British Comedy

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/7514853

Steve Coogan will reprise the role of Alan Partridge for a new mockumentary following the fictional presenter as he reintegrates into life in the UK after a year working in Saudi Arabia.

In six 30-minute episodes, the documentary about homecoming would morph into an exploration of the mental health issues facing the UK, said its makers.

The series, called And Did Those Feet … With Alan Partridge (ADTFWAP), will follow Partridge as he realises something is missing from his life.

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The series is one of six new comedy shows announced by Petrie, with Greg Davies’s The Cleaner and Man Like Mobeen from Guz Khan slated to return.

She's venturing right up the universe and everything, to find the definitive answer to the ultimate question – the meaning of life

Arthur Strong's 'farewell tour' and the rest of the week's best live comedy

The best of the week's comedy on TV, radio and on demand

The cast of The Fast Show are reuniting for a live tour to celebrate the sketch show’s 30th anniversary.

Today (January 25), it was announced that An Evening With The Fast Show will run between February and April 2024, with cast members Simon Day, Charlie Higson, John Thomson, Paul Whitehouse, Mark Williams, and Arabella Weir all featuring.

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“This celebratory live tour will be a huge treat for fans of the multi-award winning quick-fire TV sketch show and provide a real behind-the-scenes insight into some of their favourite characters and catchphrases as they come alive on stage once again.

“The cast will chat together about how it all began, how they made the TV show, and created the characters and the fun they had doing it. This will be interspersed with performances of some of their best-loved sketches monologues and songs, with on-screen inserts and a moment to remember their former collaborator, the late, great Caroline Aherne.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/7206068

Something to cheer a January of storms, floods and diverted flights: Ian Hislop on the history of jokes. If my editors scrapped the rest of this review and printed just that sentence I think readers would be persuaded that there was something worth listening to this week.

Ian Hislop’s Oldest Jokes(on BBC Sounds and Radio 4) starts with the first English joke. Or the first joke about the English. Confronted with some attractive slaves in a marketplace Pope Gregory I is supposed to have quipped “non Angli sed Angeli” (“not Angles but angels”). Hislop is delighted by this.

More hesitant is Jonathan Wilcox (author of the unpromisingly titled Humour in Old English Literature), who hesitantly concedes that old English literature contains jokes that “might have been perceived possibly by some to have been funny”. But nothing can disrupt Hislop’s optimism. He chortles his way through the double entendre-ridden Anglo-Saxon riddles preserved in the Exeter Book: “A curious thing hangs by a man’s thigh … it is stiff and hard … When the man lifts his own garment he intends to greet with the head of his hanging object that familiar hole.” The polite answer is “key”. You may guess the rude one.

I also enjoyed the following exchange. Hislop: “Tell me about any other jokes. Are there any in the Anglo-Saxon chronicles?”

Expert: “Pffft. Not really.”

Main page in Radio 4

The week's best comedy on TV, radio and streaming

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TL;DR:

The BBC has confirmed that the entire second season will air weekly on BBC Two, starting on Monday 5th February at 10pm, with all eight episodes available to stream as a boxset on BBC iPlayer on that date.

Ickelwick FM and the rest of the week's best comedy on TV, radio and streaming

The week's best live comedy

The week's best comedy on TV, radio and streaming

A bawdy comedy musical will blend classic shlock sci-fi and the British tradition of pantomimes into a new Christmas adventure.

Tide Nor Time Players are performing a new, original comedy musical for Christmas entitled Lance McKrack and the Dr X. Mass Adventure.

Lance McKrack and his trusty crew must battle the evil Professor Brainovski to save Dr X. Mass before it’s too late and Christmas is stolen from the galaxy.

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The production will be in the grand tradition of classic 1950s science fiction films such as Forbidden Planet.

There will be an eclectic mix of music, comedy, silliness for the kids and bawdy humour for the adults.

Shows will be performed at The Depozitory, Ryde on December 16 at 6.30pm and on December 17 at 2pm and 6.30pm.

