Monty Python were a British comedy troupe formed in 1969 consisting of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. The group came to prominence for the sketch comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus, which aired on the BBC from 1969 to 1974. Their work then developed into a larger collection that included live shows, films, albums, books, and musicals; their influence on comedy has been compared to the Beatles' influence on music. Their sketch show has been called "an important moment in the evolution of television comedy".
Simon John Pegg is an English actor, comedian and screenwriter. He came to prominence in the UK as the co-creator of the Channel 4 sitcom Spaced (1999–2001), directed by Edgar Wright. He and Wright co-wrote the films Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), and The World's End (2013), known collectively as the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, all of which saw Wright directing and Pegg starring alongside Nick Frost. Pegg and Frost also wrote and starred in the sci-fi comedy film Paul (2011).
Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall was a British-American actor, whose career spanned over 270 screen and stage roles across over 60 years. Born in London, he began his acting career as a child in his native England, before moving to the United States at the outbreak of World War II. He achieved prominence for his starring roles in How Green Was My Valley (1941), My Friend Flicka (1943), and Lassie Come Home (1943). Unlike many of his contemporaries, McDowall managed to transition his child stardom into adulthood, and began to appear on Broadway as well in films, winning a Tony Award for his performance in Jean Anouilh's The Fighting Cock. For portraying Octavian in the historical epic Cleopatra (1963), he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.
David Lawrence Schwimmer is an American actor, director, comedian, and producer. He gained worldwide recognition for portraying Ross Geller in the sitcom Friends, for which he received a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 1995. While still acting in Friends, his first leading film role was in The Pallbearer (1996), followed by roles in Kissing a Fool;Six Days, Seven Nights;Apt Pupil ; and Picking Up the Pieces (2000). He was then cast in the miniseries Band of Brothers (2001) as Herbert Sobel.
Happy Days is an American television sitcom that aired first-run on the ABC network from January 15, 1974, to July 19, 1984, with a total of 255 half-hour episodes spanning 11 seasons. Created by Garry Marshall, it was one of the most successful series of the 1970s. The series presented an idealized vision of life in the 1950s and early 1960s Midwestern United States, and it starred Ron Howard as Richie Cunningham, Henry Winkler as his friend Fonzie, and Tom Bosley and Marion Ross as Richie's parents, Howard and Marion Cunningham. Although it opened to mixed reviews from critics, Happy Days became successful and popular over time.
The idiom "jumping the shark" or "jump the shark" is a term that is used to argue that a creative work or entity has reached a point in which it has exhausted its core intent and is introducing new ideas that are discordant with, or an extreme exaggeration of, its original purpose. The phrase was coined in 1985 by radio personality Jon Hein in response to a 1977 episode from the fifth season of the American sitcom Happy Days, in which the character of Fonzie jumps over a live shark while on water-skis.
In Living Color is an American sketch comedy television series that originally ran on Fox from April 15, 1990, to May 19, 1994. Keenen Ivory Wayans created, wrote and starred in the program. The show was produced by Ivory Way Productions in association with 20th Television and was taped at stage 7 at the Fox Television Center on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.
Henry Franklin Winkler is an American actor, comedian, author, producer, and director. Widely known as Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli on the American television series Happy Days, Winkler has distinguished himself as a character actor for roles on stage and screen. His many accolades include three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Critics Choice Awards.
"The Pilot"—also known as "The One Where Monica Gets a Roommate", "The First One", and "The One Where It All Began"—is the pilot episode and series premiere of the American television sitcom Friends. The episode premiered on NBC on September 22, 1994. It was written by the show's creators, David Crane and Marta Kauffman, and directed by James Burrows. The pilot introduces six twenty-something friends who live and work in New York City: Monica Geller, a single sous chef in her mid 20s who is illegally subletting her grandmother's apartment; Ross Geller, Monica's older brother, a paleontologist whose marriage recently ended after he learned his wife, Carol, is a lesbian; Rachel Green, Monica's spoiled, self-centered, high-school best friend who has just left her fiancé at the altar and is financially cut off by her father; Chandler Bing, Ross' college roommate and best friend who lives across the hall from Monica; Joey Tribbiani, a struggling Italian-American actor and Chandler's roommate; and Phoebe Buffay, a laid-back, hippie-ish masseuse, singer and guitar player.
