Fawlty Towers
R.I.P. – Mr. O’Reilly
David Kelly. He was Grandpa Joe Bucket in Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, rode a motorbike naked in Waking Ned Devine, starred alongside Peter O’Toole and Peter Ustinov in the Irish mini-series, Strumpet City, and played a vicar in The Italian Job. The Dublin-born actor possessed a “wicked sense of humor”, according to [...]
Equal time request: The 10 best Dr. Watsons
Hopefully, by now, you have been able to select your favorite Sherlock Holmes of all-time. We all know who you selected so, to be clear, you’re in good company if you selected Benedict Cumberbatch. However, it’s been pointed out by several readers that Dr. Watson wants a little equal time. As with the Sherlock rankings, [...]
Remembering John Howard Davies, David Croft and Trevor Bannister
While wishing everyone a Happy New Year and prosperous 2012, I wanted to remember some ‘friends’ the world of comedy lost in 2011. Over the past several years, those of us involved in the production of a number of British comedy retrospective specials for PBS have had the incredible good fortune to spend quality time [...]
How Fawlty Towers almost never opened its doors
This gem comes from Shaun Usher over at Letters of Note, a Manchester site dedicated to the seeking out fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos. To the British comedy world, there is none more ‘fascinating’ that this accompanying 1974 memo graphic supplied by Sam Ward. While we knew of this story through several interviews [...]
Scattershooting on Wallander III, Dark Shadows and more….
Wallander III in production
From the watchful eye of tellyspotting reader, Patty Winter, comes a report of Sir Kenneth being spotted filming scenes for an upcoming episode of Wallander for series III, entitled “Dogs of Riga”, at the Riga Centra Market in Latvia, along with co-star Ingeborga Dapkunaite.
Wallander, the BBC mini-series stars the greatness of Sir [...]
