“You can’t put a price on comedy.” In the original The Office (2001-2003), creator/co-writer/co-director Ricky Gervais stars as David Brent, the insufferably self-satisfied office manager of a paper company branch who fancies himself a born comedian and a natural leader. He’s wrong about both, naturally, but his yes-man team-leader Gareth (Mackenzie Crook), a brown-noser with […]
Spies of Warsaw (2013), adapted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais from the novel by Alan Furst, has an almost old-fashioned clarity to it. It’s set in 1937 Poland, and Germany is quietly amassing troops outside the border. David Tennant continued his post-Doctor Who career redefinition playing French military attaché Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, an […]
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2015), adapted from the dense, richly-woven debut novel by Susanna Clarke, brings a different of approach to fantasy fiction and the idea of magic in the real world. Set in 19th century England, at the start of the Napoleonic Wars, it weaves the tale of two magicians—Mr. Norrell (Eddie Marsan), […]
And now for something completely different. In 1969, five overeducated British comics and an American illustrator ambushed the BBC with the strangest show in British history. How they got on the air is anyone’s guess (rumors of blackmail were quickly hushed, though the Python’s penchant for sheep gags… but enough of speculation), but their irreverent […]
Golden Years (2016) – Think of this caper comedy as a British twist on Going in Style with a side of social commentary on the treatment of aging pensioners. Bernard Hill and Virginia McKenna star as retirees who have lost their retirement savings in the financial crisis and turn to robbing banks, targeting the bonuses […]
Killing Eve: Season 1 (2018), BBC America’s clever, compelling, mordantly funny spy thriller, is the network’s first must-see original series since Orphan Black and is even more fun. Sandra Oh earned an Emmy nomination for her performance as Eve Polastri, a low-level security agent for MI-5 who has traced a series of unsolved assassination to […]
Fawlty Towers: Complete Series (1975-1979) – Basil Fawlty, the brazenly rude hotel proprietor created and incarnated by John Cleese in his brilliant British sitcom, is the most insolent, boorish, hilariously obnoxious character in the face of customer disservice. He’s a man who treats his guests as an inconvenience to running his business, with the exception […]
Before Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, director Edgar Wright and actor/writer Simon Pegg collaborated with actress/writer Jessica Hynes on the cult BBC sitcom Spaced (1999-2000, TV-14). Pegg and Hynes play Tim and Daisy, slackers who meet at a pub and decide to pose as a couple to get a great flat. They’re not […]
If Monty Python is the comedy world’s equivalent to The Beatles, then the six-part documentary mini-series Monty Python: Almost the Truth (2009) is their Beatles Anthology, an epic of a documentary featuring new interviews with the five surviving Pythons and as many colleagues and friends as the producers could track down. Each episode focuses on […]
