THE classic British sitcom Fawlty Towers is being revived and developed by Castle Rock Television with original series co-writer and star John Cleese and his daughter Camilla Cleese set to write and star. Filmmaker Rob Reiner, Michele Reiner, Matthew George, and Derrick Rossi will executive produce the series. According to early reports, the new FT will explore how the over-the-top, cynical […]
Read moreJust when you thought it might be safe to go back into the water, along comes something that gives you pause to where you might say to yourself….maybe not just yet. In this case, we’re talking the bane of good telly existence, the unscripted reality program. The surprising thing, IMHO, is that with a working […]
Read moreWhat reads right out of the April Fool’s Day playbook of the discovery of a ‘lost 13th episode’ of Fawlty Towers, an honest-to-goodness/legitimate rehearsal script with unshot material has been discovered and has been put up for auction. The rehearsal draft for “The Anniversary” episode features several minutes worth of material that was never filmed, including […]
Read moreWatching Fawlty Towers recently, I got to thinking about all those British actors that had long, successful careers but that, for whatever reason, would be forever known as ‘being in one episode of Fawlty Towers.” I immediately flashed back to the time we had the good fortune to interview Nicky Henson in 2005 for the PBS program, […]
Read moreThe Christmas gift-giving season will get started a bit early this year as over the next few months, a number of PBS stations across the country will be giving viewers an early comedic gift of Happy Birthday Mr. Bean, a celebratory documentary looking back at the thirty years since comedy legend Mr Bean landed on our screens. […]
Read moreIt seems like only yesterday that Dr. Martin Ellingham, the surly and self-centered medic with a rude bedside manner and a phobia of blood, blessed the good folks of Portwenn with his vast medical knowledge by becoming the general practicioner in Portwenn, the the sleepy Cornish village where he had spent childhood holidays with his Aunt Joan […]
Read moreBernard Cribbins, the rather fussy spoon salesman mistaken for a hotel inspector in one episode of Fawlty Towers, has died at the age of 93. **In spite of a brilliant seven decade plus career, Cribbins will be forever known as 'being in the "Hotel Inspectors" episode of Fawlty Towers, which is a testament to the greatness of perhaps the best British comedy of all time but speaks more to Cribbins' brilliant ability to make even a relatively minor role such as Mr. Hutchinson in one episode of Fawlty Towers so memorable.
Read moreMackenzie Crook, the writer, director and star behind the brilliant metal-detecting sitcom The Detectorists, confirmed there will be one last sweep of the English countryside coming from his mind palace which will warrant getting the band back together in the not-too-distant future. The series, which finished after three series in 2017, was not only a very cerebral […]
Read moreA series that played a significant part in shaping my ‘formative years in British telly’ was when I first discovered Monty Python’s Flying Circus. When it first aired in the United States on October 6, 1974, courtesy of my local PBS station, KERA (where I have now worked for a majority of my career in television), it […]
Read moreWith 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 on numerous […]
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