• Remembering John Howard Davies, David Croft and Trevor Bannister

    While wishing everyone a Happy New Year and prosperous 2012, I wanted to remember some ‘friends’ the world of comedy lost in 2011. Over the past several years, those of us involved in the production of a number of British comedy retrospective specials for PBS have had the incredible good fortune to spend quality time […]

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  • How Fawlty Towers almost never opened its doors

    This gem comes from Shaun Usher over at Letters of Note, a Manchester site dedicated to the seeking out fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos. To the British comedy world, there is none more ‘fascinating’ that this accompanying 1974 memo graphic supplied by Sam Ward. While we knew of this story through several interviews […]

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  • Scattershooting on Wallander III, Dark Shadows and more….

    Wallander III in production From the watchful eye of tellyspotting reader, Patty Winter, comes a report of Sir Kenneth being spotted filming scenes for an upcoming episode of Wallander for series III, entitled “Dogs of Riga”, at the Riga Centra Market in Latvia, along with co-star Ingeborga Dapkunaite. Wallander, the BBC mini-series stars the greatness […]

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  • British sitcoms salute the labor force

    Since the beginning of time, well, at least since 1946 when Pinwright’s Progress premiered on the BBC, the British sitcom has always saluted the labor force. After Pinwright’s Progress, the evolution of how the situation comedy dealt with the workforce really took off. Up next in the mid-50’s was Hancock’s Half Hour where Tony Hancock seemed […]

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  • Czech Republic Olympic team courts unlikely spokesperson

    And Now for Something Completely Different Touting his Olympic experience, former Monty Python and Fawlty Towers star, John Cleese, finds himself in the Czech Republic this week where he will become the face of the Czech Republic Olympic Team in all advertising leading up to the London 2012 games. Cleese, who says that the Czech […]

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  • Tellyspotting 2.0

    Over the last couple of days, we’ve experienced a phenomenal increase in traffic from around the world. As a matter of fact, Friday, 29 April, was by far the highest traffic day ever since the beginning thanks, in large part, to a couple of minor events going on like the Royal Wedding and the return […]

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  • Bring Back Whites campaign gathering steam

    Full disclosure upfront. I have only seen two episodes from the first (and only) season of the BBC situation comedy, Whites, starring Alan Davies as an executive chef at a country house hotel that has “past his sell-by date”. That said, I feel qualified to comment on the current Bring Back Whites campaign as this […]

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  • Bye, Bye, Brighton….Hello, Behind the Britcoms on PBS

    With 100’s of hours of screening of the best of the best on television anywhere, bar none, we say farewell to Brighton and the 2011 BBC Showcase with pages and pages of notes on what, hopefully, will be coming your way in the United States in the not too distant future. As you may remember […]

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  • Monday scattershooting….Paul the alien, Ricky Gervais, Bond23 and more….

    Meet Paul, the 21st century E.T., premiering tonight Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the genius minds behind Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, star as two sci-fi geeks whose pilgrimage takes them to America’s UFO heartland, where they meet ‘Paul‘, an alien who alters their universe forever. Let’s just say, this isn’t your parents E.T. The film premieres tonight in […]

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