Robert Young | |
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Born | Cheltenham, England | 16 March 1933
Occupation(s) | Film and television director |
Years active | 1972–present |
Robert William Young (born 16 March 1933) is a British television and film director.
Young was born in Cheltenham, and in the 1980s and early 1990s, established himself as a leading director of British TV drama. In the 1970s, he directed Vampire Circus (1972), Soldier's Home (1977) [1] and an episode of Hammer House of Horror . He directed several episodes of Minder and Bergerac in the early 1980s, and the acclaimed TV serial The Mad Death which centred on a rabies outbreak. Perhaps his best remembered television work was on Robin of Sherwood , for which he directed many of the best-regarded episodes.
Young moved towards black comedy in the early 1990s, directing Jeeves and Wooster based on the stories written by P.G. Wodehouse, and G.B.H. , for which he was nominated for a BAFTA award. It was partly on the strength of GBH that he was assigned to direct Fierce Creatures , John Cleese's 1997 follow-up to A Fish Called Wanda , which featured many of the same cast as GBH. However, the production ran into problems and Fred Schepisi was brought in to finalise the movie. Young did, however, direct Splitting Heirs , which starred Cleese and Eric Idle.
Young has continued to work on television drama since then.
John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, producer, and presenter. Emerging from the Cambridge Footlights in the 1960s, he first achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s, he cofounded Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus. Along with his Python costars Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Graham Chapman, Cleese starred in Monty Python films, which include Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979), and The Meaning of Life (1983).
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".
Sir Michael Edward Palin is an English actor, comedian, writer, and television presenter. He was a member of the Monty Python comedy group. He received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2013 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019.
Connie Booth is an American actress and writer. She has appeared in several British television programmes and films, including her role as Polly Sherman on BBC Two's Fawlty Towers, which she co-wrote with her then-husband John Cleese. In 1995 she quit acting and worked as a psychotherapist until her retirement.
Fierce Creatures is a 1997 farcical comedy film. While not literally a sequel, Fierce Creatures is a spiritual successor to the 1988 film A Fish Called Wanda. Both films star John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline and Michael Palin. Fierce Creatures was written by John Cleese and directed by Robert Young and Fred Schepisi.
Jeeves and Wooster is a British comedy-drama television series adapted by Clive Exton from P. G. Wodehouse's "Jeeves" stories. It aired on the ITV network from 22 April 1990 to 20 June 1993, with the last series nominated for a British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series. Set in the UK and the US in an unspecified period between the late 1920s and the 1930s, the series starred Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster, an affable young gentleman and member of the idle rich, and Stephen Fry as Jeeves, his highly intelligent and competent valet. Bertie and his friends, who are mainly members of the Drones Club, are extricated from all manner of societal misadventures by the indispensable Jeeves.
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Fry and Laurie are an English comedy double act, mostly active in the 1980s and 1990s, composed of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. The two met in 1980 through mutual friend Emma Thompson while all three attended the University of Cambridge. Following appearances on TV sketch show Alfresco, The Young Ones, and revue series Saturday Live, they gained prominence on television sketch comedy A Bit of Fry & Laurie, actress Deborah Norton appearing in many of the sketches in the first series.
Robin Sachs was an English actor, active in the theatre, television and films. He was also known for his voice-over work in films and video games.
Charles Martin Smith is an American actor, writer, and director of film and television based in British Columbia, Canada. He is known for his roles in American Graffiti (1973), The Buddy Holly Story (1978), Never Cry Wolf (1983), Starman (1984), The Untouchables (1987), Deep Cover (1992), And the Band Played On (1993), Speechless (1994) and Deep Impact (1998).
Lamberto Bava is an Italian film director. Born in Rome, Bava began working as an assistant director for his director father Mario Bava. Lamberto co-directed the 1979 television film La Venere d'Ille with his father and in 1980 directed his first solo feature film Macabre.
David Roger Brierley was an English actor. He appeared in dozens of television productions over a forty-year period.
Mary Wimbush was an English actress whose career spanned sixty years.
Ricco Ross is an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of private Frost in the 1986 science fiction action film Aliens.
Frederick Simon Treves is an English actor, director and writer, best known for playing Harold 'Stinker' Pinker in three series of ITV's Jeeves and Wooster. In 2018 he played Aleister Crowley in the short film Boca do Inferno, directed by Luis Porto and shot in Porto and Cascais, Portugal.
Romance with a Double Bass is a 1974 British short comedy film directed by Robert Young and starring John Cleese and Connie Booth. It was adapted by Young, Cleese and Booth (uncredited) from a screenplay by Bill Owen based on the short story of the same name by Anton Chekhov.
The World of Wooster is a comedy television series, based on the Jeeves stories by author P. G. Wodehouse. The television series starred Ian Carmichael as English gentleman Bertie Wooster and Dennis Price as Bertie's valet Jeeves.
"Wooster with a Wife" is the sixth episode of the second series of the 1990s British comedy television series Jeeves and Wooster. It is also called "Jeeves the Matchmaker". It first aired in the UK on 19 May 1991 on ITV.