All nine episodes from the fourth series of the BBC comedy starring Matt LeBlanc, Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig. Sean and Beverly Lincoln (Mangan and Greig) are co-writers of American sitcom 'Pucks!' with the lead role played by Matt LeBlanc (as himself). In this series, Sean and Beverly are summoned back to LA to film six more episodes of 'Pucks!' as they also try to launch new show 'The Opposite of Us'. Meanwhile, Matt experiences financial troubles after being conned by his accountant and, as a result, considers remarrying his ex-wife.

This book is a systematic attempt to establish Sheridan as a major figure in the history of English comedy. Leading scholars address Sheridan's role not only as an outstanding playwright, but also as the manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and his subsequent career as a Member of Parliament. The essays examine the theatrical world in which Sheridan worked, discuss his major plays, and include a modern director's observations on the production of his work today. This is combined with an important re-evaluation of Sheridan's achievements as a master of rhetoric in the political arena, to provide a much needed contemporary assessment of this multifaceted man and his work.

Musical revue Words by David Crane, Seth Friedman and Marta Kauffman. Music by William Dreskin, Joel Philip Friedman, Seth Friedman, Alan Menken, Steven Schwartz and Michael Skloff. Characters: 3 male, 3 female Unit set. This is a wonderful collection of songs about people who place lonely hearts ads: lonely people looking for that certain someone. In other words: Personals is about Most of Us, about the unending search for love in the Post Me Decade. "Are you looking for that "special' night where everything is going to be peachy, and you are going to meet the swellest little show of your dreams?...Personals is a winner, destined to find, apart from anything else, its own special place on the singles scene, the date show for the young in heart, the Jacques Brel of the '80s."-- N.Y. Post.

A groundbreaking work of Romantic biography; David Crane's book is an astonishingly original examination of Byron, and a radical approach to biography. Crane focuses on the lifelong feud between Augusta - Byron's half-sister with whom he had a passionate affair - and Annabella, his society wife. Recreating a meeting between the two, years after Byron's death - the Romantic 'High Noon' - he explores the emotional and sexual truth and the human vulnerability that lie at the heart of the Byron story. 'The Kindness of Sisters' is not only rigorous in its scholarship, but also superbly compelling drama. Crane's book combines passion, revenge and recrimination in 19th-century Britain with all the intensity of a Greek tragedy.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. In this second edition of Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor David Crane emphasises the liveliness of the play in stage terms. He also claims that this citizen comedy was an expression of Shakespeare's fundamental understanding of human life, conveyed centrally in the character of Falstaff. In the process he examines Shakespeare's free and vigorous use of different linguistic worlds. An account of the play's textual history concludes that at the time of its earliest performances Shakespeare's text was being adapted to specific theatrical needs, and as much in the possession of its players as of its author.

The First World War Diaries of Manchester Pals Captain Charlie May - written and kept in secret and published now for the first time. A born storyteller, Charlie May's vivid eye for detail and warm good humour brings his experience in the trenches (and the experience of millions of ordinary men like him) to life for a 21st-century readership. Captain Charlie May was killed, aged 27, in the early morning of 1st July 1916, leading the men of 'B Company', 22nd Manchester Service Battalion (the Manchester Pals) into action on the first day of the Somme. This tolerant and immensely likeable man had been born in New Zealand and - against King's regulations - he kept a diary in seven small, wallet-sized pocket books. A journalist before the war and a born storyteller, May's diaries give a vivid picture of battalion life in and behind the trenches during the build-up to the greatest battle fought by a British army and are filled with the friendships and tensions, the home-sickness, frustrations, delays and endless postponements, the fog of ignorance, the combination of boredom and terror to which every man that has ever fought could testify. His diaries reflect on the progress of the war, tell jokes - good and bad, give details of horse-rides along the Somme valley, afternoons with a fishing rod, lunch in Amiens, a gastronomic celebration of Christmas 1915 and concerts in 'Whiz Bang Hall'. He describes battles not just with the enemy, but with rats, crows and on the makeshift football pitch - all recorded with a freshness that brings these stories home as if for the first time. The diaries are also written as an extended and deeply-moving love letter to his wife Maude and baby daughter Pauline. 'I do not want to die', he wrote - 'Not that I mind for myself. If it be that I am to go, I am ready. But the thought that I may never see you or our darling baby again turns my bowels to water.' Fresh, eloquent and warm, these diaries were kept secret from the censor and were delivered to his wife after his death by a fellow soldier in Charlie's company. Edited by his great-nephew and published for the first time, these diaries give an unforgettable account of the war that took Charlie May's life, and millions of others like him.

First World War Poets by Alan Judd and David Crane. This collection of short biographies of those remarkable men who sought to record and convey the horrors of the Great War in poetry draws on letters, memoirs and portraits in a variety of media. Key poems by each of the poets are reproduced in full, and familiar images of Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon are presented along with the haunting faces of lesser-known poets such as Isaac Rosenberg and Ivor Gurney to provide a new approach to one of the most devastating events of the last century. Published to coincide with the centenary of the start of the Great War.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. In this second edition of Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor David Crane emphasises the liveliness of the play in stage terms. He also claims that this citizen comedy was an expression of Shakespeare's fundamental understanding of human life, conveyed centrally in the character of Falstaff. In the process he examines Shakespeare's free and vigorous use of different linguistic worlds. An account of the play's textual history concludes that at the time of its earliest performances Shakespeare's text was being adapted to specific theatrical needs, and as much in the possession of its players as of its author.

