Stella Street (2004)

Directed by

Peter Richardson

Genre

comedy television program

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 20m

Rated

18

Rating

6.4 of 10 from 5 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This is a comedy mockumentary about a street in Surbiton where many famous celebrities have moved in together. The story follows these celebrity characters through everyday situations, using exaggerated impressions for laughs.

satiricalabsurdplayfulmockumentarylightheartedimpression-drivennostalgic

What happens

Stella Street is a British television comedy programme, originally screened in four series on BBC Two between 22 December 1997 and 11 December 2001. It takes the form of a mockumentary filmed on a camcorder, based on the fantastical premise that a group of British and American celebrities have all decided to move into Stella Street in Surbiton (actually Hartswood Road, London, W12). The show (and subsequent film) was conceived and written by John Sessions, Phil Cornwell and Peter Richardson (who also directed). The main characters are played by Sessions, Cornwell and Ronni Ancona. The characters themselves are impressions of famous celebrities such as Marlon Brando, Michael Caine, Jack Nicholson, and, idiosyncratically, UK football pundit Jimmy Hill. Stella Street's depiction of celebrities is mainly rooted in the popular stereotypes surrounding them. For example, Stella Street's Jack Nicholson is an inveterate womaniser, drug taker, and has a tacky line in Hawaiian shirts. Michael Caine is seen as an awkward wanna-be cognoscente in horn-rimmed glasses and a shock of ginger hair. Dirk Bogarde is a posh buffoon only interested in his rose garden and Country Life magazine. Al Pacino is deluded that he is a "tall actor, like Danny DeVito and Dustin Hoffman", despite the viewer knowing that he (and the others) are of short stature. Joe Pesci is portrayed in the light of his most well-known roles in violent gangster films, while Jimmy Hill inevitably appears dull when talking about the FA Cup Final to plainly uninterested greater celebrities. Sessions and Cornwell also play other non-celebrity roles including elderly housekeeper and lifelong Stella Street resident Mrs Huggett, couple-from-hell Pam and Graham Slurry, dopey builder Dean Barraclough and the potentially murderous gardener Len MacMonotony. The show returned for a "fifth" series in 2008 on the comedy website log.tv, but this consists of only seven five-minute pieces of John Sessions, Phil Cornwell and Peter Richardson talking about featured clips from the original series. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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