Obit: Ned Sherrin @ 76...Creator of Mock News show ‘That Was The Week That Was’

[CrankyYankee]

...with “TW3,” which ran for just over a year (on the BBC) beginning in November 1962, Mr. Sherrin altered the television landscape by inaugurating a new, more youthful, more irreverent strain of satire, whose prickly progeny include “Saturday Night Live” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

In 1964 and 1965, an American version of the show attracted an enthusiastic following, drawing as it did on the subversive talents of people like Mike Nichols and Elaine May; Buck Henry; and Mr.(David) Frost himself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/arts/05sherrin.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin
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For more about the British and American versions of this program(and for insights about other shows TW3 inspired) have a look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Was_The_Week_That_Was

 

[Ultimajock]

...undoubtedly the best-known episode of "TW3" was the one over BBC-TV on 23 November 1963, which was a tribute program for President Kennedy, whose assassination had occurred just 24 hours previously. It was run via kinescope over NBC in the United States the following night. Among the material created for the program was the song "In the Summer Of His Years," performed by Millicent Martin; immediately after the program's broadcast, Martin went from the BBC television studios to EMI's Abbey Road recording studios, where she cut a version of the song with a George Martin score for release on Parlophone Records in the U.K. (it was later issued on ABC-Paramount in the States). http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/randypny2/cashbox/19640125.html shows that the Connie Francis version issued by M-G-M Records reached #31 on the Cash Box pop singles chart the following January, and the audio track of the entire program was also issued in the United States by Decca Records...

 

[bpatrick]

Re: Obit: Ned Sherrin @ 76...Creator of Mock News show ‘That Was The Week That W

That "TW3" tribute to JFK may indeed have been
the most moving moment of that whole weekend,
with the possible exception of John-John's salute,
IMO.

Sherrin also created "We Interrupt This Week," a
mock news quiz that aired on PBS in the late '70s.
IIRC, he was also the host.