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2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2007 | 1997
9 items from 2012
Graham Linehan: Twitter has made me
16 hours ago | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »
The It Crowd and Father Ted writer talks about social networks, internet distractions and why so-called pirates are really fans
Graham Linehan would like to make one thing really clear, Ok? It is this: Father Ted was filmed in front of a studio audience. It might look as thought it's all done in a draughty house on a remote Irish island, but in fact it's a studio set. Linehan, who turned 44 last week, is irked by the persistence of the idea that the sitcom that brought him and Arthur Mathews to the attention of millions has canned laughter on it.
"I get asked it all the time," he says, his Dublin accent tinged with faint exasperation. "It's like the moon landings or something." He thinks the misunderstanding stems from Wikipedia: a sound recordist captures a track from the audience, other microphones capture the actors; the audience noise is called the »
- Charles Arthur
Chris O'Dowd: from The It Crowd to Hollywood
18 May 2012 4:09 PM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
Comic hit in The It Crowd and leading man in Bridesmaids, Chris O'Dowd is now pushing at an open door in Hollywood
In January 2009, Chris O'Dowd bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. By this point, he was best known for his role in the Channel 4 sitcom The It Crowd, written by Graham Linehan (Father Ted, Black Books), and had acted in a few British films of varying quality – the 2005 black comedy Festival, Richard Curtis's The Boat That Rocked, the as yet unreleased Hippie Hippie Shake, co-starring Sienna Miller. It looked increasingly as though O'Dowd might be yet another good actor destined to drift along in roles of middling quality. He'd also just come out of an eight-year relationship. And so he took a risk. He didn't have any "highfalutin ideas", he recalls. But, hey, why not?
The road to Hollywood may be littered with the dashed hopes of actors from overseas, »
- Hadley Freeman
Life after Seinfeld
30 April 2012 4:05 PM, PDT | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »
Jerry Seinfeld's sophisticated, strange sitcom inspired a whole generation of comics – so why is there nothing quite like it today?
When Jerry Seinfeld tours the UK and Ireland in May, following last year's £100-a-pop, sell-out show at London's O2 Arena, it will be 14 years since the end of his groundbreaking sitcom Seinfeld, which scrutinised the minutiae and neuroses of four self-serving New Yorkers: smooth-but-prissy standup comic Jerry (Seinfeld), his peppy ex-girlfriend Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a wired-to-the-mains neighbour Kramer (Michael Richards) and Jerry's best friend, George (Jason Alexander), a man radioactive with resentment and self-loathing.
The final episode aired on 14 May 1998, drawing more than 76 million Us viewers after permeating the country's language and popular culture for eight years. In the UK, viewers had to exercise great cunning to keep up with the show's erratic transmission. For most of its run in the 90s, BBC2 buried Seinfeld in the witching hour »
- Ryan Gilbey
Big Train: a cult comedy that proved an early platform for top talent
25 April 2012 7:51 AM, PDT | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »
Simon Pegg, Catherine Tate and Amelia Bullmore were among those in the surreal sketch show
It is 10 years since Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan's cult comedy Big Train came to a final halt. While they were not quite a runaway success at the time, Big Train's two BBC series did prove to be an express route for the show's cast with Mark Heap, Julia Davis, Kevin Eldon, Catherine Tate, Simon Pegg, Amelia Bullmore, Rebecca Front and Tracy-Ann Oberman graduating from the surreal comedy to dominate British comedy acting.
It was their talent, combined with the Father Ted creators' brilliant writing, that helped to produce one of the most original and most consistently funny sketch shows in years. With its subversion of everyday situations by the surreal or macabre, the cast's believable portrayals and evident chemistry put the comedy into a class of its own. But few could have »
Olivier-nominated Ladykillers to tour UK and Ireland
20 March 2012 7:33 AM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
Theatrical farce adapted from the classic Ealing comedy set to tour into 2013 after record ticket sales in the West End
Little old landladies are to get their revenge all over the country after Graham Linehan's stage adaptation of The Ladykillers, currently playing at the West End's Gielgud theatre, announced that it will embark on a tour of the UK and Ireland.
