Barry Humphries
An edit that brings the Hobbit trilogy closer in line with the book (down to the structure, narrative, and characters) and also pushes the atmosphere closer to what was seen in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, while still being careful to keep the lighthearted and fun side of The Hobbit (which made it so special). With all of the useless made up characters & sideplots gone, both Tolkien fans and casual fans alike can now love Peter Jackson’s adaptation in a new way.
An isolated guy with cerebral palsy is railroaded into helping an unassertive comedienne, and finds love and acceptance through stand-up comedy.
A blue chip, continent-wide series ranging from Australia's highest snow peaks to the depths of the frigid and wild southern seas; from its last populations of wild numbats to its largest diorama of giant cuttlefish. It's a land of diverse beauty, that delights and surprises. The series both entertains and deepens our understanding of how the natural world is made up of not just unique species, but distinct individuals, whose lives are far from predictable.
What's grime music? Do superfoods have to taste awful? What's the difference between Grindr and Tinder? Barry Humphries and a team of senior investigative reporters provide an outsider's perspective of life in 2016, through reports, hidden camera experiments and comedy sketches. The results provide a fresh take on the mechanics of British society and culture, and a comedic look at the modern world's attitude to the country's burgeoning OAP population.
This documentary showcases a number of new clips which have recently come to light from sketches which were thought to have been lost forever, some not seen for over 50 years, plus rare footage of routines performed in Australia when Cook and Moore made two episodes of their show, Not Only... But Also..., for the country back in 1971. Rob Brydon narrates this very special programme as Pete and Dud fans, friends and colleagues watch these newly discovered clips in the studio for the very first time. The programme includes contributions from Not Only... But Also... producer Dick Clement, Pete and Dud collaborator Barry Humphries, and long-time fans Richard Ayoade, Josie Lawrence, Will Sharpe and Ronnie Wood as they enjoy the sketches and reflect on the career of one of Britain's best-loved comedy partnerships.
Edina and Patsy are still oozing glitz and glamor, living the high life they are accustomed to; shopping, drinking and clubbing their way around London's trendiest hot-spots. Blamed for a major incident at an uber fashionable launch party, they become entangled in a media storm and are relentlessly pursued by the paparazzi. Fleeing penniless to the glamorous playground of the super-rich, the French Riviera, they hatch a plan to make their escape permanent and live the high life forever more!
Blinky Bill is a little koala with a big imagination. An adventurer at heart, he dreams of leaving the little town of Green Patch and following in his missing father’s footsteps. When Blinky discovers a mysterious marker that hints at his Dad’s whereabouts, he embarks on a journey that takes him beyond the boundary of Green Patch and into the wild and dangerous Outback.
Bilbo Baggins lives a simple life with his fellow hobbits in the shire until the wizard Gandalf arrives and convinces him to join a group of dwarves on a quest to reclaim the kingdom of Erebor. The journey takes Bilbo on a path through treacherous lands swarming with orcs, goblins, and other dangers, not the least of which is an encounter with Gollum and a simple gold ring that is tied to the fate of Middle Earth in ways Bilbo cannot even fathom.
In this Christmas Day special, Michael presents leading comedians including Dara O Briain, the fabulous Dame Edna Everage, and ventriloquist and winner of America's Got Talent Paul Zerdin. Featuring music superstars Ellie Goulding and Tom Jones plus Michael's own inimitable style of comedy, the show promises a night packed with festive treats and surprises.
Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson traces the footsteps of Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries, Clive James and Robert Hughes arguing these Australian giants didn't just join the cultural revolution in the 60s - they led it.
Jack Irish is thrown into a world of club owners, drug dealers and killers when he is hired by a judge to find a mysterious red book.
A heart-warming tale about friendship, honour & courage, which sees a young boy become a man as he embarks on a quest to become a knight.
A tale of friendship between two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely, eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max, a forty-four-year old, severely obese man living in New York. In the mid-1970s, a homely, friendless Australian girl of 8 picks a name out of a Manhattan phone book and writes to him; she includes a chocolate bar. He writes back, with chocolate. Thus begins a 20-year correspondence. Will the two ever meet face to face?
Aging artist and scholar Barry is disenchanted with his existence - disillusioned by his sexless marriage to a televangelist, and repulsed by her brand of easy-to-swallow self-help Christianity. In dire need of an outlet he turns to Irina, a Russian immigrant and prostitute. Seeking better lives, both Barry and Irina find strength in each other as they seek mutual salvation.
