Having been one of the ‘chosen ones’ to have been able to see a pre-screening of the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg film, The World’s End, my mind immediately began to wander (no comments, please) as I left the cinema to just how much I love the earlier Channel 4 comedy series, Spaced. Brilliantly conceived and written […]
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Mel Smith, English comedian, writer, film director, producer and actor, best known for his pioneering work on the sketch comedy shows Not the Nine O’Clock News and Alas Smith and Jones has died of a heart attack at the age of 60. Smith and comedy partner, Griff Rhys Jones, founded Talkback in 1981, which grew […]
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For almost 500 years, from 1485 to 1917, he was the faithful manservant whose endless supply of cunning plans never quite elevated him beyond the level of Edmund Blackadder’s rather unhygienic servant. But, last Friday, the same night that Blackadder, the second most popular British sitcom of all-time (according to the 2004 Britain’s Best Sitcom […]
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The IT Crowd, which centers around the ragtag employees of a neglected IT department housed in the basement of Reynholm Industries, is getting the band back together to give the characters a ‘proper’ goodbye. Richard Ayoade (Moss), Chris O’Dowd (Roy), Katherine Parkinson (Jen), and Matt Berry (Douglas Reynholm) will all be back with filming set […]
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Over the course of the normal commissioning of series in the UK, it’s common practice for a new series to be given the go-ahead for a certain number of episodes, somewhere in the neighborhood of 6-8 episodes. In the case of series that have been on for several years, the addition of a Christmas episode […]
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Ever since Hugh Laurie gave up his designation as the most popular Brit on American telly when House ended its eight-year run on Fox this past year, a number of British actors have tried with limited success to crack the American television world. While it has been quite painful over the years to watch repeated […]
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Sadly, this is getting all-too frequent these days. Most recently was the passing of Richard Briers and, now, the passing of the great Frank Thornton at age 92. Known to us all as simply Captain Peacock and, more recently, Truly Truelove in Last of the Summer Wine, Frank Thornton rivaled Richard Briers for who had […]
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With Richard Briers’ untimely passing last month, I’ve been thinking more and more about the brilliance of The Good Life or The Good Neighbors as it was broadcast in the U.S. The 1970’s (gulp!) British situation comedy, which was written by Bob Larbey and John Esmonde, centered around Tom Good (Briers) and his wife/partner-in-crime Barbara […]
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The one bright spot (emphasis on ONE) that has emerged from the excruciatingly long hiatus between the conclusion of series 5 of Doc Martin and the upcoming beginning of filming on series 6 is that Martin Clunes fans on both sides of the Atlantic have gotten to experience a bit of pre-Doc Martin, Martin Clunes, […]
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As we (im)-patiently await the next Facebook status update from the inhabitants of Downton Abbey, chronicling the devastating events of series 3, episode 4, it time to, yet again, turn our attention to what really sets British actors apart from their American counterparts. As we experienced, first hand, back in 2009 at the Theatre Royal […]
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