After receiving five Olivier award nominations last week, The Ladykillers will start its tour in Plymouth on 14 September. The production will continue to tour into 2013, with further dates to be announced.
As well as garnering positive reviews, Linehan's adaptation, which turns the classic Ealing comedy into a theatrical farce, has already proved a big earner for its producers Fiery Angel. Following a pre-West End run in Liverpool, the show recouped its entire £750,000 outlay only six weeks after opening in London. During the Christmas period, it broke the Gielgud's box office record, »
- Matt Trueman
What's my motivation?: Sam Bain on writing for TV
11 March 2012 5:05 PM, PDT | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »
You've written a surefire-hit TV script, and the producer wants you on set. Fun and canapes all the way? Fresh Meat and Peep Show writer Sam Bain shares some advice (and a few regrets)
The relationship between the screenwriter and the filming process is a complicated one. Every production is different, and every writer is different. Some productions don't want the writer around, and some writers don't want to be around the production. Some writers are so keen to be involved that they take the drastic step of becoming directors (I'm looking at you, Graham Linehan).
A writer's status in a production can range from extremely low (a first-timer writing a sketch for an established star) to extremely high (Steven Moffat showrunning Doctor Who). My writing partner Jesse Armstrong and I have run the gamut. On one of the first sitcoms we were hired to write for, we were keen »
Simon Moore's Desert Island Collection
27 February 2012 1:01 PM, PST | Flickeringmyth | See recent Flickeringmyth news »
Simon Moore presents his Desert Island Collection...
Movies
1. Withnail & I - the perfect mix of comedy, pathos and uniquely quotable dialogue.
2. The Princess Bride - everything that's funny and beautiful about fantasy fiction.
3. Porco Rosso - Miyazaki's midlife crisis masterpiece, with Michael Keaton as a flying pig. Yes.
4. Monkey Business - probably the Marx Brothers' purest distillation of slapstick insanity.
5. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - the greatest Western ever made? Who the hell cares, I love the ambition, the danger and the hilarity of gunfighters on a gold rush.
6. The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler writes, Bogart & Bacall sizzle. Unbeatable film noir.
7. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - it's a musical with fistfights instead of songs. How do you resist?
8. From Russia with Love - Connery in his prime.
9. Young Frankenstein - artful comedy in every sense.
10. Rocky - the film by which all others are now measured in some degree. »
- flickeringmyth
7 Things We Want To See In Doctor Who Series 7
20 February 2012 6:21 AM, PST | Obsessed with Film | See recent Obsessed with Film news »
The seventh series of the new Doctor Who will likely start airing in the autumn of 2012 and may run into the fiftieth anniversary year, 2013. News is just starting to emerge of who the writers and directors will be and so the countdown to series seven feels like it has begun.
The last series – as usual – delighted some and frustrated others. As one who was both frustrated and delighted, here are some of my thoughts about what show-runner Steven Moffat could do to make both devoted fans and casual viewers more delighted and less frustrated over the 13 episodes which are on their way.
1. Less of the “arc” plotting
Moffat has already indicated that following the series-long storyline of the Doctor’s apparent death and Amy and Rory’s baby last year, he intends to “throw the lever back the other way” this year, even to the point of not initially commissioning any two part stories. »
- Tom Salinsky
F is for film
17 January 2012 6:30 AM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
For over a century, theatre has been inspired by the movies, and vice versa. If only musicals would keep their relationship with Hollywood to a Brief Encounter
What, you may wonder, is a section on film doing in a study of modern theatre? The fact is that film and theatre have been getting into bed together virtually since the invention of movies. Cinema has always fed off theatrical talent; modern theatre has been shaped by the techniques of cinema. But while it's natural the two forms should interact, I worry that theatre today is becoming lazily dependent on cinematic content.
The first thing to say is that, for over a century, theatre has been enthralled by the movies. In 1911 a Hamburg revue showed a film of Neptune touring the city's streets and entering the theatre door only to appear in three dimensions on the actual stage: exactly the kind of »
- Michael Billington
2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2007 | 1997
9 items from 2012
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