Television
Sinden achieved an early wider fame with the non-theatregoing public in 1963 through the Associated Rediffusion series Our Man at St Mark's followed by Our Man from St Mark's. In 1975, he co-starred in the London Weekend Television situation comedy Two's Company, in which he played an English butler, Robert, to Elaine Stritch's American character, Dorothy. Much of the humour derived from the culture clashes between Robert's very stiff-upper-lip Britishness and Dorothy's devil-may-care New York view on life. Two's Company was exceptionally well received in Britain and ran for four seasons until 1979. Stritch and Sinden also sang the theme tune to the programme.
In 1981, Sinden starred in a new Thames Television situation comedy, Never the Twain. He played snooty antiques dealer Simon Peel who lived next door to a competitor Oliver Smallbridge (played by Windsor Davies). The characters hated each other and were horrified when they discovered that their son and daughter were to be married - thus meaning they were related. Despite a lack of critical acclaim, the series proved to be popular with audiences and ran for 11 seasons until 1991. One episode had Sinden being literally picked up by two police officers who were played by his own actor sons.
Other featured television roles included guest-starring in the cult series The Prisoner. From 2001-07 he played the part of senior judge (and father-in-law of the title character) Sir Joseph Channing in Judge John Deed and is the voice of Totally Viral.
Sinden was spoofed on Spitting Image, the British satirical television programme in which famous people were lampooned by caricatured latex puppets. For example, when his puppet, sitting in a restaurant, summons a waiter and asks "Do you serve a ham salad?" the waiter replies "Yes, we serve salad to anyone". His puppet was also frequently shown fawning to the Queen and unsuccessfully requesting a knighthood from her, an honour he did in fact receive in 1997.
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Famous quotes containing the word television:
“The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it!—that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms—nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“His [O.J. Simpson’s] supporters lined the freeway to cheer him on Friday and commentators talked about his tragedy. Did those people see the photographs of the crime scene and the great blackening pools of blood seeping into the sidewalk? Did battered women watch all this on television and realize more vividly than ever before that their lives were cheap and their pain inconsequential?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“In full view of his television audience, he preached a new religion—or a new form of Christianity—based on faith in financial miracles and in a Heaven here on earth with a water slide and luxury hotels. It was a religion of celebrity and showmanship and fun, which made a mockery of all puritanical standards and all canons of good taste. Its standard was excess, and its doctrines were tolerance and freedom from accountability.”
—New Yorker (April 23, 1990)