As Australian cinema broke through to international audiences in the 1970s through respected art house films like Peter Weir's "Picnic At Hanging Rock," a new underground of low-budget exploitation filmmakers were turning out considerably less highbrow fare. Documentary filmmaker Mark Hartley explores this unbridled era of sex and violence, complete with clips from some of the scene's most outrageous flicks and interviews with the renegade filmmakers themselves.
I'd Do Anything was a 2008 talent show-themed television series produced by the BBC in the United Kingdom and broadcast on BBC One. It premièred on 15 March 2008. The show searched for a new, unknown lead to play Nancy and three young performers who will take it in turns to play Oliver in a West End revival of the British musical Oliver!. The show, named after the song "I'd Do Anything", was hosted by Graham Norton with Andrew Lloyd Webber again overseeing the programme, together with theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh. In January 2008, John Barrowman confirmed he would be taking part in the show. The BBC also confirmed in late February 2008 that Barry Humphries would join Barrowman and Denise Van Outen on the judging panel of the show. Auditions for the show began in January 2008, with the show airing on BBC One throughout March, April and May 2008. In the final, on 31 May, Jodie Prenger was announced as the winner of the series.
We Are Most Amused was a gala event held at the New Wimbledon Theatre on 12 November 2008 in honour of the 60th birthday of Charles, Prince of Wales, in aid of The Prince's Trust. Prince Charles attended the event with his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and younger son Prince Harry. The show had a similar format to the Royal Variety Show and showcased a variety of comedy acts. The performance was televised by ITV to the public on 15 November 2008. Robin Williams made his first UK stage appearance in more than 25 years. Tickets were sold to the general public and the event sold out in one hour.
The Dame Edna Treatment was a British, ITV talk show created by Barry Humphries and starring his characters Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson. It aired on ITV at various times. The theme tune was written and performed by Robin Gibb. It was based upon the 1997 British talk show Dr Dame Edna Kisses It Better. It is set in Dame Edna's health-spa, where her celebrity guests have come for some "treatment". Viewing figures varied from 2.5m according to Digital Spy.
Da Kath and Kim Code is a 2005 Australian comedy telemovie made by the creators of Kath and Kim. After three series of Kath and Kim (2002, 2003 and 2004), Gina Riley and Jane Turner initially planned to take 2005 off from television. But in July, they announced that they would be writing and filming a 90-minute telemovie. The telemovie screened in Australia and New Zealand in November and December 2005 respectively. The movie aired on 27 November 2005, and was the ABCs top rated program for 2005, achieving an average audience of 2.1 million and a peak audience of 2.4 million.
The Secret Policeman benefit shows for Amnesty International brought together comedy grand masters - from Python and Beyond the Fringe - and performers then relatively unknown, like Rowan Atkinson. Narrated by Dawn French, the programme includes interviews with many of the comedians and musicians who took part: John Cleese, Stephen Fry, Michael Palin, Sting, Lenny Henry and many more. The shows and their stars had a huge effect on modern British comedy. There are few comics today whose careers have not been heavily influenced by the anarchic and surreal humour of these events.
Nemo, an adventurous young clownfish, is unexpectedly taken from his Great Barrier Reef home to a dentist's office aquarium. It's up to his worrisome father Marlin and a friendly but forgetful fish Dory to bring Nemo home -- meeting vegetarian sharks, surfer dude turtles, hypnotic jellyfish, hungry seagulls, and more along the way.
Recorded live at the State Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre on the 15th of August 2003. Contains the hilarious on-stage antics of Dame Edna Everage, Sir Les Patterson and Sandy Stone.
The Charles Dickens story of Nicholas Nickleby, a young boy in search of a better life for his recently torn-apart family. A young compassionate man struggles to save his family and friends from the abusive exploitation of his coldheartedly grasping uncle.
A con artist escapes a deal gone wrong in New York and winds up in the Aussie outback in a strange town whose inhabitants are an oddball collection of misfits.
Pixie is cursed with turning into a Pterodactyl when her husband is caught messing with bones on an ancient burial ground. Her husband, children, friends, and neighbours must come to terms with Pixie's new "look". Her only chance to return to her normal state is to find the shaman who inflicted the curse on her.
Zany adventure that follows The Spice Girls and their entourage (mostly fictional characters) - manager Clifford, his assistant Deborah, and filmmaker Piers (who is trying to shoot a documentary on "the real Spice Girls").
