Absolutely Fabulous and The Office are the latest British sitcoms to have made the move from TV to film, with Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie and David Brent: Life on the Road arriving in cinemas this summer. Adapting a British TV comedy for the big screen is something that’s been done many times before… with varying degrees … >
After a bit of blip with the slightly underwhelming Home From Home, BBC Two’s run of sitcom pilots hits back with a vengeance in the form of Our Ex-Wife. A sitcom starring Robert Webb and Victoria Hamilton as divorced parents of two Jack and Hillary, who have built a successful divorce on hate and seeing … >
The opening salvo in the BBC’s landmark Sitcom Season sees Benidorm creator Derren Litten take on Croft and Lloyd’s department store classic Are You Being Served?, with a new episode set just a few years after the original closed its doors. Right from the start, you can tell that this is a revival written very … >
Home from Home is BBC Two’s second offering in its ongoing season of sitcom pilots. Johnny Vegas and Joanna Page buy a rundown holiday home in the Lake District and have a difficult first day with their well-off neighbours Adam James and Emilia Fox. A promising set-up with the possibility of some good class-based humour … >
The first of BBC Four’s three recreations of lost sitcom episodes sees The Fast Show’s Simon Day take on Britain’s favourite bigot Alf Garnett in a performance of Till Death Us Do Part’s 1967 episode ‘A Woman’s Place Is In The Home’. And it being a near word-for-word rendition of the original script is what … >
BBC Two’s run of new comedy pilots for its Sitcom Season starts with The Coopers Vs the Rest, a sitcom starring Paterson Joseph and Tanya Franks as Toby and Tess Cooper; the struggling parents to three adopted children. While it’s a solid first bat for a new sitcom, it’s not without its problems. Things pick up … >
Desiree Akhavan will write and star in The Bisexual for Channel 4. The new comedy series is described as “a painfully hilarious look at the difference of dating men and women from the perspective of a person who finds herself doing both. It’s an honest look at the last taboo, bisexuality and what it means to refuse to … >
Not Going Out will be back on BBC One next year for a new season. The new episodes follow 2015’s Christmas special, which saw the central couple have their first child. Season 8 will see Lee (Lee Mack) and his long-suffering flat mate Lucy Adams (Sally Bretton), now finally a couple, return as parents with three young children. Other returning … >
It’s difficult to know why this new serving of Porridge was ever cooked up. The idea of a wisecracking Cockney criminal detained in a 21st century prison with a twitching Scottish disciplinarian warder keeping an eye on him sounds like a rejected sketch from a piss poor comedy series (like, say, The Kevin Bishop Show): … >
In 1956, one of the most popular shows in the UK made the jump from radio to television and cemented the situation comedy as one of the small screen’s most enduring genres. Hancock’s Half Hour wasn’t the earliest British sitcom, but it was the first to flourish. From the beginning, writers Ray Galton and Alan … >