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Comedy doesn't always travel well, even between countries like the United States and the United Kingdom; we may share some close cultural bonds and we might speak the same language, but our humor is subtly different. Still, that hasn't stopped TV networks importing popular sitcoms from across the pond and remaking them to suit their respective audiences,  with many of the most famous examples heading in a westerly direction for a stateside spin. It's been a mixed bag over the decades: While some are hits, like "The Office" or "Sanford and Son" (based on "Steptoe and Son"), you also have abortive attempts like "The Rear Guard" ("Dad's Army") and "Kings of Van Nuys" ("Only Fools and Horses"). When it works, though, it really works, and one American remake that is arguably better than the beloved British original is "All in the Family."

Norman Lear's groundbreaking show took its basic...

Foreseeing a relaxation of censorship on the horizon, England’s Titan Films filmed this mad surgery opus with far more gore and cruelty than was the norm in 1967-68, and their gambit paid off. Horror favorite Peter Cushing stars with Sue Lloyd, a pair nobody expected to show up in a shocker with such a high sleaze quotient. Pi’s special edition gives us three versions of the show including the continental cut with Cushing’s most lurid scene ever, and heaps of comment and analysis.

Corruption

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1968 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 91.5 min., 90.5 min. / Carnage / Street Date August 30, 2021 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / �18.99

Starring: Peter Cushing, Sue Lloyd, David Lodge, Noel Trevarthen, Anthony Booth, Kate O’Mara, Wendy Varnals, Billy Murray, Vanessa Howard, Marian Collins (or Jan Waters), Phillip Manikum, Alexandra Dane, Valerie Van Ost, Diana Ashley, Victor Baring, Shirley Stelfox, Marianne Morris.

Cinematography: Peter Newbrook

Film Editor:...

Una Stubbs, the British actress who died in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Thursday at age 84, may be best known to modern audiences for her role as Sherlock Holmes’ landlady, Mrs. Hudson, on the Benedict Cumberbatch-led series “Sherlock.”

But she had her breakout role in the long-running BBC sitcom “Till Death Do Us Part,” which ran for seven seasons between 1965-75 and inspired Norman Lear’s classic American hit “All in the Family.”

In “Till Death Do Us Part,” Stubbs played the Sally Struthers role — the left-leaning daughter of a reactionary white working-class father (played by Warren Mitchell) who regularly clashes with the Liverpool socialist husband of Stubbs’ character (played by Anthony Booth).

In a 2017 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Lear recalled how his partner, Bud Yorkin, tipped him off about “Till Death Do Us Part” while shooting a film in London in the late 1960s. “’Holy s—, I’ve lived through that,...

All in the Family is roundly considered a touchstone for television achievement now, but when it debuted 50 years ago, even the network carrying it hoped it would fizzle quickly and unnoticed. CBS put an army of operators at phone lines expecting a barrage of complaints from offended middle Americans demanding its cancellation. Those calls didn’t come. What came was a deluge of support from people hoping this mid-season replacement was a permanent addition to the network’s lineup. The premiere episode contained a considerable list of “television firsts.” One of these rarities continues to remain scarce on network TV: creator Norman Lear trusted the intelligence of the viewing audience. To celebrate All in the Family’s 50th anniversary, we look back at its journey from conception to broadcast, and how it continues to influence and inform entertainment and society today.

Actor Carroll O’Connor, who was a large part of...

Stars: Leslie Caron, Anthony Booth, Avis Bunnage, Patricia Phoenix, Verity Edmett, Tom Bell, Cicely Courtneidge, Emlyn Williams, Jennifer White, Brock Peters, Gerry Duggan, Mark Eden | Written and Directed by Bryan Forbes

When watching a British film from the sixties, the realistic discussion of such things as growing up as a single parent, or considering abortion wasn’t something you’d expect to see in a film set in London. The L-Shaped Room though is one of the few that took a look at society, family, and love and didn’t hide from the awkward truths.

Jane Fosset (Leslie Caron) is an unmarried and pregnant French woman who finds a small seedy London boarding house with a room available. Struggling with the idea of having an abortion, at first the last thing she needs is to make friends with the misfits who live there. Slowly getting to know them though she soon becomes one of them,...

