Young Hyacinth premiered last week as part of the BBC’s Landmark Sitcom Season along with other ‘tip-of-the-hat’ specials including Goodnight Sweetheart, Porridge and Are You Being Served?. Having now had the opportunity to be able to screen all of them, I thought the Keeping Up Appearances prequel starring Kerry Howard worked exceptionally well. Even though the one-off was brilliantly written by […]
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Buried smack dab in the middle of the current sitcom reboot/remake/prequel overload comes a really promising new comedy pilot offering airing tonight at 10p on BBC2. Motherland, starring Anna Maxwell-Martin (Bletchley Circle, Death Comes to Pemberley, And Then There Were None), Lucy Punch (Doc Martin, Hot Fuzz), Diane Morgan (Mock the Week, Mount Pleasant) and Paul Ready […]
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As Poldark entered collective mind palaces of UK viewers last night with the premiere of series 2, American audiences continue to brace themselves for what’s next for Captain Ross, Demelza and the gang in Cornwall. Over the past few weeks, we’ve done our best to prepare everyone for the greatness that is about to grace our small screens beginning […]
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Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Beginning in 2016, we’ll be having a ‘Christie for Christmas’ holiday season for the foreseeable future. Given the audience response following last Christmas’ small screen adaptation of the Agatha Christie classic, And Then There Were None starring Aidan Turner (Being Human, Poldark) and the earlier re-do of Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence detective novels, Partners […]
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It appears that the ‘perfect storm’ we all thought it would take to get another comedy vehicle for John Cleese might be on the horizon. First, earlier this week, it was revealed that John Cleese’s fellow Monty Python member Eric Idle is to return to the Beeb this Winter. He will star in a new Christmas comedy […]
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Sunday night on BBC1, as part of the channel’s Landmark Sitcom Season, it’s Are You Being Served, Again”… again. This time, however, it’s 1988 but we’re not on a farm of any kind. Grace Brothers is re-opening its doors and Young Mr Grace is determined to drag the flagship department store into, well 1988, but he has a […]
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Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister co-creator Sir Antony Jay has died aged 86. The broadcaster, who (with Jonathan Lynn) created the classic 1980s political TV series starring Paul Eddington and Sir Nigel Hawthorne, passed away earlier this week. His representative said: “Sir Antony Jay CVO CBE died peacefully on Sunday evening after a long illness. He […]
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After hearing about the plans for the forthcoming ‘BBC Sitcom Season’ for what seems like an eternity, we now finally get to see some video for not only the remakes of what set in motion what has become a 60-year history of comedy on the Beeb but some of the channel’s new offerings as well. […]
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Reason #I’ve lost track to be in the UK by this Christmas. Why this Christmans? Well, to start with, BBC1 is showing a two-part adaptation of Agatha Christie’s tale of love and murder in 1920s London, The Witness for the Prosecution, starring Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City), Toby Jones and Andrea Riseborough. The original text is […]
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Fawlty Towers, the quintessential British sitcom and, perhaps, the best all-around television sitcom of all-time, is headed down under courtesy of series co-creator/writer, John Cleese. Uneasy about the reception the show might get from UK audiences and critics, more than 40 years after the original was aired on the BBC, Cleese has chosen an all-Australian cast for the […]
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