Beat Generation New Yorker Lenny Bruce shocked the world, and became the blueprint for a new kind of stand up comedy, with his profanities, attitudes toward drugs, irreverence, anti-establishmentism and general anarchistic demeanour. He faced years of consequent police and legal harassment. find out more...

Sir Arthur Greeb-Streebling, the Dagenham Dialogues, the Leaping Nuns, the Superthunderstingraycars, it's all here, and plenty more besides, in Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's ‘ Not Only But Also', the seminal BBC sketch show that ran from 1965 to 1970. PG rated genius. find out more...

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse's finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko, played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine, who works as a bar hostess in Tokyo's very modern post-war Ginza district. Sly, resourceful, but trapped, Keiko comes to embody the conflicts and struggles of a woman trying to establish her independence in a male-dominated society. A profoundly moving masterpiece. find out more...

Whoopi Goldberg is like a hip, Afro-American Joyce Grenfell. Her monologues are masterpieces of characterisation and acute observation - always funny and moving.

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