As we celebrated the 41st anniversary this past week of Fawlty Towers, I thought it would fun to take a look back at how the greatest situation comedy of all-time made the leap to German broadcaster RTL. The first ever non-English adaptation of the John Cleese/Connie Booth bit of brilliance occurred in 2001 with a pilot set […]
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September 19, 1975 — a day that will live on in history as the day one of the most brilliant situation comedies of all-time debuted on the BBC. Born out of a seemingly uneventful trip to the Torquay Gleneagles Hotel by the original members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers is comedy greatness that has not seen its […]
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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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Every so often, I feel the need to get a weekend dose of the greatest British comedy of all time, Fawlty Towers. Perhaps this is because FT is as close to comedy perfection as there is, even after some 40 years since it was produced. In between, there’s nothing better than a bit of Monty Python and […]
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Fawlty Towers has to be the greatest 12 episodes of comedy ever. The UK version of The Office is a close second (much better, I think, than the American version, but that’s a debate for another day). In 2000, the British Film Institute selected Fawlty Towers as the best British television show. After a year-long poll looking for Britain’s Best Sitcom, the BBC […]
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Hundreds of fans gathered to see British comedian John Cleese open the ‘silly walk’ tunnel, officially known as the Dommel tunnel, in Eindhoven, a city located in the province of North Brabant in the south of the Netherlands, on Monday. The 130 meter long wall of the tunnel boasts a mural of Monty Python’s silly […]
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Sadly, this is no April Fools joke. Ronnie Corbett, the co-star of The Two Ronnies, one of the most successful and long running light entertainment shows on British television, has died at the age of 85. At its peak, over 17 million viewers each week watched the legendary sketch comedy show, which ran from 1971-1987 on […]
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Several years ago, 21-year-old Nathan Feist, a student at Cornell University in New York, succeeded where Basil Fawlty (and, O’Reilly) failed by bringing a semblance of functionality to the most dysfunctional hotel in the seaside town of Torquay on the ‘English Riviera’. Exhibited at the BrickFair, Virginia LEGO convention back in 2014, his intricate LEGO recreation of the famous […]
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Not the Nine O’Clock News, the late 70s/early 80s television sketch comedy series designed as a comedic alternative to the Nine O’Clock News on BBC1, featured satirical sketches on current news stories and popular culture. Produced by John Lloyd (best known for his work on such comedy television programs as Spitting Image, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Blackadder and QI, Not the […]
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The British Film Institute unearthed a valuable piece of television history this week. Two more missing episodes of the cult comedy, At Last the 1948 Show, which was a precursor to Monty Python’s Flying Circus, have been found 48 years after they aired. Named for a joke about how long it took TV commissioners to make a […]
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