Comedy
Comedy
Just A Minute
Monday 5 January, 6.30pm
11 parts
Highlights from the new series include IT support
for Alan Turing, passive laughing, the price of love
(VAT included), the use of offshore accounts by
pirates, medieval investment advice and how laser
eye surgery was invented.The series also has some
new features with the Radio 4 panel shows Who
Gives A Toss and Give Me Strength.
Concrete Cow stars Robert Webb, Beth Chalmers,
Steven Kynman, Catherine Shepherd, Chris Pavlo
and Abigail Burdess, and is written by Milton Jones,
James Cary, Adam Bromley and the cast.
Producer/Adam Bromley
Bearded Ladies
Wednesday 7 January, 6.30pm
Four parts
Radio 4’s most devious panel game returns.
Chairman Nicholas Parsons (above) continues
to attempt to keep control over a roll-call of
celebrity contenders attempting to talk about
a subject for 60 seconds without hesitation,
repetition or deviation.
Panellists in this series include: Graham Norton,
Paul Merton, Ross Noble,Tony Hawks, Clement
Freud,Tim Rice and Linda Smith.
Producer/Chris Neill
Concrete Cow
Bearded Ladies (L-R): Fay Rusling, Orianne Messina,
Ewan Bailey, Charlotte McDougall and Susie Donkin
Tuesday 6 January, 6.30pm
Six parts
Bearded Ladies continues into the New Year with
the sketch show that asks: if it really is a woman’s
world, why is there always a man to leave his socks
in the middle of the floor?
The team behind Radio 4’s award-winning Think The
Unthinkable returns for a second series of the
strange, irreverent and highly entertaining sketch
show, Concrete Cow.
Combining the comedic talents of two critically
acclaimed double acts, Orianne Messina and Fay
Rusling and Charlotte McDougall and Susie Donkin,
along with actor/writer Ewan Bailey, Bearded Ladies
BBC Radio 4: Quarter 1
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Comedy
is a fresh, contemporary sketch show that explores
modern themes and situations.The sketches cover
everything from work, play and being a mother to
having a mother, last dates, getting a job and
hosting a party.
lists, celebrity features and competitions that
inhabit them.
Orianne, Fay, Charlotte and Susie were part of the
award-winning writing team behind Channel 4’s
smash hit Smack The Pony.
Absolute Power
Producer/Helen Williams
Thursday 5 February, 6.30pm
Four parts
Producer/Carol Smith
The Department
Wednesday 7 January, 11.00pm
Three parts
Far from the gaze of an unsuspecting public and
untouched by the tentacles of Westminster, The
Department has been secretly running the country
for some time. Deep within its labyrinthine
headquarters works a dedicated three-man thinktank: Oscar Proud, historian, pedant and competent
juggler;Victor Gooch, financial wizard and legal
parasite; and Lazlo Woolf, scientific hypothesist and
Sagittarian. Each week they investigate possible
solutions to one of the nation’s major problems
and, each week, your future is in their hands …
Welcome to The Department, a new comedy series
in which Oscar,Victor and Lazlo apply their various
skills to dream up ludicrous, irritating and pointless
changes to the way people do things.
The Department is written by and features hot new
comedy talents Chris Addison, John Oliver and
Andy Zaltzman, with assistance from Matthew
Holness, Lucy Montgomery and Peter Dickson.
Stephen Fry and John Bird return as the masters of
spin, Charles Prentiss (Fry) and Martin McCabe
(Bird), for the third and final series of Absolute Power.
With more machinations than Machiavelli and
contacts at the highest level of government, top
media and government relations firm Prentiss
McCabe will be wheezing the wheezes and spinning
the spin in the sharply satirical comedy penned by
Mark Tavener.
The cast includes Tom George as Clive, the office
junior, and Tony Gardner as Archie, Labour’s “man
in the shadows”.
Producer/Dawn Ellis
Old Harry’s Game
Thursday 19 February, 11.00pm
Six parts
The Sony Award-winning sitcom set in Hell, and
starring writer Andy Hamilton as Satan, returns for
a fifth series.
Producer/Paul Mayhew Archer
Producer/Jon Naismith
This Is Craig Brown
Wednesday 28 January, 6.30pm
Wednesday 25 February, 11.00pm
Six parts
The Sony and British Comedy Award-winning team
returns with a brand-new series of The Sunday
Format featuring smoothly spliced, quick-fire
parodies of all the supplements, and the lifestyle
Craig Brown is widely regarded as one of today’s
leading satirists.The series is taken from his awardwinning scribblings for Private Eye and his Way Of
The World column in the Telegraph.
The Sunday Format
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Comedy
The cast includes Edward Fox, Harry Enfield, Rory
Bremner, Felicity Montagu, Geoffrey McGivern and
Mel Hudson.There are cameos from the real John
Humphrys and Barry Norman.The narrator/links
man for the series is Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith in
The Matrix and Lord Elrond in Lord Of The Rings).
and each programme includes extracts from his
comedy shows, specially recorded in these areas
for the series.
