Auf Wiedersehen, Pet is a British comedy-drama television programme about seven British construction workers who leave the United Kingdom to search for employment overseas. In the first series, the men live and work on a building site in Düsseldorf. The series was created by Franc Roddam after an idea from Mick Connell, a bricklayer from Stockton-on-Tees, and mostly written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, who also wrote The Likely Lads, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? and Porridge. It starred Tim Healy, Kevin Whately, Jimmy Nail, Timothy Spall, Christopher Fairbank, Pat Roach and Gary Holton, with Noel Clarke replacing Holton for series three and four and the two-part finale. The series were broadcast on ITV in 1983–1984 and 1986. After a sixteen-year gap, two series and a Christmas special were shown on BBC One in 2002 and 2004.
Quadrophenia is a 1979 British drama film, loosely based on the Who's 1973 rock opera of the same name. It was directed by Franc Roddam in his feature directing début. Unlike the adaptation of Tommy, Quadrophenia is not a musical film, and the band does not appear live in the film.
Kudos is a British film and television production company. It has produced television series for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky, Amazon and Netflix and its productions include Tin Star, Humans, Broadchurch, The Tunnel, Grantchester, Apple Tree Yard, Utopia,Spooks (US:MI5), Hustle and Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes. In 2007 it was voted Best Independent Production Company by Broadcast magazine. Formed in 1992, since 2007 it has been part of the Shine Group. In 2007 it also set up the film unit, Kudos Pictures. In 2011, the Shine Group was 100% acquired by News Corporation and was part of the 50-50 joint-venture Endemol Shine Group. On 3 July 2020, France-based Banijay bought the studio through former's acquisition of Endemol Shine Group.
Timothy Leonard Spall is an English actor and presenter. Spall gained recognition for his character actor roles on stage and screen. He is known for his collaborations with director Mike Leigh, acting in six of his films: Home Sweet Home (1982), Life is Sweet (1990), Secrets & Lies (1996), Topsy-Turvy (1999), All or Nothing (2002), and Mr. Turner (2014). He was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his role in Secrets and Lies, and received the Cannes Film Festival Best Actor Award for his portrayal of J. M. W. Turner in Mr. Turner. In 2000, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II.
Gary Frederick Holton was a British singer-songwriter, musician and actor from London. He was the frontman of the band Heavy Metal Kids (1972–1977), worked with Casino Steel (1981–1984), and played the part of Wayne in the UK television comedy Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (1983–1985). Holton died from an overdose of morphine combined with alcohol in 1985.
The Family is a 1974 BBC television series made by producer Paul Watson, and directed by Franc Roddam. It is a fly-on-the-wall documentary series, seen by many as the precursor to reality television. It is similar to an American documentary which had aired the previous year in 1973, called An American Family.
MasterChef is a British competitive cooking reality show produced by Endemol Shine UK and Banijay and broadcast in 60 countries around the world. The show initially ran from 1990 to 2001 and was revived in 2005 as MasterChef Goes Large. The revival featured a new format devised by Franc Roddam and John Silver, with Karen Ross producing. In 2008, the name was changed back to MasterChef but the format remained unchanged.
Endemol Shine North America is the American division of Banijay that was founded on March 15, 2002 as a merger of Shine Americas, Shine USA, and Reveille Productions.
George Ian Kenneth "Kenny" Ireland was a Scottish actor and theatre director. Ireland was best known to television viewers for his role in Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV in the 1980s, and for playing Donald Stewart in Benidorm from 2007 until his death in 2014.
Andrew Fried is an American documentary filmmaker, producer and director, and the president of Boardwalk Pictures. Fried is known for producing documentary films and television series, such as Chef's Table, The Black Godfather, Last Chance U, 7 Days Out, My Love, Men in Kilts, Booktube, Street Food, Cheer, Val and The Goop Lab with Gwyneth Paltrow. He directed the 2020 documentary film We Are Freestyle Love Supreme.
Craig Plestis is the President and CEO of Smart Dog Media, a reality programming production company. Plestis is an executive producer of The Masked Singer and I Can See Your Voice.
MasterChef is a competitive cooking show television format created by Franc Roddam, which originated with the UK version in July 1990. Dave Ross commissioned the show for the BBC and gave it the name, he had already produced Masterteam a quiz with Angela Rippon and worked on Mastermind, and so the name was a continuum of that. The format was revived and updated for the BBC in February 2005 by executive producers Roddam and John Silver with series producer Karen Ross.
Endemol Shine Group B.V. was a Dutch production and distribution company of scripted and non-scripted content, responsible for programmes such as Big Brother, Deal or No Deal, The Money Drop, Fear Factor, MasterChef, Your Face Sounds Familiar, Peaky Blinders, Black Mirror, Humans, Grantchester and Tin Star.
Banijay S.A. is a French multinational television production and distribution company which is the world's largest international content producer and distributor with over 130 production companies across 21 territories, and a multi-genre catalogue containing over 180,000 hours of original programming. Headquartered in Paris, the company was founded in January 2008 by Stéphane Courbit, former president of Endemol France, and has risen since its inception, to become a €3.2bn turnover business. It is currently a subsidiary of FL Entertainment N.V., based in Amsterdam.
Endemol Shine Australia is a subsidiary of Banijay, a global content production and distribution company operating in over 22 territories with more than 120 production companies. The current CEO of Endemol Shine Australia is Peter Newman.
Magarditch Halvadjian is a Bulgarian TV and movie producer and director. He has been involved in directing since 1992.
Shine Group was an international television production and distribution group with 26 production companies across 12 countries creating scripted and non-scripted content in the global marketplace.
Vincenzo Nicoli is a British actor who appears in film, television and theatre. He is best known for roles in blockbuster films, such as Alan Jude in the 1992 science fiction film Alien³ (1992), Enrico Biscaglia in the romantic drama film In Love and War (1996), Tony Genova in the 2016 short film The Naughty List (2016) and in the television programme Auf Wiedersehen, Pet as Sandro.
MasterChef India – Tamil is an Indian Tamil-language competitive cooking reality show based on MasterChef Australia and is part of MasterChef India. Produced by Innovative Film Academy and Endemol Shine India, it is broadcast on Sun TV. The show is hosted by Vijay Sethupathi. The show was originally supposed to be aired in May 2021; however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in India, the show was pushed back to 7 August 2021. The debut season of the Tamil version of MasterChef made the MasterChef format surpass 500 seasons worldwide.
Mini is a 1975 documentary created by director Franc Roddam for the BBC Inside Stories series. It follows 11-year-old arsonist Michael "Mini" Cooper over three weeks in October 1974 during his time at the secure Aycliffe Assessment Centre in School Aycliffe.
