Directing
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.
After 17 years of married life, Chris and Katy Bunting are faced with being parents for the first time. The repercussions are only just starting to become apparent.
At and around Soho cafe Charlie's Nosh Bar, Sidney Balmoral James ('Sid') is on the lookout for any get-rich-quick scheme. He is helped by William Montmorency Beaumont Kerr ('Billy the Kerr') and quite often frustrated by local bookmaker Albert Welshman. Meanwhile, Sid's long-suffering girlfriend Liz has been waiting for seven years for Sid to set the date.
The World of Beachcomber was a surreal television comedy show produced by the BBC, inspired by the Beachcomber column in the Daily Express newspaper. The show, like the column, consisted of a series of unrelated pieces of humour. Links between the items were provided by Spike Milligan, dressed in a smoking jacket and cap, as in the cartoon logo above the newspaper column. The other actors were a Who's Who of British comedy of the time, encompassing almost every supporting player seen or heard in comedy, not excluding people of diminutive stature.
After a lock-keeper entrusts his daughter to a canal Casanova, he is shocked to learn that she is pregnant. He then refuses to open his locks - causing barges to pile up in every direction until the guilty party confesses.
A series of seven individual sitcom pilots from writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.
Four people go to great lengths to obtain the fortune left in a will by a very wealthy practical joker.
Freddie and the Dreamers play part of a Scout troupe that get caught up in a series of misadventures on their way to camp.
A TV version of the stage show originally performed at the Edinburgh Fringe (August 1960) and in London (Fortune Theatre, May 1961) and Broadway (October 1962).
Ex-colleagues reflect on the comic genius and sometimes difficult character of Tony Hancock.
