British Comedy Guide

Steve Bendelack

  • Director

Press clippings

"I'm appalled we let the blackface happen": Little Britain's messy legacy, 20 years on

Two decades after it moved to BBC Three, the commissioner and producer behind the sitcom explain how it struck comedy gold - and why it wouldn't get made today.

Tom Nicholson, i Newspaper, 16th September 2023

Susannah Fielding joins The Cockfields

Susannah Fielding has joined the cast of The Cockfields. She will play new girlfriend of Simon in the second series of Gold's sitcom. Gregor Fisher, Michele Dotrice and Greg McHugh also join the cast.

British Comedy Guide, 14th May 2021

TV review: The Cockfields, episode three, Gold

This has been a real gem. It's a shame it is only a trilogy, but in those three episodes we have really got to know the Cockfield clan. Yes, they might be a bunch of Isle of Wight oddballs, but they are - mostly - a bunch of very sympathetic, engaging Isle of Wight oddballs.

Bruce Dessau, Beyond The Joke, 14th November 2019

Gold orders new sitcom The Cockfields

Channel Gold has ordered The Cockfields, a new sitcom about a family on the Isle of Wight. It's written by Joe Wilkinson and David Earl and stars Wilkinson and Diane Morgan.

British Comedy Guide, 3rd June 2019

Preview: The League of Gentlemen specials

The League of Gentlemen return with three anniversary specials next week, and TVO has been lucky enough to take a sneaky peek at the first two instalments.

Paul Holmes, The Velvet Onion, 12th December 2017

Ill Behaviour: Showtime importing BBC comedy-thriller

Showtime is importing the BBC comedy-thriller Ill Behaviour stateside, premiering the six-part series as early as next month.

Ray Flook, Bleeding Cool, 4th October 2017

Details revealed about new BBC comedy Ill Behaviour

Details have been revealed about Ill Behaviour, the new comedy drama by Sam Bain about a man with cancer.

British Comedy Guide, 16th February 2017

Inbetweeners creators film new BBC comedy drama Ill Behaviour

Iain Morris and Damon Beesley, the creators of The Inbetweeners, are working on a new comedy drama called Ill Behaviour.

British Comedy Guide, 10th November 2016

Returning to BBC3 four years after her critically-acclaimed sitcom Pulling was axed to make way for 17 more series' of Two Pints of Lager, Sharon Horgan recovers her form with Dead Boss, a satisfyingly silly prison-set sitcom co-written with comedian Holly Walsh.

Beginning with a double-bill, it stars Horgan as Helen, a woman wrongly sentenced to 12 years in the chokey for the murder of her boss. Her thwarted efforts to clear her name and survive within this madhouse form the spine of a likeable farce, which, as directed by The League of Gentlemen's Steve Bendelack, has a cartoonish quality vaguely redolent of that other (good) BBC3 sitcom, Ideal.

Merrily tweaking all the usual prison clichés, it's populated by the likes of a leering Top Dog - notorious for once paper-cutting an inmate to death with a copy of TV Quick - and Jennifer Saunders as a faux-mumsy Governess. In fact the cast is uniformly strong, with Geoffrey McGivern proving particularly amusing as Helen's hopeless lawyer.

It's no Porridge, but Dead Boss still succeeds as an enjoyable streak of assured nonsense.

Paul Whitelaw, The Scotsman, 10th June 2012

The League Of Gentlemen: Where are the cast & crew now?

What the cast and crew of The League Of Gentlemen are up to now including Steve Pemberton and Steve Bendelack.

Claire Allfree, Metro, 9th February 2012

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