The BFI’s Missing Believed Wiped returns to BFI Southbank this December to present British television rediscoveries, not seen by audiences for decades, most since their original transmission dates…. The bespoke line-up of TV gems feature some of the countries most-loved television celebrities and iconic characters including Alf Garnett in Till Death Us Do Part: Sex Before Marriage, Cilla Black in her eponymous BBC show featuring Dudley Moore , Jimmy Edwards in Whack-o!, a rare interview with Peter Davison about playing Doctor Who, an appearance by future Doctor Who Patrick Troughton from ITV’s early police drama, No Hiding Place plus a significant screen debut from a young Pete Postlethwaite.

However for Nerdly readers, one of the real highlights of this edition of Missing Believed Wiped is the uncovering of TV horror Late Night Horror: The Corpse Can’t Play. Originally broadcast on 3 May, 1968 on BBC2 this is the only...

Ken Russell spent most of his days regarding his first theatrical feature, French Dressing, as a disaster. Certainly it did his career prospects no good at the time. Then he caught it on late night TV in the nineties, and said to himself, "This is a masterpiece!"He might have been right, though the film's effect is so indefinable that its success or failure on its own terms, whatever they might be, is hard to be certain of. But it's sufficiently unlike anything else to qualify for some kind of place of honor in the sub-sub-genre of British seaside psychotronic cinema.The starting point was kind of charming and straightforward: a run-down coastal resort tries to vie with Cannes by launching a film fest and inviting the latest Gallic sex kitten sensation. The producer probably imagined something a bit like a Carry On film, whereas Russell hoped to take things into Jacques Tati territory.

It can cost £2,000 to interview Brad Pitt for 20 minutes – I'd want some proper exclusives for that, not the usual recycled claptrap

Two grand for a 20-minute interview with Brad Pitt at Cannes. That's what film company Alliance is charging some journalists for the privilege. So if I took an hour and 20 minutes at £8,000, how many bangs would I expect for my buck? Quite a few, as it happens.

Alliance is quick to point out that we will not be paying Pitt Ltd per se. The payment is just a means of covering its star's costs – for example, flying from America to France in one's private jet with one's own army of hairdressers, makeup artists and agents, never mind the matching suits of armour for you and your son Maddox … well, it soon mounts up. And nobody would want Brad, estimated to be worth a paltry $150m last year, to suffer financially for his art.

Country music icon George Jones will be induced into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame August 21, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. at the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame Theater. The singer will be inducted alongside Al Dexter and Ray Winkler. The event will feature special guest performer Mel Tillis and the Statesiders along with the Justin Trevino Band featuring Tony Booth, Georgette Jones, Frankie Miller, Darryl McCall, Mona McCall, Amber Digby and Curtis Potter. The legendary Ralph Emery will host the event. Many attempts have been made, but rarely capture in words the immense, singular vocal gifts that have made George Glenn Jones one of the most influential singers in country music history. He is...

Mvd Visual and Wienerworld will release The Beatles - 'Rare And Unseen', July 14, 2009, in a new documentary revealing the earliest known footage of the Beatles, including home movies, personal photographs and private memorabilia, from their beginnings in Liverpool, to their eventual break-up. Highlights include the earliest known footage of the Beatles on stage in Liverpool February 1962, their only existing film on tour in Scotland - Caird Hall, Dundee October 1964, footage from the Bahamas, February 1965 during the filming of director Richard Lester's Help!, footage from September 1967 in Newquay filming Magical Mystery Tour, home movie footage from Paris Olympia Theatre January 1964 and an interview with John Lennon recorded in New York. The Beatles are shown at play, on and off stage, on film with contributions from: Phil Collins, Steve Harley, Norman 'Hurricane' Smith, Colin Hanton (their first drummer), Sam Leach (tour manager), Tony Barrow (press officer 1962-1968), Tony Bramwell (friend and roadie), Ken Dodd,...

John Lennon was once escorted by police from a drug dealer's house with a pocket-full of marijuana, according to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's father-in-law.

The late Beatle was discovered inside the den when a group of screaming women surrounded the London flat during the incident in 1969. Police then rang Lennon to offer to escort him safely from the building.

But the cops were unaware the singer was carrying 11 pounds (4.9 kilogrammes) of marijuana in his pocket when they ushered him to the safety of a waiting police car.

Tony Booth - who was scoring drugs at the house at the time - says, Lennon "killed himself with laughter" over the incident.