Family Guy

During the Company’s 2010 production of The Sorcerer, a cast member reported that one of the songs in the show was familiar to her as she had heard it performed on the Family Guy animated series.  Most were surprised that a song from a relatively obscure work, such as The Sorcerer, would find its way onto network television.  That indeed, however, was the case!  In season 4, episode 20, titled Patriot Games, the London Sillinannies sang and danced to The Sorcerer’s “If You Marry Me.”

All Creatures Great and Small

All Creatures Great and Small is a television series, set in 1937, based on a series of books about a Yorkshire veterinarian, written by Alf Wight under the pen name of James Herriot. The series was produced by Playground Entertainment for Channel 5 in the United Kingdom, and for PBS in the United States.

In Season 3, Episode 2, titled Honeymoon’s Over, first broadcast on September 22, 2022, the head veterinarian, Siegfried Farnon, played by Samuel West, is feeding bits of cake to the animals in their cages, as he sings from Alexis’ Act I ballad, “Love feeds on many kinds of food I know, some love for rank and some for duty.”

In Season 3, Episode 5, titled Edward, first broadcast on October 13, 2022, Siegfried is working with a schoolboy who’s trailing him as a learning experience. Siegfried grabs a cup of tea, tells the boy to follow him, and launches into “My name is John Wellington Wells …” as he begins to show the boy the various potions and powders in the dispensary.

The Plain Old Man

In Charlotte MacLeod’s sixth novel in her “Sarah Kelling & Max Bittersohn Mysteries Series,” Sarah’s Aunt Emma has supervised annual Gilbert and Sullivan productions for many years. This year, she has invited her cast of relatives to stage The Sorcerer. The show is nearly ready when a team of burglars drug the cast and crew and make off with a priceless portrait. Aunt Emma is appearing in the role of Lady Sangazure and, theft or no theft, she insists that the show must go on, even when Charlie Daventer, who plays the Notary, or “plain old man” in the production, meets with a fatal “accident.” When Sarah begins to suspect that the actor was murdered, it becomes clear that Aunt Emma may also be in danger of taking her final bow.

The Incredible Umbrella and The Amorous Umbrella

Author and editor, Marvin Kaye, wrote two books The Incredible Umbrella and The Amorous Umbrella, in which the main character, J. Adrian Fillmore, finds an umbrella in a secondhand store that is labeled as having once been owned by J. W. Wells. The umbrella sends Fillmore traveling through Victorian literature and provides a fanciful view of the lives of Gilbert and Sullivan characters after the operettas.