Last of the Summer Wine is a British sitcom created and written by Roy Clarke and originally broadcast by the BBC from 1973 to 2010. It premiered as an episode of Comedy Playhouse on 4 January 1973, and the first series of episodes followed on 12 November 1973. From 1983 to 2010, Alan J. W. Bell produced and directed all episodes of the show. The BBC confirmed on 2 June 2010 that Last of the Summer Wine would no longer be produced and the 31st series would be its last. Subsequently, the final episode was broadcast on 29 August 2010. Since its original release, all 295 episodes, comprising thirty-one series—including the pilot and all films and specials—have been released on DVD. Repeats of the show are broadcast in the UK on BBC One, Gold, Yesterday, and Drama. It is also seen in more than twenty-five countries, including various PBS stations in the United States and on VisionTV in Canada. Last of the Summer Wine is the longest-running comedy programme in Britain and the longest-running sitcom in the world.
Steven William Moffat is a Scottish television writer, television producer and screenwriter. He is best known for his work as showrunner, writer, and executive producer of the science fiction television series Doctor Who and the contemporary crime drama television series Sherlock, based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. In 2015, Moffat was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his services to drama.
Stephen Russell Davies, better known as Russell T Davies, is a Welsh screenwriter and television producer whose works include Queer as Folk, The Second Coming, Casanova, the 2005 revival of the BBC One science fiction franchise Doctor Who, Cucumber, A Very English Scandal, Years and Years and It's a Sin.
An Unearthly Child is the first serial of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC TV in four weekly parts from 23 November to 14 December 1963. Scripted by Australian writer Anthony Coburn, the serial introduces William Hartnell as the First Doctor and his original companions: Carole Ann Ford as the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan Foreman, with Jacqueline Hill and William Russell as school teachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton. The first episode deals with Ian and Barbara's discovery of the Doctor and his time-space ship, the TARDIS, in a junkyard in contemporary London. The remaining episodes are set amid a power struggle between warring Stone Age factions who have lost the secret of making fire.
A showrunner is the leading producer of a television series. In United States network television they are typically credited as an executive producer. Alternatively they may be credited as a producer. A showrunner has creative and management responsibility for a television series' production through combining the responsibilities of employer and, in comedy or dramas, typically also character creator, head writer, and script editor, or in animation, a story editor. In films, the director has creative control of a production, but in television, the showrunner outranks the episodic directors.
The Royle Family is a British sitcom produced by Granada Television for the BBC, which ran for three series from 1998 to 2000, and specials from 2006 to 2012. It centres on the lives of a television-fixated Manchester family, the Royles, comprising family patriarch Jim Royle, his wife Barbara, their daughter Denise, their son Antony and Denise's fiancé David.
Our Friends in the North is a British television drama serial produced by the BBC. It was originally broadcast in nine episodes on BBC2 in early 1996. Written by Peter Flannery, it tells the story of four friends from Newcastle upon Tyne over a period of 31 years, from 1964 to 1995. The story makes reference to certain political and social events which occurred during the era portrayed, some specific to Newcastle and others which affected Britain as a whole. These include general elections, police and local government corruption, the UK miners' strike (1984–85), and the Great Storm of 1987.
The Edge of Destruction is the third serial of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was written by David Whitaker, and first broadcast on BBC TV in two weekly parts on 8 February and 15 February 1964. The first episode was directed by Richard Martin, while Frank Cox directed the second. In the story, the Doctor, his granddaughter Susan, and her teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright are in the Doctor's time and space machine the TARDIS when it appears to be taken over by an outside force. The travellers begin acting strangely and turn against each other.
Thomas Nigel Kneale was a Manx screenwriter who wrote professionally for more than 50 years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and was twice nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay.
Paul Abbott is an English television screenwriter and producer. Abbott has become one of the most critically and commercially successful television writers working in Britain, following his work on popular series such as Coronation Street, Cracker and Shameless, the last of which he created. He is also responsible for the creation of some of the most acclaimed television dramas of the 1990s and 2000s, including Reckless and Touching Evil for ITV and Clocking Off and State of Play for the BBC.
Children's Ward is a British children's television drama series produced by Granada Television and broadcast on the ITV network as part of its Children's ITV strand on weekday afternoons. The programme was set – as the title suggests – in Ward B1, the children's ward of the fictitious South Park Hospital, and told the stories of the young patients and the staff present there.
The Year of the Sex Olympics is a 1968 television play made by the BBC and first broadcast on BBC2 as part of Theatre 625. It stars Leonard Rossiter, Tony Vogel, Suzanne Neve and Brian Cox, and was directed by Michael Elliott. The writer was Nigel Kneale, best known as the creator of Quatermass.
Dennis Spooner was an English television writer and script editor, known primarily for his programmes about fictional spies and his work in children's television in the 1960s. He had long-lasting professional working relationships with a number of other British screenwriters and producers, notably Brian Clemens, Terry Nation, Monty Berman and Richard Harris, with whom he developed several programmes. Though he was a contributor to BBC programmes, his work made him one of the most prolific writers of televised output from ITC Entertainment.
Dennis Kelly is a British scriptwriter for theatre, television and film.
British television science fiction refers to popular programmes in the genre that have been produced by both the BBC and Britain's largest commercial channel, ITV. The BBC's Doctor Who is listed in the Guinness World Records as the longest-running science fiction television show in the world and as the "most successful" science fiction series of all time.
Outnumbered is a British sitcom about the Brockman family, starring Hugh Dennis as the father, Claire Skinner as the mother and their three children played by Tyger Drew-Honey, Daniel Roche and Ramona Marquez.
Janice Hally is a Scottish playwright and television screenwriter who has written more than 300 broadcast hours of prime-time British television drama serials and individual screenplays. She was co-creator and main screenwriter on the first-ever, long-running Gaelic drama serial Machair.
Jack Thorne FRSL is an English screenwriter and playwright.
An Adventure in Space and Time is a 2013 British biographical television film, starring David Bradley, Brian Cox, Jessica Raine and Sacha Dhawan. Directed by Terry McDonough, and written by regular Doctor Who writer Mark Gatiss, it premiered on BBC Two on 21 November 2013, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the science fiction television series. Further, international broadcasts of the television film were made after its premiere on British television.
Inside No. 9 is a British black comedy anthology television programme that first aired in 2014. It is written by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton and produced by the BBC. Each 30-minute episode is a self-contained story with new characters and a new setting, and all star Pemberton or Shearsmith. Aside from the writers, each episode has a new cast, allowing Inside No. 9 to attract a number of well-known actors. The stories are linked only by the number 9 in some way, typically taking the form of a door marked with the number 9, and a brass hare statue that is in the background of all episodes. Settings include a suburban house, a gothic mansion and a barn. Pemberton and Shearsmith took inspiration for Inside No. 9 from an episode of Psychoville, a previous project, which was filmed in a single room - this in turn was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. The series was also influenced by the Hammer House of Horror episode "The Mark of Satan", which featured a character who was obsessed with the number 9.