The TV show Judi Dench refuses to miss an episode of: “She absolutely adores it”
Befitting her status as one of the United Kingdom’s greatest-ever actors, Judi Dench is every bit as accomplished in television as she is treading the boards or lending her gravitas to a feature film.
She did make a regrettable faux pas during one of her earliest small-screen credits, though, after an unfortunate brain fart left her momentarily oblivious to the fact she was working with one of the most influential directors of their era, even if Vittorio De Sica was gracious enough to remind her that he’d made a “little thing called Bicycle Thieves.”
A common trait among actors who achieve success on the silver screen is that they largely leave their TV days behind, with cinema offering more opportunities, prestige, fame, and fortune. However, Dench has never been one of those names, with her longest absence from television since 1959 being a mere five-year sabbatical between 2002 and 2007.
As she tends to do, the Academy Award winner has also hoovered up a hatful of awards for her episodic contributions, claiming four Baftas from a dozen nominations, four Primetime Emmy nods, and a Golden Globe for her TV detours. And yet, the show she loves so much, she felt compelled to write a letter about it wasn’t what anyone would consider hard-hitting drama.
Of course, Dench is no stranger to voicing her opinions on television after taking serious umbrage with The Crown, but the British remake of the long-running American game show Jeopardy was an altogether more pleasant affair, especially when it allowed her to salute the efforts of a longtime friend who served as the host.
“When it was announced that this series was going to happen, I did get some emails from friends who are in the public eye saying, ‘Bagsy be in the celeb version,'” Stephen Fry told The Standard. “It’s one of those quiz formats where people don’t only enjoy doing it, they dream of doing it. They imagine it would be really good fun to be on. Dame Judi Dench loved it; she did write to me. She absolutely adores it.”
A staple of Stateside daytime TV since 1964, replicating the format for British audiences has been a priority for several generations of showrunners, even if none of them lasted very long. The first UK version launched in 1983, the second arrived in 1990, and the third premiered in 1995 before it went dormant for two decades until it was resurrected like a phoenix once again in 2024 with Fry at the helm.
It’s hard to imagine someone like Dench sitting glued to her telly for things like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, or Game of Thrones, but it’s much easier to conjure a mental image of her hunkered down with a cup of tea watching Fry host Jeopardy, where she may or may not scream answers at the screen like any self-respecting game show fan would.
Whether the latest iteration fares better than its predecessors remains unknown, but it must be doing something right if it gets fan mail from someone of Dench’s standing.
