Television
Davis belonged to a comedy troupe which included her future Gavin & Stacey co-stars Rob Brydon and Ruth Jones. Her first break into TV was as a regular cast member of Big Train after her work on a BBC Radio 4 comedy was brought to the attention of Father Ted writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews. Her career was given a further boost in 1998 after she sent a tape of her work to Steve Coogan who invited to her to write and tour with him later that year.
Davis has starred in many comedy television shows in the UK including I'm Alan Partridge, Big Train, Brass Eye, Jam, Human Remains, Gavin & Stacey, I Am Not An Animal, Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible, Ideal and Nathan Barley.
In 2004 Davis wrote and starred in the highly acclaimed dark comedy Nighty Night, which returned for a second series in 2005. In more serious roles Davis has starred in productions such as the BBC's For the Love of God, The Alan Clark Diaries (in which she plays secretary to the notorious MP), Fear of Fanny, in which she played the original celebrity chef Fanny Cradock, and Persuasion, an adaptation of the Jane Austen novel.
In the last episode of The Office, she is heard on the phone as the voice of a woman from a dating agency in conversation with David Brent. Over Christmas 2008, Davis appeared on Little Britain Abroad as a Russian mail-order bride called Ivanka.
In 2010 Davis co-wrote and co-starred in Lizzie and Sarah with Jessica Hynes. The pilot was aired in the UK on 20 March 2010 on BBC2. It was made by Baby Cow and is noted as being even darker than Davis's previous work.
In December 2011 Davis appeared in the second episode of the drama series Black Mirror entitled '15 Million Merits' as Judge Charity, on the fictional talent show "Hot Shot". On 22 December 2011, Davis appeared in the Christmas special and finale of the BBC Three comedy How Not to Live Your Life as Anne Yeaman.
Davis appeared in the series' pilot episode of Bad Sugar, shown on Channel 4 on 26 August 2012.A full series will air in 2013. Hunderby, created, written and starring Davis, is currently airing on Sky Atlantic.
Read more about this topic: Julia Davis
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it!—that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms—nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“His [O.J. Simpson’s] supporters lined the freeway to cheer him on Friday and commentators talked about his tragedy. Did those people see the photographs of the crime scene and the great blackening pools of blood seeping into the sidewalk? Did battered women watch all this on television and realize more vividly than ever before that their lives were cheap and their pain inconsequential?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Television is an excellent system when one has nothing to lose, as is the case with a nomadic and rootless country like the United States, but in Europe the affect of television is that of a bulldozer which reduces culture to the lowest possible denominator.”
—Marc Fumaroli (b. 1932)