The Last Detective

Paul Slippery (Hugh Laurie), a forty-something doctor, lives with his wife Estelle and three sex-obsessed sons Rory, Daniel, and Edwin in the west London suburb of Putney. On top of coping with family pressures and a mid-life crisis, Paul discovers his unusual ability to hear other peoples' inner thoughts.

This series was set in a fictional Yorkshire town and based on the books by David Nobbs, the creator of Reginald Perrin and Henry Pratt. Each episode took place at a different social function (a "do") and followed the changing lives of two families, the working-class Simcocks and the middle-class Rodenhursts, together with their respective friends, Rodney and Betty Sillitoe, and Neville Badger.

When Major Sinclair Yeates leaves his home in England to work as the Irish Resident Magistrate, he finds that the justice system needs tempering somewhat to suit the local needs - and that not everything is as straight-forward as it appears on the surface.

In the fictional town of New Burbage, legendary theatrical madman Geoffrey Tennant returns to the New Burbage Theatre Festival, the site of his greatest triumph and most humiliating failure, to assume the artistic directorship after the sudden death of his mentor, Oliver Welles. When Geoffrey arrives he finds that Oliver is still there, in spirit anyway, and with his guidance (and often in spite of it) Geoffrey attempts to reconcile with his past while wrestling the festival back from the marketing department. Despite a bitter leading lady, a clueless leading man, and a scheming general manager, he manages to stage a remarkable production of Hamlet -- the play that drove him mad.

This show is a collection of tales that make for "ripping good" television. Sir Michael Palin played a different lead character in each yarn.