Ian La Frenais

The story of the big names that have shaped the musical genres, plus an occasional stopgap for the new rock 'n' roll - comedy.

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Documentary about the 1991 film

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Chat show hosted by Terry Wogan, featuring live studio interviews with famous and notable personalities.

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The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.

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Omnibus was an arts-based BBC television documentary series, broadcast mainly on BBC1 in the United Kingdom. The programme was the successor to the long-running arts-based series 'Monitor'. It ran from 1967 until 2003, usually being transmitted on Sunday evenings. During its 35-year history, the programme won 12 Bafta awards. Among the series' best remembered documentaries are Cracked Actor, a profile of David Bowie, and Rene Magritte, a graduate film by David Wheatley, 'Madonna: Behind the American dream', a film produced by Nadia Hagger, and a profile of the British film director Ridley Scott. For a season in 1982, the series was in a magazine format presented by Barry Norman. The series was replaced by 'Imagine' hosted by Alan Yentob.

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When young dockworker Jude leaves Liverpool to find his estranged father in the United States, he is swept up by the waves of change that are re-shaping the nation. Jude falls in love with Lucy, who joins the growing anti-war movement. As the body count in Vietnam rises, political tensions at home spiral out of control and the star-crossed lovers find themselves in a psychedelic world gone mad.

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London high-society mouse, Roddy is flushed down the toilet by Sid, a common sewer rat. Hang on for a madcap adventure deep in the sewer bowels of Ratropolis, where Roddy meets the resourceful Rita, the rodent-hating Toad and his faithful thugs, Spike and Whitey.

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Like millions of kids around the world, Santiago harbors the dream of being a professional footballer... However, living in the Barrios section of Los Angeles, he thinks it is only that—a dream. Until one day an extraordinary turn of events has him trying out for Premiership club Newcastle United.

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Fluke Kelso, a dissipated, middle-aged former Oxford historian, who is in Moscow to attend a conference on the newly opened Soviet archives, receives in his hotel a very unexpected visitor.

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Friends Ben Trotter, Doug Anderton and Philip Chase deal with teenage angst, their parents' complex lives, and the political and social turmoil of the 1970s, including a tragic IRA pub bombing that affects Ben's family.

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Sketches and clips from his greatest television comedy performances

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In 1960s London, sisters Gerry, Mandy and Jo don male disguises and rob jewelry stores. Gerry also takes a job at a hip magazine in order to scope out a potential target. Sparks fly, however, between Gerry and American journalist Daniel Wheaton, and their budding romance threatens to expose the sisters' latest operation.

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In the 1970s, Strange Fruit were it. They lived the rock lifestyle to the max, groupies, drugs, internal tension and an ex front man dead from an overdose. Even their demise was glamorous; when lightning struck the stage during an outdoor festival. Twenty years on, these former rock gods they have now sunk deep into obscurity when the idea of a reunion tour is lodged in the head of Tony, former keyboard player of the Fruits. Tony sets out to find his former bandmates with the help of former manager Karen to see if they can recapture the magic and give themselves a second chance.

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Tracey Takes On... is a sketch comedy series starring actress Tracey Ullman. The show ran for four seasons on HBO and was commissioned after the success of the comedy special Tracey Ullman Takes on New York (1993). Each episode focuses on a specific subject which Ullman and her cast of characters take on through a series of sketches and monologues.

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Jimmy Rabbitte, just a thick-ya out of school, gets a brilliant idea: to put a soul band together in Barrytown, his slum home in north Dublin. First he needs musicians and singers: things slowly start to click when he finds three fine-voiced females virtually in his back yard, a lead singer (Deco) at a wedding, and, responding to his ad, an aging trumpet player, Joey "The Lips" Fagan.

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Jimmy Nail plays tough cop Spender, forced to return to his native Newcastle after a failed undercover operation in London. He uses tough and unconventional methods to tackle the criminal underworld, but he must also deal with the friends, enemies and family he left behind, and never expected to return to. Sammy Johnson played Spender's sidekick Stick, while Denise Welch played Spender's wife.

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Maxine Chandler (Anne Bancroft) is a fading Hollywood star who is living in a suite at the Savoy Hotel while she's working in London. She employs a young cockney woman, Freddie Latham (Charlotte Coleman) as her personal assistant. Freddie is an outspoken woman who doesn't hesitate to let Max know about her obvious shortcomings. Max's agent, Malcolm Parkes (Richard Pearson) often echoes Freddie's opinions, though usually much more quietly.

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A mysterious oriental skull transforms a father into his son, and vice versa.

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The adventures of the eponymous Lovejoy, a likeable but roguish antiques dealer based in East Anglia. Within the trade, he has a reputation as a “divvie”, a person with an almost supernatural powers for recognising exceptional items as well as distinguishing genuine antique from clever fakes or forgeries.

