Red Nose Day has to be the single most brilliant example known to man and/or woman of how an entire country demonstrates the ability to rally around a charitable cause. To label Red Nose Day in the UK as a cultural phenomenon is doing it an injustice. It’s an institution. The entire country gets involved. The entire British […]
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By the time you read this, everyone at Tellyspotting hopes you had a safe and happy Burns Night celebration last night. For those in the know, Burns Night falls on 25 January every year with the date chosen to coincide with the Scottish poet’s birthday, who was born on 25 January 1759. For those ‘out of […]
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Filmed in locations across the West Midlands, the most iconic location, Hyacinth and Richard Bucket’s home, was a quiet family home in Coventry before television crews knocked on the door of current owner Rosemary Healey to ultimately set up shop for what was to become Hyacinth’s famous house, along with her neighbor, Elizaben Warden’s home […]
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The adaptation of Henry Fielding’s classic novel The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, long considered to be one of the earliest novels in the English language, tells the story of the title character’s complicated journey to find real love. Delighting readers since 1749, Tom Jones will continue to do just that in this 4-part television […]
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Rowan Atkinson turned 68 on Friday. From this end, all we can do is wish him a very Happy Belated Birthday. All he’s done is give the world the gift of laughter over the years beginning with Not the Nine O’Clock News, then Blackadder, Mr. Bean and, finally, The Thin Blue Line. Stops along the […]
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It’s repetitive…it’s predictable…it continues to be brilliantly funny every year and it’s worthy of an annual mention on Tellyspotting every New Years Eve. On the surface, Dinner for One is a short British cabaret sketch from the 1920s that has become a German New Year’s tradition. Whether or not you understand the cultural significance of this, Dinner […]
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Much like watching It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Story, Tuna Christmas or, as evidenced by a recent admission, Die Hard, one of my annual Christmas traditions is to listen to John Cleese’s adaptation of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas from podcast No. 28. Never mind that there have been endless readings over the years by the likes […]
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What 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 […]
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If it wasn’t the case before, I’m now fully convinced that if you looked up the definition of brilliant in the dictionary, there would simply be a photo of Dame Judi Dench. The Oscar/Tony/BAFTA/Laurence Olivier/Golden Globe/Screen Actors Guild award winner turns 88 years young today and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.
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Watching 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, […]
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