Stella Street

Stella Street is a British television comedy programme, originally screened in four series on BBC Two between 1997 and 2001. It takes the form of a mockumentary filmed on a camcorder, based on the fantastical premise that a group of British and American celebrities who have all decided to move into Stella Street in Surbiton.

The show was conceived and written by John Sessions, Phil Cornwell and Peter Richardson. The main characters are played by Sessions, Cornwell and Ronni Ancona. The characters themselves are impressions of famous celebrities such as Marlon Brando, Michael Caine, Jack Nicholson and, idiosyncratically, UK football pundit Jimmy Hill.

Stella Street’s depiction of celebrities is mainly rooted in the popular stereotypes surrounding them. For example, Stella Street’s Jack Nicholson is an inveterate womaniser, drug taker, and has a tacky line in Hawaiian shirts. Michael Caine is seen as an awkward wanna-be cognoscente in horn-rimmed glasses and a shock of ginger hair. Dirk Bogarde is a posh buffoon only interested in his rose garden and Country Life magazine. Al Pacino is deluded that he is a “tall actor, like Danny DeVito and Dustin Hoffman”, despite the viewer knowing that he are of short stature. Joe Pesci is portrayed in the light of his most well known roles in violent gangster films, while Jimmy Hill inevitably appears dull when talking about the FA Cup Final to plainly uninterested greater celebrities.