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The Brittas Empire
''The Brittas Empire'' is a British sitcom created and originally written by Andrew Norriss and Richard Fegen. Chris Barrie played titular character Gordon Brittas, the well-intended but hugely incompetent manager of the fictional Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre. The show ran for seven series and 52 episodes – including two Christmas specials – from 1991 to 1997 on BBC1. Creators Norriss and Fegen co-wrote the first five series. The series peaked at 10 million viewers. In 2022, the series was described by Daily Mirror as "fondly-remembered". ''The Brittas Empire'' enjoyed a long and successful run throughout the 1990s, and gained large mainstream audiences. In 2004 the show came 47th on the BBC's ''Britain's Best Sitcom'' poll, and all series have been released on DVD both individually as series and as a complete boxset. ''Best of the Britcoms'' noted the series has been hailed as "the Fawlty Towers of the 1990s" due to its "fast-paced, outrageous omedyfull of inventive ga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Comedy
Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss. Writers and comedians often use it as a tool for exploring vulgar issues by provoking discomfort, serious thought, and amusement for their audience. Thus, in fiction, for example, the term ''black comedy'' can also refer to a genre in which dark humor is a core component. Popular themes of the genre include death, crime, poverty, suicide, war, violence, terrorism, discrimination, disease, racism, sexism, and human sexuality. Black comedy differs from both blue comedy—which focuses more on crude topics such as nudity, sex, and Body fluids—and from straightforward obscenity. Whereas the term ''black comedy'' is a relatively broad term covering humor relating to many serious subjects, ''gallows humor'' tends to be used more speci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Britain's Best Sitcom
''Britain's Best Sitcom'' was a BBC media campaign in which television viewers were asked to decide the best British situation comedy. Viewers could vote via telephone, SMS, or BBC Online. This first round of voting was conducted in 2003, after which the BBC published a list of the top 100 selections. From this list, they produced a 12-episode television series broadcast by BBC Two from January through to March 2004. The series was a retrospective that examined the history and qualities of the contending programmes. In the first episode, Jonathan Ross summarised the progress of the poll and presented video clips from the 50 sitcoms that received the most votes. Each of the next ten weekly episodes, one hour in length, focused on one sitcom. In each episode, a different celebrity presenter advocated a particular sitcom, delivering 20 reasons why it deserved viewers' votes. The sitcom's writers and actors, as well as celebrity viewers, also shared their own perspectives and memo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ian Davidson (scriptwriter)
Ian Davidson is a British scriptwriter who also acted, directed and produced in television and the theatre from the 1960s. After performing and writing with Michael Palin and Terry Jones at Oxford University - his first BBC writing credit was for ''That Was the Week That Was'' in 1963 - he became an actor at The Second City in Chicago. Returning to the UK, he worked for Ned Sherrin (as a film director) and David Frost, and then began a lifelong association with Barry Humphries as a writer and director. He appears, briefly, in many of the ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'' episodes - notably as a Dead Indian On a Pile of Dung, and as a news reporter who interrupts a sketch to say that it's his first time appearing on television. He was Script Editor of ''The Two Ronnies'' from 1978 to 1983 and with Peter Vincent wrote seven series of the sitcom '' Sorry!'' With Vincent he also wrote for Dave Allen, ''The Brittas Empire'' and ''Comrade Dad''. With John Chapman, he wrote ''French Fiel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mike Walling
Mike Walling (8 July 1950 – 2 July 2020) was an English comic actor and screenwriter. Career Walling began his career as an English teacher at Holland Park School in London. In the mid-1970s, while still a teacher, he won a British TV talent contest, New Faces, with a comedy double act called "Mr Carline & Mr Walling." He immediately left teaching and embarked on launching his new career in comedy. When the comedy duo ended their partnership, Walling moved into situation comedy, appearing in several series—"Just Liz", "Bootle Saddles" and then the highly successful " Brush Strokes". He began starting to get more work as a screenwriter when he teamed up with Tony Millan. The two of them wrote screenplays for a number of different shows, as well as their own series. In the early 1980s Walling teamed up with session bass player Mo Foster for various comedy music projects, with Walling writing the lyrics and Foster writing the music and producing the resulting songs. One of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2point4 Children
''2point4 Children'' is a BBC Television sitcom that was created and written by Andrew Marshall. It follows the lives of the Porters, a seemingly average, working-class London family whose world is frequently turned upside-down by bad luck and bizarre occurrences. The show was originally broadcast on BBC One from 1991 to 1999, and ran for eight series, concluding on 30 December 1999 with the special episode "The Millennium Experience". Lead actor Gary Olsen (who played the father) died from cancer in September 2000. The show is regularly repeated in the UK. In Australia showings are on UKTV. The name of the show comes from the stereotypical average size of a typical nuclear family in the UK. The show regularly picked up audiences of up to 14 million throughout the 1990s, with an average of between 6 and 9 million. The final episode was viewed by 9.03 million people. In 1997 a remake of the show debuted in the Netherlands: ''Kees & Co'' starring Simone Kleinsma. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Smith (television Writer)
Paul Smith (born November 18 1961) is a British television writer who was born and lives in London. Smith's four-part BBC1 drama One Night (executive producer Hilary Salmon) won the Reflet D'Or for Best Drama Series at the 2012 Festival Tous Ecrans as well as making the official selection for FIPA Biarritz. Lead writer on Jam Media/CBBC's pioneering live action/animation series '' ROY'' (RTS Award for Best Children's Drama 2010, two 2011 BAFTA nominations, including Writers' Award), Smith also wrote ten-part CBBC teen drama series '' Desperados'' (Prix Jeunesse 2008), about a junior wheelchair basketball team. He has also written two BBC1 Afternoon Plays – Tea with Betty starring Rosemary Leach as Queen Elizabeth II and ''Death Becomes Him''. His other recent work includes ITV1 comedy drama ''The Complete Guide to Parenting'' starring Peter Davison (British Comedy Guide Editors' Award), the Sunday serial dramatisation of '' Bootleg'' (BAFTA Children's Drama Award) and BBC1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Variety Performance
The ''Royal Variety Performance'' is a televised variety show held annually in the United Kingdom to raise money for the Royal Variety Charity (of which King Charles III is life-patron). It is attended by senior members of the British royal family. The evening's performance is presented as a live variety show, usually from a theatre in London and consists of family entertainment that includes comedy, music, dance, magic and other speciality acts. The ''Royal Variety Performance'' traditionally begins with the entrance of the members of the royal family followed by singing of the national anthem, God Save the King, which was also performed by the participating acts as a traditional end to Royal Variety Performances; with the exception of 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, as a result of which, As If We Never Said Goodbye opened that year's show instead, sung by that year's host, Jason Manford. Background and founding The first performance, on 1 July 1912, was called t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Dwarf
''Red Dwarf'' is a British science fiction comedy franchise created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, which primarily consists of a television sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999, and on Dave (TV channel), Dave since 2009, gaining a cult following. The series follows low-ranking technician Dave Lister, who awakens after being in suspended animation for three million years to find that he is the last living human, and that he is alone on the mining spacecraft ''Red Dwarf''—save for a hologram his deceased bunkmate Arnold Rimmer and "Cat (Red Dwarf), Cat", a life form which evolved from Lister's pregnant cat. As of 2020, the cast includes Chris Barrie as Rimmer, Craig Charles as Lister, Danny John-Jules as Cat (Red Dwarf), Cat, Robert Llewellyn as the sanitation droid Kryten, and Norman Lovett as the ship's computer, Holly (Red Dwarf), Holly. To date, twelve series of the show have aired, (including one miniseries), in addition to a Television film, feature-length s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