Edgar McLean Stevenson Jr. was an American actor and comedian. He is best known for his role as Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake in the television series M*A*S*H, which earned him a Golden Globe Award in 1974. Stevenson also appeared on a number of television series, notably The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Doris Day Show and Match Game.
Stefanie Powers is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Jennifer Hart on the mystery television series Hart to Hart (1979–1984), for which she received nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards.
David Krumholtz is an American actor. Krumholtz is best known for portraying Bernard in The Santa Clause franchise (1994–present), Michael Eckman in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Goldstein in the Harold & Kumar film trilogy (2004–2011), Charlie Eppes in the CBS drama series Numb3rs (2005–2010), and Isidor Isaac Rabi in Oppenheimer (2023).
Wait Till Your Father Gets Home is an animated sitcom produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions that aired in first-run syndication in the United States from 1972 to 1974. The show originated as a one-time segment on Love, American Style called "Love and the Old-Fashioned Father". The same pilot was later produced with a live cast, but with no success. The show was the first primetime animated sitcom to run for more than a single season since fellow Hanna-Barbera show The Flintstones more than ten years earlier, and would be the only one until The Simpsons seventeen years later. The show was inspired by All in the Family.
Cleveland Orenthal Brown Sr. is a fictional character from the animated television series Family Guy, and its spin-off series The Cleveland Show. He is a neighbor and friend of the Griffin family and is best known for his mild-mannered deadpan delivery. His established profession was that of a deli owner, before he switched over to being a postal worker after his return to Family Guy.
Dennis James was an American television personality, philanthropist, and commercial spokesman. Until 1976, he had appeared on TV more times and for a longer period than any other television star. Alternately referred to as "The Dean of Game Show Hosts" and the "Godfather of Gameshows", he was the host of television's first network game show, the DuMont Network's Cash and Carry (1946).
Screen Gems is an American film production company owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of Japanese multinational conglomerate, Sony Group Corporation. It has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation, initially as a cartoon studio, then a television studio, and later on as a film studio. The label currently serves as a film production that specializes in genre films, mainly horror.
The 55th Annual Tony Awards was held at Radio City Music Hall on June 3, 2001 and broadcast by CBS. "The First Ten" awards ceremony was telecast on PBS television. The event was co-hosted by Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. The Producers won 12 awards, breaking the 37-year-old record set by Hello, Dolly! to become the most awarded show in Tony Awards history. Mel Brooks's win made him the eighth person to become an EGOT.
The Cleveland Show is an American animated sitcom created by Seth MacFarlane, Richard Appel, and Mike Henry for the Fox Broadcasting Company. A spin-off of Family Guy, and the second television series in the franchise, the series centers on Cleveland Brown, his new wife Donna Tubbs-Brown, and their children Cleveland Brown Jr., Roberta Tubbs, and Rallo Tubbs. Similar to Family Guy, it exhibited much of its humor in the form of cutaway gags that often lampoon American culture, though it used significantly less than Family Guy. The animation was produced by Fox Television Animation.
Between 1994 and 1996, a wide-ranging series of network affiliation switches took place in media markets across the United States as the result of a multimillion-dollar deal between Fox and New World Communications which was announced on May 23, 1994. The Fox–New World agreement, which saw twelve stations owned by New World change affiliations to Fox, initiated some of the most sweeping changes in American broadcasting history. This deal, and the ancillary deals that followed, created a domino effect and presented a wide-ranging series of ramifications that have impacted local broadcasting up to the present day.
Better Late Than Never is an American reality-travel show which aired on NBC and was produced by Universal Television, in association with Storyline Entertainment. The series is an adaptation of the South Korean Grandpas Over Flowers series. The cast includes four "seasoned" North American celebrities William Shatner, Henry Winkler, George Foreman, and Terry Bradshaw, accompanied by younger comedian Jeff Dye, as they travel overseas, experiencing new cultures and checking off their bucket lists. The series started productions in August 2015 and premiered August 23, 2016.
