The
Theatre of the Absurd arrived on television in 1961, with productions of Simpson plays on both British networks.
BBC TV produced a live performance of
One Way Pendulum, now lost, whilst
Granada mounted a shortened version of
A Resounding Tinkle for
ITV. He was invited to contribute to BBC TV’s
That Was The Week That Was, although his sketch, 'Televising Parliament', was dropped due to overruns in the live transmission on 16 November 1963, and has never surfaced. Hot on the heels of his
Summer Holiday success, director
Peter Yates agreed to shoot Simpson’s best known stage play,
One Way Pendulum (1964). Starring
Eric Sykes,
George Cole and a mute
Jonathan Miller, Yates' rendition of the play captured Simpson’s matter-of-fact approach to nonsense but failed at the box office. As the BBC’s Acting Assistant Head of Light Entertainment,
Frank Muir invited Simpson to write for
BBC2 in 1965. The central characters of
Tinkle were expanded into seven half-hours of
Three Rousing Tinkles (1966) and
Four Tall Tinkles (1967), featuring Edwin Apps and Pauline Devaney as Bro and Middie. He followed this with
World in Ferment (1969), a six-part parody of current affairs programming with
John Bird,
Eleanor Bron,
Jack Shepherd and
Angela Thorne, of which no episodes survive. His final series for television was the unsuccessful
Charley’s Grants (1970), co-written with
John Fortune and
John Wells, starring
Hattie Jacques, and produced by
Ian MacNaughton (who produced
Monty Python’s Flying Circus), which is also entirely lost. Plays followed, including a satire on advertising,
Thank You Very Much (1971), and an effective three-hander for
ITV,
Silver Wedding (1974), directed by
Mike Newell. Simpson’s highest-profile production for television was
Elementary, My Dear Watson (1973), a
Sherlock Holmes parody for
BBC One's
Comedy Playhouse starring
John Cleese and
Willie Rushton. It has been screened several times at the
National Film Theatre in London. It is frequently argued that Simpson’s work operates better in small doses (Simpson himself described his only novel called
Man Overboard as one which he expected no-one to be able to read to the end), so it is natural that he should have produced so much sketch material for television.
World in Ferment lent towards this strength, and his skilful monologues for women were seen again in
But Seriously – It’s Sheila Hancock (1972). Other vehicles included
Ned Sherrin's
The Rather Reassuring Programme (1977),
Beryl Reid Says… Good Evening (1968) and
The Dick Emery Show (1977–1980). ==Later activities==