeero and Stephanie Davis, is all the more reason to check it […]
Read more
I may be in the minority here, but one of my most favorite British situation comedies of all-time is Open All Hours. Written by Roy Clarke (Last of the Summer Wine, Keeping Up Appearances) and starring comedy legends Ronnie Barker and David Jason, Open All Hours ‘premiered’ in 1973 as a last-minute addition to Barker’s comedy anthology series, Seven […]
Read more
More often than not, fortunately or unfortunately, the story lines of the brilliant British situation comedy, W1A, are far too close to reality and, in some cases, frighteningly accurate. For instance, how many out there have suffered through meetings like this… In the case of W1A, the comedy which stars Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville as BBC […]
Read more
The telecast raised over £78 million pushing the overall 30-year fundraising efforts of Comic Relief to a massive £1 billion and some change.
Read more