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All Gas and Gaiters is a British television ecclesiastical sitcom which aired on BBC1 from 1966 to 1971. It was written by Pauline Devaney and Edwin Apps, a husband-and-wife team who used the pseudonym of John Wraith when writing the pilot. All Gas and Gaiters was also broadcast on BBC Radio from 1971 to 1972.
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.
A Touch of Frost is a television detective series produced by Yorkshire Television for ITV from 6 December 1992 until 5 April 2010, initially based on the Frost novels by R. D. Wingfield. Writing credit for the three episodes in the first 1992 series went to Richard Harris.
Comedy Playhouse is a long-running British anthology series of one-off unrelated sitcoms that aired for 128 episodes from 1961 to 1975. Many episodes later graduated to their own series, including Steptoe and Son, Meet the Wife, Till Death Us Do Part, All Gas and Gaiters, Up Pompeii!, Not in Front of the Children, Me Mammy, That's Your Funeral, The Liver Birds, Are You Being Served? and particularly Last of the Summer Wine, which is the world's longest running sitcom, having run from January 1973 to August 2010. In all, 27 sitcoms started from a pilot in the Comedy Playhouse strand.
Pauline Perpetua Sheen is an English actress. She began her career with roles on various television series, before fronting her own comedy sketch show, Pauline's Quirkes, in 1976. She later starred as Vicky Smith on the BBC drama series Angels (1982–1983), and achieved fame with her portrayal of Sharon Theodopolopodous on the long-running sitcom Birds of a Feather, for which she won a British Comedy Award and was nominated on three occasions for a National Television Award. In 1997, she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress for her role in the BBC miniseries The Sculptress. Between 2010 and 2012, Quirke played Hazel Rhodes on the ITV soap opera Emmerdale.
Brian Paul Conley is an English actor, comedian, singer and television presenter. Conley has been the host of The Brian Conley Show, as well as presenting the Royal Variety Performance on eight occasions. In his 40-year television career, he has starred in multiple award-winning television sitcoms including Time After Time and The Grimleys. In the West End, he has played the lead role in musicals such as Me and My Girl, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Hairspray, Oliver!, The Music Man, Barnum and Jolson for which he was nominated for a prestigious Laurence Olivier Award. As a musician, he has released five albums, including Brian Conley Sings, Let the Good Times Roll, and Stage to Stage. He has won numerous awards in his career including The National Television Award for Most Popular Comedy Performer, Best Live Performer in Manchester Evening News and a British Comedy Award.
"Woodentop" is an episode of the Thames Television series Storyboard, which comprises a series of one-off plays on different themes. The episode was originally broadcast on 16 August 1983. Woodentop became the first episode in the long-running British police television series The Bill. The name woodentop is a colloquialism for beat policemen who traditionally wear helmets; the nickname is itself an allusion to the Children's TV series The Woodentops.
Keith Barron was an English actor and television presenter who appeared in films and on television from 1961 until 2017. His television roles included the police drama The Odd Man, the sitcom Duty Free, and Gregory Wilmot in Upstairs, Downstairs.
Rita Gemma Craven is an Irish actress. She is best known for her role as Joan Parker, the frigid wife of Arthur, in the BBC TV drama Pennies From Heaven (1978).
Philip Jackson is an English actor. He appeared as Chief Inspector Japp in both the television series Agatha Christie's Poirot and in BBC Radio dramatisations of Poirot stories; as Melvin "Dylan" Bottomley in Porridge; and as Abbot Hugo, one of the recurring adversaries in the 1980s series Robin of Sherwood.
Rockliffe is a British television police procedural drama series, produced by the BBC, which ran for three series between 9 January 1987 and 14 December 1988. Rockliffe was devised by Richard O'Keeffe, and produced by Leonard Lewis. The first two series, entitled Rockliffe's Babies, starred Ian Hogg as Alan Rockliffe, a detective sergeant assigned to train a team of inexperienced plain-clothed Crime Squad PCs in inner-city London, which include Steve Hood, Gerry O'Dowd, David Adams, Janice Hargreaves, Paul Georgiou, Keith Chitty and Karen Walsh. The series featured writing contributions from Richard O`Keeffe, Don Webb, Charlie Humphreys and Nick Perry, and was directed by Derek Lister, Keith Washington, Clive Fleury and David Attwood.
