Aside from John Cleese and Ricky Gervais, you can probably count on one hand when the star of a British sitcom knows when enough is enough and gets to be the one that actually pulls the plug on their own show. Unfortunately, for show creators, writers and stars, in most cases, they usually find out […]
Read more
This just in…a U.S. television broadcast network will try, yet again, to re-invent the wheel and adapt a British drama for American television. Surprise! ABC will re-make Peter Moffat’s British legal drama, Silk, the Bafta-nominated BBC drama which revolved around the lives of barristers at Shoe Lane chambers, and the lengths they went to to […]
Read more
The BBC has just launched an unbelievably cool searchable online archive where you can browse the listings from every copy of the Radio Times ever published, from 1923-2009 (in case your wondering, that’s 4,469 separate editions and 350,622 pages covering 4,423,653 individual programs. Imagine, 86 years of TV and radio history at the touch of a button.
Read more
“As soon as you decide it’s too complicated for the viewer or history is an inconvenient shape, you fall into a cascade of errors which ends in nonsense”, author Hilary Mantel said to the audience at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. Referring to her novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies and their upcoming BBC adaptations, Mantel stressed the importance of not under-estimating the intelligence of her readers and audience, reports Radio Times. “As soon as you decide this is too complicated for the viewer or history is an inconvenient shape – ‘I’ll just tidy it up’ – you fall into a cascade of errors which ends in nonsense”, citing Showtime’s The Tudors as the perfect example of how simply combining history and drama does not always make for good telly.
Read more
It was drama overload this past week in New Orleans at the BBC’s annual Syndication Showcase (insert how much you feel sorry for me being in New Orleans for three days screening brilliant telly here). I say drama overload in the nicest possible sense. Seems as though ever since that fateful day in January 2011 […]
Read more
Ian Fletcher, the Beeb’s Head of Values and chair of its Way Ahead Task Force, will roam the halls of the BBC for a bit longer as a second series of W1A has been commissioned but the BBC. “I am very happy to have the cameras back,” said the fictional Fletcher (played by Downton Abbey‘s […]
Read more
The big-screen adaptation of the classic BBC wartime comedy, Dad’s Army, is drawing some of the biggest names (outside of Benedict Cumberbatch) together as they begin to assemble the cast. The feature film treatment of the Jimmy Perry, David Croft iconic British comedy has landed one of the greats with the announcement that Bill Nighy, […]
Read more
Three years removed from his brilliant portrayal of a pain medication-dependent, unconventional, misanthropic medical genius, Dr. Gregory House, Hugh Laurie is returning to the small screen to star in the BBC adaptation of the John le Carre novel, The Night Manager. Laurie’s co-star, Tom Hiddleston, is coming off his portrayal of country western singer Hank Williams in I Saw the Light.
Read more
At long last, The Paradise is set for a series 2 return tonight on PBS’ Masterpiece Classic series. While the doors have been shuttered since series 1 came to a close almost a year ago in November 2013, fans of the BBC drama series have been wondering whether or not the second series would make […]
Read more
Filming for the second cycle of Shakespeare’s history plays airing on BBC2 and PBS in America under the Hollow Crown is now underway. As with the first set of programs, this years follow-up sports quite the line-up that plays out like a who’s who of British actors who will lend their talents and star in […]
Read more