Following a brief stay in London on Day 1 of KERA’s All Creatures Tour of England where I do admit I was tempted, albeit briefly, to join the Gorilla Circus’ Flying Trapeze School in Hyde Park, we boarded the Transcendent Travel coach on Tuesday and headed to the Historic Dockyard in Chatham, the main filming location […]
Read more
Marking the 40th anniversary of one of the greats of British comedy, Royal Mail has released a collection of 12 special stamps celebrating the brilliance of Blackadder. Eight of the stamps will feature some of the series’ most classic moments with four being reserved to track the evolution of Edmund Blackadder from series 1 through Blackadder Goes […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
Rowan Atkinson, English actor, comedian, and screenwriter turns 65 today. While best known to audiences worldwide for his work on the sitcoms Blackadder and Mr. Bean and, more recently, for his stellar performance in Maigret, I first stumbled upon Atkinson’s brilliant talent in the BBC2 sketch comedy series, Not the Nine O’Clock News.
Read more
Britain’s Royal Mail rolled out a long-overdue collection of stamps celebrating British comedy greats on Wednesday, April 1. Thankfully, this was no April Fools Day joke. The brilliant set features British comedy greats from the 1950s to the modern day, from Norman Wisdom and Morecambe and Wise to Spike Milligan and Victoria Wood. Stamps featuring […]
Read more
This is a long one folks so bear with me…. After almost three years of tellyspotting, I continue to have a thought regarding a genre that I’m particularly fond of….British situation comedy. Having grown up on the likes of such classics as Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Good Neighbors, To the Manor Born, Keeping Up Appearances, […]
Read more
As comedy duos in the world of British comedy go, historically, most U.S. viewers are only familiar with the more recent juggernauts of Fry and Laurie or French and Saunders. As is particularly the case in the UK, comedy duos are not unfamiliar to U.S. audiences given the success of Martin & Lewis, Laurel & […]
Read more
Helen Mirren completes British invasion of SNL Following in the footsteps of her Arthur co-star, Russell Brand, Dame Helen Mirren will host this coming Saturday’s edition of Saturday Night Live on NBC. Mirren’s hosting stint of the late-night comedy show will come the night after the premiere of the release of the re-make of the Dudley Moore […]
Read more
It may be Oscar time, but if you’re really interested in a few classic British comedy films, head over to the local video store (Premiere Video on Mockingbird Lane in Dallas immediately comes to mind as being the place to get these) and spend some quality screen time before Oscar Sunday. Bedazzled (1979) with Dudley […]
Read more
Just another short rant about why there is no need to create American versions of British comedies that were close to perfection the first time around. This holds true virtually 100% of the time, whether it be for the big or small screen. All I need to do is utter the words of Death at […]
Read more