Showing results for "David" in Satire

A Signature Performance: Four-time Emmy Award winner David Hyde Pierce delivers an air of lovable self-importance in his rendition of the classic social satire that remains as fresh today as the day it was published.

Soseki Natsume's comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the foolishness of upper-middle class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him. A classic of Japanese literature, I Am a Cat is one of Soseki's best-known novels. Considered by many as the greatest writer in modern Japanese history, Soseki's I Am a Cat is a classic novel sure to be enjoyed for years to come.

Winner of an Obie and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and directed by Tony nominee Leigh Silverman, Yellow Face is as timely as ever, wrestling with issues of cultural appropriation, complicity, and artistic freedom. It’s brought to life in this audio-only revival by a stunning all-star cast (many playing themselves) led by Daniel Dae Kim.

When the Little Didney Animal Rescue Centre is threatened with closure, the fate of the animals rests entirely on a quiz team from the local pub. The Farmhouse Five, the collective leftovers rejected by the other teams. Can these five quiz team refugees beat 2,000 other teams in a massive quiz chase across the South West of England? The prize is a 1,000 acre estate left in the will of an eccentric millionaire, but the challenge is huge. Not only have the Farmhouse Five never once won their local pub quiz, but now, somebody else isn’t playing fair.

When Shadeys Bank loses another CEO to a scandal, they are desperate to show they’ve reformed. Who better to present their redemption than a country Vicar? Reverend Tom Goodman is ousted from his job as a country Vicar for allowing a homeless family to stay in the church hall. Meanwhile, a major bank is trying to rescue its image after the latest in a long string of financial scandals. It seems like the perfect match, and Goodman is hastily appointed as the bank’s new CEO.

When ex-SAS soldier Michael Purdy comes in front of the judge for hacking the bank account belonging to the Minister for Invalidity Benefits and wiping out his personal wealth, he braces himself for a prison sentence. What Michael doesn’t expect is to be put in charge of a group of offenders and sent to a remote location in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Spain to teach them survival skills as part of their rehabilitation programme. But Michael knows nothing at all about survival skills.

Aging Rock God Jim Sullivan is heading for the quiet life on his tiny newly acquired island, off the coast of Cornwall. That is until he sends a letter to the King of England, announcing his intent to declare independence from the UK and appointing himself king. Determined not to cede one inch of British territory, the UK government dispatches low-level Foreign Office researcher John Cabot to put a stop to Sullivan's ambitions. What they didn't anticipate was Cabot's tenacity for unearthing information they'd rather he didn't, or Sullivan's relentless optimism in his own ideas.

Rose Well Holiday Park needs a hero. This once shining icon of the Great British Holiday Camp is dying and the last residents are more interested in preparing for a zombie apocalypse or fighting off imaginary UFOs than playing crazy golf or bingo. In addition, a foreign bottled water company is attempting to force a sale so they can seize the last asset of Rose Well Park, the Rose Well Spring. What Rose Well Park could probably do without is a hero whose belief in a better tomorrow far outweighs any of his past achievements. But William Fox is all they have.

For a time, Jimmy spent his expat days in Mexico unearthing pre-Columbian artifacts. Now he makes a living doing small trucking jobs and helping out with the occasional missing-person situation. But Jimmy’s laid-back lifestyle is being seriously imposed upon by a ninety-pound stalker named Louise. Add to this a sudden wave of hippies led by a murderous ex-con guru in search of psychic happenings, archaeologists unearthing (illegally) the Mayan tombs, and Louise and her weirdo husband’s quest for UFO sites, and Jimmy’s south-of-the-border existence is in danger.

David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.

Ted Fullilove, aka Mr. Peanut, is not like other Ivy League grads. He shares an apartment with Goldberg, his beloved battery-operated fish, sleeps on a bed littered with yellow legal pads penned with what he hopes will be the next great American novel, and spends the waning malaise-filled days of the Carter administration at Yankee Stadium, waxing poetic while slinging peanuts to pay the rent.

The setting is a comedy club in a small Israeli town. An audience that has come expecting an evening of amusement instead sees a comedian falling apart onstage - an act of disintegration, a man crumbling, as a matter of choice, before their eyes. They could get up and leave or boo and whistle and drive him from the stage, if they were not so drawn to glimpse his personal hell.

Fleeing across England in a fruit shaped van, attending his own wake and shouting the word 'parsnip' at inopportune moments wasn't exactly what Reginald Perrin had planned. But for Reggie, nothing in life is really going to plan. This brand-new dramatisation of David Nobbs's hilarious classic novel follows the adventures of a middle-aged, middle-of-the-road, middle management dessert salesman, as he decides he's finally had enough.

Following an unfortunate encounter with Spanish gin measures and an enthusiastic estate agent, retired special effects engineer Terry England is the proud owner of a nearly completed villa in a new urbanization in Southern Spain. Not quite how he intended to spend his enforced early retirement, Terry nevertheless tries to make the best of his new life. If only the local council can work out which house he actually bought and the leaf blowers would please stop.

Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.

Red York has seen it all: the Maple Leafs’ 45 consecutive Stanley Cups, Toronto’s designation as a United Nations World Heritage Site, the emergence of the Toronto Telegram as the nation’s greatest newspaper. Now, in response to at least two readers’ requests, and with the aid of a ghostwriter whose name he can’t ever remember, the award-winning columnist has penned a definitive history of the city of Toronto in the back half of the 20th century.

When Sam’s wife first tells him about Vitek, a twenty-first-century fertility lab, he sees it as the natural next step in trying to help their future child get a “leg up” in a competitive world. But the more Sam considers the lives that his child could lead, the more he begins to question his own relationships and the choices he has made in his life.

Over the course of his long and distinguished career, God has literally seen it all. And not just seen. In fact, the multi-talented deity has played a pivotal role in many major events, including the Creation of the universe, the entirety of world history, the life of every human being who has ever lived, and the successful transitioning of American Idol into the post-Simon Cowell era. Now, as the earth he has godded so magnificently draws to a Mayan-induced close, God breaks his 1,400-year literary silence with his final masterpiece, The Last Testament.

Dining alone in an elegant Parisian brasserie, accountant Daniel Mercier can hardly believe his eyes when President François Mitterrand sits down to eat at the table next to him. After the presidential party has gone, Daniel discovers that Mitterrand’s black felt hat has been left behind. After a few moments’ soul-searching, Daniel decides to keep the hat as a souvenir of an extraordinary evening. It’s a perfect fit, and as he leaves the restaurant Daniel begins to feel somehow...different.

First there was the insomnia.Then there were the support groups that helped him sleep.Then Marla Singer turned up, muscled in on ascending bowel cancer and ruined everything.Then he met Tyler Durden. Then came Fight Club. Fight Club is the psychological story of a man's descent into an underground world of violence. Mild mannered product recall specialist by day, tortured insomniac by night, our narrator meets Tyler Durden - part-time projectionist, banquet waiter, soap-maker and anarchic genius. Together they create Fight Club.