The series is a selection of sketches and
monologues, linked seamlessly by music.There are
six episodes, each one focusing on a particular
topic, which include: politics, travel, communications,
the arts, celebrity and hallucinations.
The Now Show
Producer/Simon Nicholls
Friday 5 March, 6.30pm
Six parts
Producer Simon Nicholls says: “The best way to
describe the series, and this is how I pitched it to
Radio 4, is Chris Morris’s Blue Jam meets Alan
Bennett’s Talking Heads – weird and wonderful.
Items include John Humphrys grilling a Home
Office Minister about a storm that’s currently
raging in a teacup; The Complete Works Of
Shakespeare For Telephone; and the diary of Queen
Elizabeth II.”
Producer/Simon Nicholls
Dedicated Troublemaker
Thursday 4 March, 6.30pm
Four parts
Comedian Mark Steel began questioning authority,
inequality and conventional behaviour at an early
age. He says: “As an angry 13-year-old, during one
of my first days in the main building of Swanley
Comprehensive, the headmaster, Dr Henry, caught
me eating a banana in the corridor.This was an
outrageous breach of the school code. It may seem
a trivial rule to me, he insisted, but if we only kept
to the rules we liked, where would that lead?” In
Mark’s case it led to a career as a comedian,
journalist and popular historian.
Passionate, parochial and personal moments from
Mark’s life are detailed in this series of four
programmes, in which he returns to the places and
people he knew back then, to see what’s changed,
including himself. Mark talks to local residents in
the pub, on the street, or wherever he finds them,
BBC Radio 4: Quarter 1
Steve Punt (top) and Hugh Dennis
The Now Show returns for another series of
brilliantly observed radio satire. Steve Punt and
Hugh Dennis star with Mitch Benn, Marcus
Brigstocke and Jon Holmes, in a show that deals
with everything that’s “now” and nothing that’s
“then”. Recorded in front of a live audience and
featuring a potent mix of sketches, songs and
observational humour, The Now Show takes
a hilarious swipe at current trends and
perceived wisdom.
Producer/Adam Bromley
4
Comedy
Inner Voices
Wednesday 10 March, 11.15pm
Four Parts
Four male comedy talents perform comic
monologues they’ve scripted themselves for the
latest series of Inner Voices.The fantastic line-up
features actor and comedian Dylan Moran; top
stand-up comic Curtis Walker; Reginald D
Hunter, one of the nominees for this year’s
prestigious Perrier Awards; and Stewart Lee,
half of the comedy duo Lee and Herring
and a talented writer in his own right.
Producer/Liz Webb
Quote … Unquote
Monday 22 March, 6.30pm
Ten parts
Nigel Rees chairs the 34th series of the
long-running panel game based on quotations.
Quote ... Unquote has been broadcast on Radio 4
since 1976 and there have been over 300 editions
of the show.
Producer/Carol Smith
Elephants To Catch Eels
Tuesday 30 March, 6.30pm
Six parts
The Cornish smuggling comedy returns for a
second series, penned by the award-winning team
behind Dead Ringers.
Written by Tom Jamieson and Nev Fountain, the
two main writers on BBC Radio 4 and BBC One’s
Dead Ringers, Elephants To Catch Eels is produced by
Dead Ringers star Jan Ravens.
Producer/Jan Ravens
The Museum Of Everything
Thursday 1 April, 11.00pm
Six parts
The Museum Of Everything is a brand-new comedy
series written and performed by Danny Robins,
Dan Tetsell and Marcus Brigstocke, the team behind
BBC Two’s We Are History and the first series of
2000 Years Of Radio on Radio 4.
Based on the trio’s successful 2002 Edinburgh
Festival show, The Museum Of Everything is a witty
and original sketch show in disguise. Set in the
mystical and apparently infinite environs of the
Museum of Everything, the series is themed around
the world of museums, galleries, guided tours, stately
homes, historical re-enactors and obsessive
collectors. Listeners might bump into Merlin, find out
how wicker shaped today’s society and meet some
rather disgruntled museum staff along the way.
Robins,Tetsell and Brigstocke have been performing
together as Club Seals for nearly a decade and,
between them, have contributed to many Radio 4
programmes, including The Now Show, Dead Ringers,
The Way It Is, Hudson And Pepperdine, The Sunday
Format, Giles Wemmbley Hogg Goes Off and BBC
One’s The Basil Brush Show.
Producer/Alex Walsh Taylor
Set in Drumlin Bay, Cornwall, at the end of the
18th century, Elephants To Catch Eels follows the
story of Tamsyn Trelawney, the area’s most
celebrated smuggler, and her drunken father, Jago.
Highlights from the new series include Tamsyn and
Captain Marriott swapping places for charity, a
group of handsome highwaymen who unwittingly
win Tamsyn’s fans away from her, and a trip to
London to rescue Jago when he’s kidnapped.
BBC Radio 4: Quarter 1
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