Category: British
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End Of Part One – A Soft Soap Opera
End Of Part One, the ITV show written by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, was always playing with its form, and trying new things. This can be seen even in the newspapers during the run up to the debut of the show in April of 1979. The promotional material and interviews took an interesting tack.…
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Not Home To Roast
Home To Roost, the sitcom from the creator of Rising Damp, arrived on ITV screen in April of 1985. For a comedy with proven pedigree, much like Ever Decreasing Circles, it seemed to arrive without much fanfair. Maybe that’s just how it was in those days. It was announced in The Stage on Thursday 21st…
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ITV Comedy Is Condemned By Its Own Research (1976)
Whilst researching something else, I came across this article from The Stage, dated Thursday 28th October 1976. Imagine having to sit and listen to this report being delivered, a report you yourself commissioned. The perception of ITV comedy as being lesser to the BBC has been about for the longest time it seems. It’s why…
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Ever Decreasing Clippings
For a sitcom that reunited Richard Briers with the writers of The Good Life, and one which had pretty good ratings from the off (later monster ones), Ever Decreasing Circles arrived on BBC screens in January of 1984 with surprisingly little fanfair. In a packed page of previews in the Burton Daily Mail, the day…
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Come Back Mrs Noah USA?
Come Back Mrs Noah was a sitcom by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft, who wanted to make a space sitcom before everyone else started doing it, after the huge success of Star Wars. Given carte blanche, they wrote a vehicle for Mollie Sugden. Here’s how the pilot was received in December of 1977 by Kenneth…
