If nothing else, Young Hyacinth, the forthcoming BBC prequel to the classic Roy Clarke series, Keeping Up Appearances, will give audiences a bit of insight as to how a 19-year-old Hyacinth from humble beginnings turned into an over-bearing, social-climbing snob with a penchant for slimline telephones with automatic redial, Royal Doulton china with hand-painted periwinkles, candlelight suppers. In […]
Read more
It’s opening night of the BBC Showcase in Liverpool, the annual gathering of hundreds of international television buyers here for the opportunity to screen upcoming BBC programming to bring back to their respective countries. This year didn’t open with a laundry list rundown of programs and series ‘in the pipeline’ for people to screen over the […]
Read more
Is there no end to the brilliant comedy news coming out the UK? Already this week, in conjunction with their Landmark Sitcom Season which will celebrate 60 years of British Comedy on the Beeb in 2016, came the announcement concerning 21st century remakes of several classic British comedies including Porridge, Up Pompeii, Are You Being Served?, Good […]
Read more
Unlike American television where broadcast networks have made a living for years producing full-length programs that have centered around bloopers filmed during the actual episode recording, program bloopers for a majority of British telly, be it comedy or drama, have always been few and far between. Having had the great good fortune over the years […]
Read more
Armed with her early theatre training background from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Patricia Routledge launched her career at the Liverpool Playhouse. She spent years, professionally, on stage and in theatre (which included a 1968 ‘Best Actress in a Musical’ Tony Award for her performance in Darling of the Day) in addition to several big screen appearances including To Sir, With […]
Read more
Hyacinth Bucket, played brilliantly by Patricia Routledge, has spent a lifetime in our collective homes over the years insisting her surname is pronounced Bouquet. She is pretty much a pompous social-climbing snob. Unbeknownst to most neighbor residents of Blossom Lane, Hyacinth originally came from a very poor working-class background. Her main mission in life is […]
Read more
Even the most casual Keeping Up Appearances fan of the woman who makes no bones about having a sister whose house has a swimming pool, sauna, and room for a pony, will no doubt ever forget her singing prowess designed to impress next door neighbor, Emmet Hawkesworth. To this day, I’ll never forget interviewing Ms. […]
Read more
At 82, Patricia Routledge, the star of Keeping Up Appearances and Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, has not slowed one bit. Following up her 1995 series-ending role as Hyacinth, then moving on to play the crime-solving Hetty Wainthropp, Ms. Routledge continued a long, storied career in both film and musical theatre, including her most recent role as […]
Read more
As the great Patricia Routledge inches closer to her 83rd birthday on Friday, 17 February, I’m reminded of a point in time in the late 1990’s that we had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interview Ms. Routledge for a salute to British comedy program for broadcast on public television in the States. For weeks before the […]
Read more
One of the great treats of being a British television fan is the fact that, at any given moment in time, you can catch a very familiar name or face from your favorite British comedy or drama series on the theatre stage. Whether it be the ultimate of London’s West End or one of the […]
Read more