Unless someone's playing some kind of sick joke, it appears that the prolific and successful director Gareth Carrivick, (part) responsible for the likes of The Smoking Room, Beautiful People, Two Pints and This Morning With Richard Not Judy, died this morning.
No word of cause as yet. Very sad news.
R.I.P. if this is true (hopefully not). 
I love loads of his programmes.
Sad.
Serious question. How important is the director to a sitcoms success or failure?
Quite important indeed. No matter the quality of a script, with a poor director even the best performers and writers will struggle. If the case were otherwise, there wouldn't be such a select group of regular directors.
Latest Twitter postings suggest he'd been suffering from Leukemia for a while, and suddenly worsened. Terrible.
And he did direct Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel, so he may have been about to make the jump into films.
Gareth had been fighting leukemia. He is greatly missed.
The Smoking Room was excellent, as was Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel. Sad news.
RIP.
Quote: chipolata @ March 17 2010, 11:42 AM GMTAnd he did direct Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel.
That was, indeed, excellent.
RIP.