The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally a 1978 radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4, it was later adapted to other formats, including novels, stage shows, comic books, a 1981 TV series, a 1984 text adventure game, and 2005 feature film.
Barbara Jane Horrocks is a British actress. She portrayed the roles of Bubble and Katy Grin in the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. She was nominated for the 1993 Olivier Award for Best Actress for the title role in the stage play The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, and received Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for the role in the film version of Little Voice.
Peter Malcolm Gordon Moffett, known professionally as Peter Davison, is an English actor with many credits in television dramas and sitcoms. He made his television acting debut in 1975 and became famous in 1978 as Tristan Farnon in the BBC's television adaptation of James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small stories.
Andrew Wynford Davies is a Welsh screenwriter and novelist, best known for his television adaptations of To Serve Them All My Days, House of Cards, Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice, Bleak House, War & Peace, and his original serial A Very Peculiar Practice. He was made a BAFTA Fellow in 2002.
Windsor Davies was a British actor. He is best remembered for playing Battery Sergeant Major Williams in the sitcom It Ain't Half Hot Mum (1974–1981) over its entire run. The show's popularity resulted in Davies and his co-star Don Estelle achieving a UK number-one hit with a version of "Whispering Grass" in 1975. He later starred with Donald Sinden in Never the Twain (1981–1991), and his deep Welsh-accented voice was heard extensively in advertising voice-overs.
Steven William Moffat is a Scottish television writer, television producer and screenwriter. He is best known for his work as the second showrunner and head writer of the 2005 revival of the BBC sci-fi television series Doctor Who (2010–2017) and co-creating and co-writing the contemporary crime drama television series Sherlock, based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories (2010–2017). In the 2015 Birthday Honours, Moffat was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to drama.
British humour carries a strong element of satire aimed at the absurdity of everyday life. Common themes include sarcasm, tongue-in-cheek, banter, insults, self-deprecation, taboo subjects, puns, innuendo, wit, and the British class system. These are often accompanied by a deadpan delivery which is present throughout the British sense of humour. It may be used to bury emotions in a way that seems unkind in the eyes of other cultures. Jokes are told about everything and almost no subject is off-limits, though a lack of subtlety when discussing controversial issues is sometimes considered insensitive. Many British comedy series have become successful internationally, serving as a representation of British culture to overseas audiences.
The Quatermass Experiment is a British science fiction serial broadcast by BBC Television during the summer of 1953 and re-staged by BBC Four in 2005. Set in the near future against the background of a British space programme, it tells the story of the first crewed flight into space, supervised by Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group.
Fireball XL5 is a 1960s British children's science-fiction puppet television series about the missions of Fireball XL5, a vessel of the World Space Patrol that polices the cosmos in the year 2062. Commanded by Colonel Steve Zodiac, XL5 defends Earth from interstellar threats while encountering a wide variety of alien civilisations.
U.S. television science fiction is a popular genre of television in the United States that has produced many of the best-known and most popular science fiction shows in the world. Most famous of all, and one of the most influential science-fiction series in history, is the iconic Star Trek and its various spin-off shows, which comprise the Star Trek franchise. Other hugely influential programs have included the 1960s anthology series The Twilight Zone, the internationally successful The X-Files, and a wide variety of television movies and continuing series for more than half a century.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy radio series primarily written by Douglas Adams. It was originally broadcast in the United Kingdom by BBC Radio 4 in 1978, and afterwards the BBC World Service, National Public Radio in the US and CBC Radio in Canada. The series was the first radio comedy programme to be produced in stereo, and was innovative in its use of music and sound effects, winning a number of awards.
Moonbase 3 is a British science fiction television programme that ran for six episodes in 1973. It was a co-production between the BBC, 20th Century Fox and the American ABC network. Created by Doctor Who producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks as a realistic alternative strand of TV science-fiction, it was not a commercial or critical success.
Ruth Alexandra Elisabeth Jones is a Welsh actress, comedian, writer, and producer. She co-wrote and co-starred in the award-winning BBC sitcom Gavin & Stacey. She later co-wrote and starred in the Sky One comedy-drama Stella (2012-2017), for which she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Female Comedy Performance and won the BAFTA Cymru Award for Best Screenwriter.
Mike Tucker is a Welsh special effects expert who worked for many years at the BBC Television Visual Effects Department, and now works as an Effects Supervisor for his own company, The Model Unit. He is also the author of a variety of spin-offs relating to the television series Doctor Who and novelisations based on episodes of the television series Merlin. He sometimes co-writes with Robert Perry.
Eddie Robson is a British writer and novelist best known for his sitcom Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully and his work on a variety of spin-offs from the BBC Television series Doctor Who. He has written books, comics, short stories, and for television and theatre, and has worked as a freelance journalist for various science fiction magazines. He is married and lives in Lancaster.
The Day After Tomorrow is a 1975 British science fiction television special produced by Gerry Anderson between the two series of Space: 1999. Written by Johnny Byrne and directed by Charles Crichton, it stars Brian Blessed, Joanna Dunham, Nick Tate, Katharine Levy and Martin Lev, with narration by Ed Bishop. Set in a future where environmental damage on Earth threatens the survival of humanity, The Day After Tomorrow follows the interstellar mission of Altares, a science vessel that uses photon energy to travel at the speed of light. After leaving the Solar System and reaching Alpha Centauri, their primary destination, the crew of Altares push deeper into space; there, they encounter phenomena including a meteor shower, a red giant and, finally, a black hole, which pulls the ship into another universe.
British television science fiction refers to programmes in the genre that have been produced by both the BBC and Britain's largest commercial channel, ITV. BBC's Doctor Who is listed in the Guinness World Records as the longest-running science fiction television show in the world as well as the "most successful" science fiction series of all time.
Joseph Lidster is an English playwright and screenwriter, best known for his work on the Doctor Who spin-off series Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures.
Joanna Marion Scanlan is a British actress and writer. On television, she is known for her roles in The Thick of It (2005–2012), Big School (2013–2014), Puppy Love (2014), No Offence (2015–2018), Requiem (2018), and The Larkins (2021). She was nominated for three BAFTA TV Awards for Getting On (2009–2012), including two for Best Writing.