Successful playwright Felix Webb has a new play, 'The Hit Man', in rehearsal. Directed by his old friend Humphrey, it is already being hailed as a masterpiece; but Felix can't enjoy his success. He has fallen passionately in love with Hilary, a beautiful, fiesty young actress, and is preparing to desert his perfect family, his wife Elena and three lively children. His intolerable situation is further complicated when Humphrey casts Hilary as one of the leads in 'The Hit Man'. Enter Robin Grange, a charismatic young Hollywood actor making his London theatre debut. Robin is attractive, charming and dangerous, and soon inveigles his way into everyone's life. He ingratiates himself with the cast and, quickly grasping Felix's dilemma, sets about weaving his web of mischief. He suggests that if he were to seduce Elena, she would be distracted from Felix's affair, regain her self respect, and perhaps even willingly part from the unfaithful husband to whom she clings...
The life and death of the legendary Ludwig van Beethoven. Beside all the work he is known for, the composer once wrote a famous love letter to a nameless beloved and the movie tries to find out who this beloved was. Not easy as Beethoven has had many women in his life.
Joan delivers her biting tongue to the Queen and her country.
Dame Edna's Hollywood is an American series starring Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage in a spoof of Hollywood talk shows.
In 1981, Gerd Heidemann (Jonathan Pryce), a war correspondent and reporter with the German magazine Stern, makes what he believes is the literary and historical scoop of the century: the personal diaries of Adolf Hitler. Over the next two years, Heidemann and the senior management figures at Stern secretly pay 10 million German marks to a mysterious 'Dr Fischer' (Alexei Sayle) for the sixty volumes of 'Hitler's diaries'. However, to the dismay of all, it is discovered after the publication of first extract that the diaries are crude forgeries, faked by Stuttgart criminal Konrad Kujau.
The gloriously glamorous Dame Edna entertains a celebrity audience in this 1988 special.
Fat middle aged 24/7 drunkard Les Patterson represents Australia at the UN where his fart literally incinerates an Arab ambassador. Patterson is reassigned to the Middle East so he can be tortured to death by the country he insulted. Patterson's arrival is the prefect distract of a coup and he is spared. At a bar Patterson meets a bio weapons scientist who's developed a horrific disease for the KGB whom plan to distribute it to the Pentagon via toilet seats. Patterson of course is far too drunk to understand anything happening and teams up with Dane Edna to save the world.
The Dame Edna Experience is a British television comedy talk-show hosted by Dame Edna Everage. It ran for twelve regular episodes on ITV, plus two Christmas specials. The first seven aired for the first time in 1987, the next seven in 1989. It was directed by Ian Hamilton and Alasdair MacMillan and produced by London Weekend Television. Regulars on the program, besides Dame Edna, were her "bridesmaid" Madge Allsop and Robin Houston who was the announcer, with orchestra conducted and arranged by Laurie Holloway. Each program featured several celebrity guests, usually three, but some programs included up to eight guests. There would also be other invited "guests" like Kurt Waldheim and Imelda Marcos who once introduced at stage right would fall victim to a trap door or something similar and fail to make it to their chair. The entire series was released on DVD by BBC Video in June 2004, and can now also be purchased as a complete set including the Christmas specials and the three An Audience with Dame Edna specials, plus other material. The series was released for Region 2 by Network DVD in the UK in 2007, as a 4-disc set. For reasons unknown, the Region 2 release does not include the 1989 Christmas special "The Dame Edna Satellite Experience" that ended the second series and featured Ursula Andress, Yehudi Menuhin, and Robert Kilroy-Silk. It does, however, include the one-off 1990 Christmas special A Night On Mount Edna with guests Mel Gibson, Charlton Heston, Gina Lollobrigida and Julio Iglesias.
Dr. Fischer has an unusual hobby - to expose human greed. How much humiliation will his fellow man endure enticed by valuable presents? Dignity for money! Death for money?
As much a parody of the typical BBC documentary style as an extravagant curtsy to Dame Edna Everage, Housewife Superstar. The Dame is known mostly through her special broadcast in 1983; in Britain s/he is a household name. This 1984 birthday tribute is a deeply probing investigative profile of one of the world's spookiest celebrities.
