Not long after Monty Python’s Flying Circus premiered on KERA-TV in Dallas, one of my earliest memories of watching British comedy on public television was to ‘religiously’ watch Dave Allen at Large. A somewhat non-descript sketch comedy series featuring an intellectually brilliant Irish comedian that sat in a high bar stool with a seemingly bottomless glass of […]
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Figuratively, not literally, it’s been a rough decade for the characters that Ben Miller has played so brilliantly. In Worst Week of My Life, Ben’s character, Howard Steel, made it standard practice to put himself in absolutely dreadful situations and proceed to make things worse by trying to either put things right or explain what […]
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Forty years ago this month, in a scene reminiscent of the Beatles’ first trip to America, four members of the Monty Python comedy troupe landed at Dallas’ Love Field and were mobbed by adoring fans. The troupe had just flown in from LA where Monty Python and the Holy Grail had just been screened for the first time to […]
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As everyone seems to be jumping on the ‘Throw-Back Thursday‘ (a.k.a. #TBT) bandwagon these days, I figured why not Tellyspotting! Every week (on Thursdays, of course), I will try to come up with something that will either be a fun reminder of British television of the past or introduce you to something new that you […]
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My educated guess is that every year for the past 5 years when Downton Abbey comes to a close, you probably wake up the next day with the stark realization that, at best, there are between 6-10 months before we find out what the next bad thing is that will to happen to Bates and […]
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For a bit of a different take on the classic Three Little Pigs story, Sesame Street had to look no further than the House of Cards for their next parody target. The American version with Kevin Spacey, not the brilliant BBC series with Ian Richardson. Given the British focus of Tellyspotting, I find myself a bit […]
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For those of you that may not be familiar with the annual BBC Showcase in Liverpool, this is the annual event put on by BBC Worldwide which showcases what’s coming up on the BBC in the forthcoming year. Approximately 750 TV programmers from around the world are in attendance for 5 days of non-stop, intense […]
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Ironically, as we (as in, Tellyspotting) head to Liverpool today for the 2015 BBC Showcase, news came down that the mind palace creation of Richard Curtis and Lenny Henry back in 1985, Red Nose Day, is coming to America. The U.K.’s #1 fundraiser event which takes over the BBC every two years for a night of […]
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Armed with her early theatre training background from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Patricia Routledge launched her career at the Liverpool Playhouse. She spent years, professionally, on stage and in theatre (which included a 1968 ‘Best Actress in a Musical’ Tony Award for her performance in Darling of the Day) in addition to several big screen appearances including To Sir, With […]
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It may have been 25 years since Rowan Atkinson first gave voice to Mr Bean, but it is pretty clear that the British comic legend still has a great passion for the character that has over the last quarter of a century become one of the most recognized comedy creations on what, we call, Planet […]
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