This book is a systematic attempt to establish Sheridan as a major figure in the history of English comedy. Leading scholars address Sheridan's role not only as an outstanding playwright, but also as the manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and his subsequent career as a Member of Parliament. The essays examine the theatrical world in which Sheridan worked, discuss his major plays, and include a modern director's observations on the production of his work today. This is combined with an important re-evaluation of Sheridan's achievements as a master of rhetoric in the political arena, to provide a much needed contemporary assessment of this multifaceted man and his work.

Escape From Reality is a collection of short stories encompassing several genres of fiction such as magic realism, fantasy, romance, mystery, science fiction and fantasy. In this book there are heroes and villains, moral and physical challenges, time travel, vampires, alternate worlds and nonstop action that brings forth the true measure of a man. It's time to escape from reality...

3,500 A.D. Thanks to the revolutionary gravity wings technology, mankind was finally able to leave the confines of the Earth's solar system and seek out earth type planets capable of supporting human life. Professor Peter Blackwood, a former soldier, planetary explorer and teacher is a citizen of a powerful interstellar Confederation. Deciding to retire from decades of working in space and confronting hostile alien environments, he seeks a well-deserved retirement on an exotic planet of New Caledonia, where he plans to settle down and start a family. But on the way to his new home a mysterious energy cloud snatches him from his hyperspace tunnel, takes control of his ship and throws him into another part of the galaxy where he is forced to land on an alien planet many light years away from home. The alien planet to Blackwood's surprise does contain life, an intelligent human life. Saved from native predators by an enigmatic young female with godlike powers, he learns that humans on planet Enigma are all descendants of the original crews of starships forced to land on this planet by the red cloud centuries ago. And on Enigma human beings are divided into commoners and powerful overlords, humans with immense powers of creation and destruction. Blackwood's arrival was foretold by an ancient prophecy. Forced into a dangerous sociopolitical game by a powerful alien intelligence, Blackwood has no choice but to transform himself from a scientist into a revolutionary. With millions of innocent lives at stake failure is not an option.

Living in 22nd century America fifty years after the Second Civil War, detective Nina Tarot is a member of SPEAR, Special Police Emergency Advanced Response, an elite crime fighting unit that knows no equal. Robots are an integral part of human society, assiting mankind in exploration of space and oceans as well as construction and law enforcement. By law it is forbidden to advance the power of Artificial Intelligence beyond the prescribed limits and build machines that look and act like humans. But someone broke that law, declaring war against the organized crime. In pursuit of a ruthlessly efficient and elusive assassin who looks like a young teenage girl, Nina suspects that the killer may not be human at all. Following the trail of blood, Nina will come face to face with a shocking conspiracy that stretches back to the last days of the Second Civil War. But Nina's own success as a SPEAR agent is based on her own dark secret that if revealed will taint her life and honor forever.

Although it was written shortly before or after Queen Elizabeth's death
in 1603 and performed by the boy company at Blackfriars, this play
foreshadows the light ladies and callous gallants of Restoration
comedy. Passion is a scourge, love is humiliation, and friends might as
well be enemies. Freevill discards his concubine Franceschina and, for
a joke, sets his straight-laced friend Malheureux on to her, who falls
for her and promises to carry out her revenge on Freevill by killing
him. The play in the theatre, which is fully imagined in the
introduction to this edition, impresses on the audience the
spuriousness of rigid moral persuasions, especially when they are tried
by fits of sexual passion.

Dryden's audiences in 1671, both aristocratic and middle-class, would
have been quick to respond to the themes of disputed royal succession,
Francophilia and loyalty among subjects in his most successful
tragicomedy. In the tragic plot, written in verse, young Leonidas has
to struggle to assert his place as the rightful heir to the throne of
Sicily and to the hand of the usurper's daughter. In the comic plot,
written in prose, two fashionable couples (much more at home in London
drawing-rooms than at the Sicilian court) play at switching partners in
the 'modern' style. The introduction of this edition argues that
Dryden's own ambivalence about King Charles and his entourage, on whom
he came to rely more on more for patronage, manifests itself in both
plots; most of all perhaps in the excessively Francophile Melantha,
whose affectation cannot quite hide her endearing joie-de-vivre.

The Critic was Sheridan's response to a very specific political and
theatrical situation. In the summer of 1779, a Franco-Spanish invasion
seemed imminent and patriotic fervour superseded party divisions and
personal animosities. The Critic satirises the panic of the summer in
the form of the comically misconceived tragedy 'The Spanish Armada'
that is in rehearsal in the second and third acts, but The Critic ends
with genuine patriotic feeling. This edition traces both the political
and the theatrical objects of Sheridan's satire and discusses its
reliance (and improvement) on earlier meta-theatrical burlesques like
The Duke of Buckingham's Restoration romp The Rehearsal.