Shillingbury Tales

GB

Drama Comedy
English     7     1980     GB

Overview

Shillingbury Tales was a British television sitcom comedy-drama series made by ATV for ITV and broadcast 1980-81. Comprising a single feature length pilot and six one-hour episodes, the series deals with life in an idealised fictional English village and stars Robin Nedwell, Diane Keen, Nigel Lambert, Jack Douglas, John Le Mesurier, Bernard Cribbins and Trevor Howard. It was preceded by a feature length pilot episode The Shillingbury Blowers starring Trevor Howard, broadcast 6 January 1980 The series was written by Francis Essex and directed by Val Guest. Unusually for a British situation-comedy at that time it was recorded entirely on location on 16mm film and consequently there was no laughter track. Much of the filming took place in the village of Aldbury in Hertfordshire. The show ended when ATV lost their licence to broadcast and their replacement Central declined to continue production of the series. The series was broadcast in a number of countries around Europe.

Similar

The Andy Griffith Show is an American sitcom first televised on CBS between October 3, 1960 and April 1, 1968. Andy Griffith portrays the widowed sheriff of the fictional small community of Mayberry, North Carolina. His life is complicated by an inept, but well-meaning deputy, Barney Fife, a spinster aunt and housekeeper, Aunt Bee, and a precocious young son, Opie. Local ne'er-do-wells, bumbling pals, and temperamental girlfriends further complicate his life. Andy Griffith stated in a Today Show interview, with respect to the time period of the show: "Well, though we never said it, and though it was shot in the '60s, it had a feeling of the '30s. It was when we were doing it, of a time gone by." The series never placed lower than seventh in the Nielsen ratings and ended its final season at number one. It has been ranked by TV Guide as the 9th-best show in American television history. Though neither Griffith nor the show won awards during its eight-season run, series co-stars Knotts and Bavier accumulated a combined total of six Emmy Awards. The show, a semi-spin-off from an episode of The Danny Thomas Show titled "Danny Meets Andy Griffith", spawned its own spin-off series, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., a sequel series, Mayberry R.F.D., and a reunion telemovie, Return to Mayberry. The show's enduring popularity has generated a good deal of show-related merchandise. Reruns currently air on TV Land, and the complete series is available on DVD. All eight seasons are also now available by streaming video services such as Netflix.

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The Andy Griffith Show
1960