Eric Sykes
Birthday: 1923-05-04 Place of Birth: Oldham, Lancashire, England, UK
Synopsis
'Eric Sykes' started as a radio scriptwriter but he soon found he could perform as well as write. The slight handicap of being very hard of hearing doesn't interfere with his wonderful comic timing. The spectacles he wears have no lenses but contain a bone conducting hearing aid.
Acting
The Others
Grace is a religious woman who lives in an old house kept dark because her two children, Anne and Nicholas, have a rare sensitivity to light. When the family begins to suspect the house is haunted, Grace fights to protect her children at any cost in the face of strange events and disturbing visions.
Splitting Heirs
A member of the English upper class dies, leaving his estate and his business to an American, whom he thinks is his son who was lost as a baby and then found again. An Englishman who thinks he is an Indian comes to believe that he is actually the heir. He comes to hate the American who is his boss, his friend, and the man who has stolen the woman after whom he lusts.
The Boys in Blue
Sgt. Cannon (Tommy Cannon) and PC Ball (Bobby Ball) run the police station in the quiet town of Little Botham. When the station is threatened with closure due to a lack of crime, they decide to invent some crimes to justify their existence. When they try to steal a painting from a local rich businessman (Roy Kinnear), they accidently stumble across a gang of real art thieves who have just stolen £1 million worth of paintings. It is up to the two bungling cops to stop them escaping with their haul.
If You Go Down in the Woods Today
A Boy Scout troupe led by their scoutmaster (Sykes) is on a field trip to a seemingly-peaceful English woodland. However, the woods are actually teeming with strange characters, some of whom turn out to be disguised police officers and others criminals. The police are searching for £2,000,000 in stolen banknotes and hope that the criminals will lead them to them. The criminals, on the other hand, are aware that the police are looking for them and doing their best to avoid betraying the location of their stash.
The Plank
Classic short British comedy, full of stars, about two workmen delivering planks to a building site. This is done with music and a sort of "wordless dialogue" which consists of a few mumbled sounds to convey the appropriate emotion. TV remake of the 1967 short.
Sykes
Sykes is a British sitcom that aired on BBC 1 from 1972 to 1979. Starring Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques, it was written by Sykes, who had previously starred with Jacques in Sykes and A... and Sykes and a Big, Big Show. Forty-three of the 1970s colour episodes were remakes of scripts for the 1960s black and white series, such as "Bus" based on 'Sykes and a Following' from 1964 and the episode "Stranger" with guest star Peter Sellers based on 'Sykes and a Stranger' from 1961.
Sykes had the same premise as Sykes and A... with Sykes, Jacques, Richard Wattis and Deryck Guyler reprising their former identical roles. The series was brought to an end by the death of Hattie Jacques of a heart attack on 6 October 1980.
Shalako
Sean Connery is Shalako, a guide in the old West who has to rescue an aristocratic British hunting party from Indians and bandits.
The Plank
A slapstick comedy about two workmen delivering planks to a building site. This is done with music and a sort of "wordless dialogue" which consists of a few mumbled sounds to convey the appropriate emotion.
The Liquidator
Spy spoof about Boysie Oakes, a British secret agent who specialises in Liquidating. In actual fact he contracts out the work and pretends it was himself. This leads to complications.
Rotten to the Core
Rogues Jelly Knight, Scapa Flood, and Lennie the Dip leave prison expecting boss The Duke to have their stash ready to share out. Instead, Duke's girl Sara gives them the news Duke is dead and the money gone on nursing care. They soon discover that Duke is actually running Hope Springs Nature Clinic with the help of most of the local villains. Very strange - and the nearby army camp and Sara's encouragement of Lieutenant Vine would seem to be no coincidence either. Written by Jeremy Perkins
Heavens Above!
A naive but caring prison chaplain, who happens to have the same last name as an upper class cleric, is by mistake appointed as vicar to a small and prosperous country town. His belief in charity and forgiveness sets him at odds with the conservative and narrow-minded locals, and he soon creates social ructions by appointing a black dustman as his churchwarden, taking in a gypsy family, and persuading the local landowner to provide free food for the church to distribute free to the people of the town. When the congregation leaders realise the mistake and call for the Church of England to remove him, this turns out to be a very, very difficult issue - until one clergyman realises that a British project to send a man into space is in need of an astronaut...
Very Important Person
Comedy set in World War Two, starring James Robertson-Justice and Leslie Phillips. Sir Ernest Pease (Robertson-Justice) is a self-important scientist who is sent undercover on a bombing mission to monitor the effectiveness of his latest invention, a new-fangled radar. When the plane is attacked, he parachutes to safety - only to be sent to a POW camp, where he takes on the alias of Lieutenant Farrow. There, the somewhat happy-go-lucky bunch of Brits suspect their acerbic new fellow prisoner of being a spy, and all sorts of culture clashes and misunderstandings ensue.
