A Bit of a Do was a British comedy drama series based on the books by David Nobbs. The show starred David Jason and was aired on ITV in 1989. It was made for the ITV network by Yorkshire Television.

The show was set in a fictional Yorkshire town. Each episode took place at a different social function and followed the changing lives of two families, the working-class Simcocks (David Jason, Gwen Taylor, David Thewlis and Wayne Foskett) and the middle-class Rodenhursts (Nicola Pagett, Paul Chapman, Sarah-Jane Holm and Nigel Hastings), together with their respective friends, Rodney and Betty Sillitoe (Tim Wylton and Stephanie Cole), and Neville Badger (Michael Jayston). The series begins with the wedding of Ted and Rita Simcock's son Paul to Laurence and Liz Rodenhurst's daughter Jenny; an event at which Ted and Liz begin an affair. The subsequent fallout from this affair forms the basis for most of the first series.

Series 1

Series 2

Pat Sandys who had produced one of David Nobbs' plays Cupid's Darts was looking for plays for a series called Love and Marriage. The three ideas put forward by David Nobbs were a dentists' dinner dance, a Miss Ball Bearing competition and a diamond wedding. Though the ideas were not used, David Nobbs came up with the idea of having the same characters in different do's. Casting Gwen Taylor as Rita came first. David Nobbs wanted John Thaw and several others to play Ted Simcock, before David Jason was chosen.

A Doll's House (Norwegian: Et dukkehjem; also translated as A Doll House) is a three-act play in prose by the playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premièred at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month.

The play was controversial when first published, as it is sharply critical of 19th century marriage norms.Michael Meyer argues that the play's theme is not women's rights, but rather "the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person." In a speech given to the Norwegian Women's Rights League in 1898, Ibsen insisted that he "must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the women's rights movement," since he wrote "without any conscious thought of making propaganda," his task having been "the description of humanity." The Swedish playwright August Strindberg attacked the play in his volume of short stories Getting Married (1884).

UNESCO inscribed Ibsen's autographed manuscripts of A Doll's House on the Memory of the World Register in 2001, in recognition of their historical value.

Fry and Laurie were a successful English comedy double act, mostly active in the 1980s and 1990s. The duo consisted of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, who met in 1980 through mutual friend Emma Thompson whilst all attended the University of Cambridge. Fry and Laurie have since collaborated on numerous projects together, including Jeeves and Wooster, in which Laurie portrayed Bertie Wooster and Fry portrayed Wooster's valet Jeeves. They also gained prominence through their own sketch show, A Bit of Fry & Laurie.

Since the conclusion of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, both have gone on to have successful solo careers in television, acting and writing, amongst other things though they still remain friends. More recently, Fry and Laurie have expressed interest in a continued partnership and reunited for a retrospective show in 2010 entitled Fry and Laurie Reunited.

On May 14, 2012, Stephen Fry announced on Twitter that he and Hugh Laurie are working on a new project together.

Fry and Laurie have also appeared together in various television advertisements, interviews, audio books and other projects.

James Hugh Calum Laurie, OBE (born 11 June 1959), known as Hugh Laurie (/ˈhjuː ˈlɒri/), is an English actor, voice artist, comedian, writer, musician, recording artist, and director. He first became known as one half of the Fry and Laurie double act, along with his friend and comedy partner Stephen Fry, whom he joined in the cast of Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster from 1987 to 1999.

From 2004 to 2012, he played Dr Gregory House, the protagonist of House, for which he received two Golden Globe awards, two Screen Actors Guild awards, and six Emmy nominations. As of August 2010, Laurie is the highest paid actor in a drama series on US television. He has been listed in the 2011 Guinness Book of World Records as the highest paid actor ever in a TV Drama—earning US$ 700,000 per episode in House—and for being the most watched leading man on television.

Laurie was born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England. The youngest of four children, Laurie has an older brother named Charles and two older sisters named Susan and Janet. He had a somewhat strained relationship with his mother, Patricia (née Laidlaw). His father, Ran Laurie, was a medical doctor who also won an Olympic gold medal in the coxless pairs (rowing) at the 1948 London Games.

Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club.

After a troubled childhood and adolescence, during which he was expelled from a number of schools and eventually spent three months in prison for credit card fraud, he was able to secure a place at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature.

He first came to public attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and took the role of Jeeves (with Laurie playing Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster.

As an actor, Fry played the lead in the film Wilde, was Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, starred as the title character Peter Kingdom in the ITV series Kingdom, has a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the Fox crime series Bones and appeared as rogue TV host Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V For Vendetta. He has also written and presented several documentary series including the 2008 television series Stephen Fry in America, which saw him travelling across all 50 US states. Since 2003 he has been the host of the quiz show QI.