The Cops is a British television police procedural drama series created by Jimmy Gardner, Robert Jones, and Anita J. Pandolfo, that first broadcast on BBC Two on 19 October 1998. Produced by World Productions, the series follows the lives of one shift of uniform officers based at Christie Road Police Station in the fictional town of Stanton, Greater Manchester. Billed as another attempt by the BBC to rival The Bill, the series was notable for its documentary-style camerawork and uncompromising portrayal of the police force. Although the series featured a number of notable actors across three series, Katy Cavanagh, Rob Dixon, and John Henshaw remained as the principal cast throughout.
The Ghost Squad is a British crime drama series produced by Company Pictures, for Channel 4, broadcast from 15 November to 27 December 2005. Created by Tom Grieves, the series was inspired by the real life "Ghost Squad" that existed between 1994 and 1998, secretly investigating police corruption. Elaine Cassidy, Emma Fielding and Jonas Armstrong star as protagonists Amy Harris, Carole McKay and Pete Maitland.
Powers is a British science fiction television series first broadcast in 2004 on BBC One. Produced by Chris Le Grys and directed by Emma Bodger and Brian Farnham for BBC Children's, the series was created by Jim Eldridge, who wrote episodes alongside co-writers Stephen Hallett, Christopher Wicking, Carolyn Sally-Jones, and John Jackson.
The Body in the Library is a 3-part 1984 television film adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1942 detective novel The Body in the Library, which was co-produced by the BBC and the A&E Network. The film uses an adapted screenplay by T. R. Bowen and was directed by Silvio Narizzano. Starring Joan Hickson in the title role, it was the first film presented in the British television series Miss Marple and premiered in three parts from 26 to 28 December 1984 on BBC One. In the United States the film was first broadcast on 4 January 1986 as a part of PBS's Mystery!. In his review in The New York Times, critic John J. O'Connor wrote:
Miss Christie would no doubt approve of Joan Hickson, the veteran British character actress who plays Miss Marple... This BBC/Arts & Entertainment co-production offers an especially good example of Agatha Christie in adaptation. The characters are nicely realized and the suspense holds. Miss Hickson is lovely, neither as awesome as Miss Rutherford nor as overly cute as Helen Hayes. And the supporting cast is admirable, particularly Gwen Watford as Dolly and David Horovitch as Inspector Slack. As someone notes about the case, "you'll have to admit it has all the bizarre elements of a cheap thriller." Once hooked, you won't be able to turn it off.
Dirk Gently is a British comic science fiction detective television series based on characters from the novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. The series was created by Howard Overman and stars Stephen Mangan as holistic detective Dirk Gently and Darren Boyd as his sidekick Richard MacDuff. Recurring actors include Helen Baxendale as MacDuff's girlfriend Susan Harmison, Jason Watkins as Dirk's nemesis DI Gilks and Lisa Jackson as Dirk's receptionist Janice Pearce. Unlike most detective series Dirk Gently features broadly comic touches and even some science fiction themes such as time travel and artificial intelligence.
Being Eileen is a BBC comedy-drama which began as a six-part series on 4 February and ended on 11 March 2013. It began as a one-off Christmas special titled Lapland, broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 24 December 2011. A full series was later announced, with the title Being Eileen, consisting of six 30 minute episodes, due to the success of the single episode, which was viewed by 6.9 million viewers upon its original airing. The series also aired on BBC Two as part of Sign Zone, which features sign language throughout. The series was released on DVD on 1 April 2013.
The sixteenth series of the British television drama series Grange Hill began broadcasting on 5 January 1993, before ending on 12 March 1993 on BBC One. The series follows the lives of the staff and pupils of the eponymous school, an inner-city London comprehensive school. It consists of twenty episodes.
References
- Mark Lewisohn, "Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy", BBC Worldwide Ltd, 2003
- British TV Comedy Guide for All Night Long