Following the success of the 1979 show and the financial benefits accruing to Amnesty from the spin-off movie, TV special and record albums – Cleese, Lewis and Walker planned the next show to be a more spectacular event. Cleese focused on broadening the comedic talent to be presented at the show. In addition to the Amnesty show stalwarts drawn from the Oxbridge/Monty Python/Beyond The Fringe orbit, he invited newcomers such as Rowan Atkinson’s colleagues from the BBC TV show Not the Nine O'Clock News including Pamela Stephenson and Griff Rhys Jones; comedian Victoria Wood and regional comic Jasper Carrott. Lewis secured a return appearance by Billy Connolly and a debut appearance by "alternative" comedian Alexei Sayle who Lewis had recently discovered and was managing. Building on the success of Pete Townshend's 1979 appearance Lewis recruited other rock musicians to perform at the 1981 show including Sting, Phil Collins, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Donovan and Bob Geldof.
Janet and Brad Majors, unhappily married, are separated after appearing on a game show. Janet becomes a superstar while Brad is thrown into a mental hospital. But what does fast food magnate Farley Flavors have up his sleeve?
Using archival film, aerial photography, stills, prints and contemporary footage, this documentary presents the city of Melbourne and its lifestyle. Looks at the unique Victorian architecture that transformed Melbourne from a tent city during the Gold Rush to a modern and prosperous city. Captures the vibrant streetscapes, the trams, the elaborate arcades and some of the institutions that cater to Melbourne's elite such as the Georges store and the Melbourne Club.
A 1981 documentary looking at the Cult following of the Rocky Horror show and introducing the sequel "Shock Treatment".
Dame Edna Everage takes questions from a celebrity audience about her life and career.
The Getting of Wisdom is based on the 1910 novel by Henry Handel Richardson (born Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson). Her novel is thought to be an account of her own schooldays at the Presbyterian Ladies College in Melbourne. The film is about a young girl, Laura Tweedle-Rambotham who grew up in the outback, and at around the age of 14, is sent off by her poor mother who has scrimped and saved for her to go to a prestigious women’s private college in Melbourne, the Presbyterian Ladies College.
The first of the Amnesty International comedy benefit galas. The title is a play on the phrase at Her Majesty's pleasure (the show was performed at Her Majesty's Theatre, London). This show came to be considered part of the Secret Policeman's Ball series of shows that it inspired, although it pre-dated the first show in the series by three years. The event was organized by a team of three: Monty Python member John Cleese, Amnesty's Assistant Director Peter Luff and Transatlantic Records executive Martin Lewis. It featured the cream of Britain's comedic talent of the era, setting a precedent that would inspire many subsequent Amnesty galas...
Macarthy is a country town football champ who is kidnapped in a neon lit helicopter by tyrant Colonel Ball-Miller, the tycoon president of the South Melbourne football club.
Percy, the man with the world's first penis transplant, discovers that there is a chemical in the city's water that makes men impotent.
Barry McKenzie's Aunt Edna is kidnapped by Count Von Plasma, the vampire head of an isolated Eastern European dictatorship who mistakes her for the Queen of England and thinks that kidnapping her will draw tourists to his country. Barry and his mates set out to rescue her and bring her back to Australia.
Barry McKenzie sets off for England with his aunt, Edna Everage, to advance his cultural education. Bazza is an innocent abroad, fond of beer, Bondi and beautiful sheilas, but he soon settles into the Australian ghetto in Earls Court, where his old mate Curly has a flat.
A shy young man is hired by an ad agency to conduct a survey on sex in Australia. The somewhat clueless young man investigates homosexuality, transvestites, prostitution, and strip clubs along with every other variant on the "norm". While doing his interviews he meets celebrities, self proclaimed sex experts, prostitutes, female impersonators, pop stars, actors, and legislators as well as self appointed morals guardians.
A housewife, bored with her bra-manufacturer husband, who spends most of his time obsessed with classical music, strikes up an affair with one of his employees whom she hides in the attic--something both she and the lover find quite a suitable arrangement.
Stanley is infatuated with Margaret, the statuesque waitress who works with him. He meets George Spiggott AKA the devil and sells his soul for 7 wishes, which Stanley uses to try and make Margaret his own first as an intellectual, then as a rock star, then as a wealthy industrialist. As each fails, he becomes more aware of how empty his life had been and how much more he has to live for.
Noel Edmonds, Keith Chegwin, John Craven and Maggie Philbin reunite for a one-off edition of the Saturday morning classic Swap Shop to celebrate its 30th anniversary.
Dame Edna's Neighbourhood Watch was a comic game show created by Barry Humphries for ITV.
