Yes Minister…30+ years and still relevant

Max Headroom was created some 20+ years ago and is more relevant today than it was in the 80’s. Similarly, it’s hard to believe that it’s been over 30 years since co-creators, Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn wrote the unbelievably brilliant British comedy, Yes Minister, that is also more relevant today than when it originated. […]

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Monty Python – early home video discovered

You just think programs like America’s Funniest Home Videos or full-blown channels such as YouTube are new and original ideas. Not so, say Dan Cruickshank and Kirsty Wark, who are out to prove that shooting a video and showing it off to the public isn’t a new thing. Beginning this week, on BBC Two, Home Movie […]

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High praise for The Rev

Getting press and any accompanying critical acclaim is not always the recipe for a successful British comedy series, but in the case of one of the newest in the BBC Two line-up, The Rev, it certainly doesn’t hurt when you can also count on the someone “higher up” amongst your fan base. Dr. Rowan Williams, […]

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A British comedy world w/out Python?

One can only imagine, if even only for a brief moment, what our available British comedy viewing choices would be today had the BBC acted on their early feelings regarding Monty Python’s Flying Circus. According to this article in theTelegraph, documents obtained last year under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that BBC management found […]

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Dawn French on her newest project, Roger and Val Have Just Got In

He’s a botanist at a local garden centre. She’s a food technology teacher. The he is Alfred Molina and the she is Dawn French. The two star in the newest addition to the BBC Two british comedy line-up beginning this coming Friday titled Roger and Val Have Just Got In. It’s not “laugh out loud […]

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Sherlock vs. Doctor Who – you decide

Recently on BBC Newsnight, Steven Moffat talked about two characters he’s spent a lot of time with over the past year, Sherlock and Doctor Who. Moffat called Sherlock Holmes, not the traveling Time Lord, the “single best fictional character ever created.” In describing the difference between the two characters, Moffat said: “They’re also sort of opposites. I […]

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Roy Clarke discusses the last of Last of the Summer Wine

As we reported here earlier this summer, the world’s longest running situation comedy on television, Last of the Summer Wine, is coming to a close in the UK this coming Sunday, 1 August. Transmission is scheduled to begin on many U.S. public television stations as early as November 2010. How does one begin to bring to […]

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165 Eaton Place in the 21st Century

“This is not a remake but a completely new version, set in a different era with a whole new cast of characters.” That quote, in itself, from Piers Wenger, head of drama at  BBC Wales, makes me really wish it was 2011 already when the new Upstairs Downstairs comes to PBS’ Masterpiece series to celebrate their […]

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Sherlock in the 21st Century

Not since we all witnessed the end of the David Tennant era and beginning of the Matt Smith era on Doctor Who has there been as much viewer anticipation for a series premiering in the UK. Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Hawking, Small Island) and Martin Freeman (The Office, Hitchhikers Guide). It premiered this past Sunday on […]

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