Poldark’s Phil Davis to front new comedy pilot, ‘Static’

Full disclosure. I’m a big Phil Davis fan. Over his career, viewers have been treated to Davis as the mean money lender in the BBC adaptation of Bleak House, the human incarnation of the devil on Being Human, a murderous cab driver in the first episode of Sherlock, a crime family solicitor in Silk and, more recently, his portrayal as […]

Read more

DCI Banks calling it a day after five series

Sadly, after six years and five overly intense series of DCI Banks, we must say goodbye to Stephen Tompkinson, Caroline Catz, Andrea Lowe and Jack Deam and their so brilliantly created characters of DCI Alan Banks, DI Helen Morton, DS Annie Cabot and DS Ken Blackstone. Based on Peter Robinson’s crime novels, the DCI Banks series was the […]

Read more

R.I.P. Terry Pratchett — creator of ‘Discworld’ dies at 66.

R.I.P. Terry Pratchett — Discworld has stopped spinning…. As sentiments on Twitter have poured in from around the world, the above tweet, which easily came in under the 140-character limit, seemed to say it all. The literary world is a much lonelier place today as Terry Pratchett, the mind palace that created the brilliant Discworld series […]

Read more

It’s a steamier ‘Poldark’ coming to PBS and BBC One

In 1975, Robin Ellis captivated audiences on both sides of the pond with his brilliant portrayal of the dashing British officer, Captain Ross Poldark in Poldark. Now, 40 years later, the BBC and PBS are giving the series a bit of a steamier 21st century reboot with a new television adaptation based on the novels of […]

Read more

Sans powdered wigs, BBC's Silk headed for U.S. remake on ABC

This just in…a U.S. television broadcast network will try, yet again, to re-invent the wheel and adapt a British drama for American television. Surprise! ABC will re-make Peter Moffat’s British legal drama, Silk, the Bafta-nominated BBC drama which revolved around the lives of barristers at Shoe Lane chambers, and the lengths they went to to […]

Read more

Behind-the-scenes with 'Mapp and Lucia' from BBC

Three E.F. Benson novels about upper-middle-class British people in the 1920s and 1930s, vying for social prestige and “one-upmanship” in an atmosphere of extreme cultural snobbery, known simply as Mapp and Lucia, has begun filming at Lamb House in Rye, East Sussex, the original inspiration for Benson’s fictional seaside town of Tilling. Based on Benson’s […]

Read more

Sherlock actress moving from Baker Street to Ripper Street…temporarily.

In keeping with the tradition of the entire cast of Sherlock actors making maximum use of their downtime during the maddening but understandable hiatus between series, Louise Brealey will soon be following in the footsteps of series stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Andrew Scott, Mark Gatiss, Una Stubbs and Rupert Graves by taking on other […]

Read more

'Ripper Street' pays tribute to The Doctor

Reason #50 (yes, I’m up to 50 and counting) why I absolutely love British television and think it is the best television on Planet Earth. Ok, # 1 & #2 have to be the writing and the acting (or acting and writing depending on the day), but when it comes to the actual production, besides […]

Read more

Whitechapel returns to ITV tonight for series 4

ITV’s Whitechapel, stars Rupert Penry-Jones and Phil Davis, detectives in London’s Whitechapel district who deal with murders which replicate historical crimes. Joined by Steve Pemberton, the popular drama returns to ITV this Wednesday at 9pm with six new episodes, told in three two-part stories. Personally, I have to admit that it really took me bit […]

Read more