Writing
BBC series based on the novels by Georges Simenon which starred Rupert Davies as Inspector Maigret, a French police detective who preferred to watch and listen in order to solve crimes. The series ran from 1960-63 on British television.
Hancock's Half Hour is a BBC television comedy series of the 1950s and 60s written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The series starred Tony Hancock with Sid James. The final series, renamed simply Hancock, starred Hancock alone. Comedian Tony Hancock starred in the show, playing an exaggerated and much poorer version of his own character and lifestyle, Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock, a down-at-heel comedian living at the dilapidated 23 Railway Cuttings in East Cheam. The series was influential in the development of the situation comedy, with its move away from radio variety towards a focus on character development.
Steptoe and Son is a British sitcom written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson about a father and son played by Wilfred Brambell and Harry H. Corbett who deal in selling used items. They live on Oil Drum Lane, a fictional street in Shepherd's Bush, London. Four series were broadcast by the BBC from 1962 to 1965, followed by a second run from 1970 to 1974. Its theme tune, "Old Ned", was composed by Ron Grainer. The series was voted 15th in a 2004 BBC poll to find Britain's Best Sitcom. It was remade in the US as Sanford and Son, in Sweden as Albert & Herbert and in the Netherlands as Stiefbeen en zoon. In 1972 a movie adaptation of the series, Steptoe and Son, was released in cinemas, with a second Steptoe and Son Ride Again in 1973.
A dramatic and penetrating examination of the intellectual and moral standards existing at Oxford University, England, in the early 1970s.
Thirty-five years after his premature death in 1968 Tony Hancock was voted Britain's best-ever comedy performer. Here's a chance to see what made him so special - the surviving episodes from Series 2 and Series 3 of Hancock's Half Hour, plus a Christmas special. Episodes include: "The Alpine Holiday", "Air Steward Hancock", "The Last Of The Many", "The Lawyer: The Crown vs Sidney James", "Competitions: How To Win Money And Influence People" and "There's An Airfield At The Bottom Of My Garden". The Christmas special is "Hancock's Forty-Three Minutes: The East Cheam Repertory Company".