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The British governor of a tiny island nation in the Caribbean Commonwealth finds his idyllic existence thrown into chaos when an American drilling company finds a huge source of natural mineral water there.

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Seven British construction workers escape Britain's ever growing dole queues and travel to Germany to work on a site in Dusseldorf. We follow their trials and tribulations of working away from home and away from the women they left behind.

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The dashing Captain Hugh "Bullshot" Crummond - WWI ace fighter pilot, Olympic athlete, racing driver, part-time sleuth and all round spiffing chap - must save the world from the dastardly Count Otto van Bruno, his wartime adversary. And, of course, win the heart of a jolly nice young lady.

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Alan O'Black is a comic who wants to hit it big. But his endless attempts at stardom have worn down his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Julie. Thinking she'll give him another chance if he gets a real job, Alan gets a gig as a limo driver, which promptly lands him in a slew of trouble when he meets and gets involved in the hijinks of a crooked entrepreneur, Bradley Coleman.

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Fresh off the Harwich Ferry from the continent, unemployed medieval historian Jim Dixon goes to Swinging London in search of a life and a job.

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Anthony Hope's classic tale gets a decidedly 'un-classic' treatment at the hands of Peter Sellers. Following the story somewhat, friends of the new King Rudolph of Ruritania fear for his life, and switch him with a look-a-like London cabby. Throw in two(!) lovely blondes, treachery, and a battle for life and honour, and enjoy life at its zaniest.

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Times are hard for habitual guest of Her Majesty Norman Stanley Fletcher. The new prison officer, Beale, makes MacKay look soft and what's more, an escape plan is hatching from the cell of prison godfather Grouty and Fletcher wants no part of it.

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Footage of a concert given in Moscow, Russia, by rock singer Elton John.

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Going Straight is a BBC sitcom which was a direct spin-off from Porridge, starring Ronnie Barker as Norman Stanley Fletcher, newly released from the fictional Slade Prison where the earlier series had been set. It sees Fletcher trying to become an honest member of society, having vowed to stay away from crime on his release. The title refers to his attempt, 'straight' being a slang term meaning being honest, in contrast to 'bent', i.e., dishonest. Also re-appearing was Richard Beckinsale as Lennie Godber, who was Fletcher's naïve young cellmate and was now in a relationship with his daughter Ingrid. Her brother Raymond was played by a teenage Nicholas Lyndhurst. Only one series, of six episodes, was made in 1978. It attracted an audience of over 15 million viewers and won a BAFTA award in March 1979, but hopes of a further series had already been dashed by Beckinsale's premature death earlier in the same month.

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Fletcher and Godber are in trouble for brewing liquor in the lead-up to Christmas, but are caught up in a hostage situation in the Governor's office.

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With the destruction of their previous neighbourhood has inevitably come the destruction of the lads’ favoured watering hole The Fat Ox. Again, it’s Bob rather than Terry who is visibly distressed by this. Upset and much the worse for free alcohol, Bob then storms into the library to seek sympathy from Thelma - who is, predictably, unimpressed. So when Thelma finds out that Terry has been getting semi-serious with glamorous Finnish shop assistant Chris, she takes it upon herself to try and pair them off for good via planning first a dinner party and then that mainstay of 70s comedy, a camping expedition. Of course, things don’t go quite according to plan and before you can say ‘I can see the way this is going’ we are set up for japes, larks and embarrassing incidents aplenty, which culminate in the lads getting rather fed up with their partners’ attempts to inflict the rugged outdoor lifestyle upon them and trying to hitch up and drive off with the girls still asleep in the caravan.

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Fletcher discovers that his fellow inmates are planning to escape.

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A late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels. The show's comedy sketches, which parody contemporary culture and politics, are performed by a large and varying cast of repertory and newer cast members. Each episode is hosted by a celebrity guest, who usually delivers an opening monologue and performs in sketches with the cast, and features performances by a musical guest.

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A minimum-security prison is the setting for gallows humor by wisecracking inmates.

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Porridge is a British situation comedy broadcast on BBC1 from 1974 to 1977, running for three series, two Christmas specials and a feature film also titled Porridge. Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, it stars Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale as two inmates at the fictional HMP Slade in Cumberland. "Doing porridge" is British slang for serving a prison sentence, porridge once being the traditional breakfast in UK prisons. The series was followed by a 1978 sequel, Going Straight, which established that Fletcher would not be going back to prison again. Porridge was voted number seven in a 2004 BBC poll of the 100 greatest British sitcoms.

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British ITV sitcom starring John Thaw and Bob Hoskins as two friends in a love triangle.

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