Lucy is one of many female comedians who say the allegations against Russell Brand are just the tip of the iceberg. Six years on from the #MeToo movement, they say there remains a culture of misogyny and male privilege in the comedy industry that emboldens predators and prevents women from speaking out.

In a video on YouTube titled Brand Awareness, the comedian Kate Smurthwaite said the allegations against Brand were “nowhere near scratching the surface” of the wider problems.

“I could probably, personally from my own experience, name 15 to 20 people who have behaved inappropriately with me. And if I then included other women in comedy and the stories that they’ve told me, we could easily get that to 100 to 150,” she said.

“There are so, so many others. And I know some people will say: ‘Well tell us the other names.’ But no, I’ve done it before, I’ve described these incidents and people don’t hear me, they don’t believe me. They say: ‘That’s a very serious allegation, I hope you’ve taken it to the police,’ and ultimately I lose work. And I can’t do that over and over again.”

Ellie Tomsett, a media lecturer at the University of Birmingham who has been researching the barriers to women’s participation in the comedy circuit, said the problem was entrenched in the history of UK comedy.

“Since the days of performances in working men’s clubs in the 60s, comedy has targeted women, and we’ve got this really long hangover from that,” she said. “There might be more women visibly present on stage or on our screens now, but the actual working conditions for comics have been remarkably consistent. That’s what creates that space where abuse can flourish.”

According to Tomsett, the problem is threefold: comedy – in its live and media forms – continues to be male-dominated, it is used to obscure sexually aggressive behaviour and misogyny, and women struggle to speak up due to unregulated power structures and the precarious nature of freelancing.

On top of that, women who do complain are often accused of being humourless prudes, when their careers depend on their ability to “see the funny side”.

“Comic licence makes it easy for men to say: ‘I was just joking, that woman doesn’t understand what comedy is.’ If you make accusations against someone who’s bankable for a promoter, then you’re putting yourself in a very dangerous situation.”

During a preview at the BFI last night (September 19), it was announced that the series will premiere on Friday, October 6 at 8.30pm on BBC One, with the whole series dropping as a boxset on BBC iPlayer on the same day.

Comedian Daniel Sloss has gone on record, speaking to The Times, telling them that female comedians set up online groups to warn others about people they’ve worked with and had difficult experiences with, including predatory behaviour.

Mr Sloss told the times: “I know for many, many years that women have been warning each other about Russell.”

At least five other male comedians have been named in the conversations, MailOnline reports.

They include famous stars of TV, radio and stage - some still working, others who have disappeared from the limelight.

Mr Sloss said there were ‘many stories with varying degrees of severity’.

Comedian Sara Pascoe has also claimed there are two well-known predators in the comedy circuit.

She indicated that there is more than one predator in the comedy industry, including "a man that's assaulted men."

Comedian Stevie Martin disclosed the WhatsApp group existed as long ago as 2020, telling the Telegraph: “A Whatsapp-based blacklist began circulating of predatory male comics and promoters. It’s growing every day.”

Probably the reason I hate him so much is because I'm a dad and I've got this fear that one day my daughters will bring something like that home.

Speaking on The Comedian's Comedian Podcast with Stuart Goldsmith in July, writer and comic Lucy Beaumont slammed predatory men when asked by host Goldsmith what has "held her back" on the comedy circuit. The 40-year old said names would be out there "soon".

"Predatory male behaviour," she began. "I've had quite a few incidences where if you're in any other workforce you would go to HR [Human Resources], but there isn't one. I think it's just everywhere and it's not talked about enough. It upsets me when I hear about young female comics having the same experiences. I thought for a while it was the same five or six people - and now it's not - I could name you 10 or 15 because of course people talk."

Lucy, who is married to fellow comedian Jon Richardson, continued: "Comedy has the biggest gossips ever so everybody knows - or if you don't know the ones I know yet then you will do soon. It [comedy] attracts such interesting, passionate, raw, edgy, wounded people - but it also attracts predatory men who are really messed up and sexually have been repressed for years. And they get a bit of fame and display these behaviours.

"It just gets covered up. Their agents know and the channels know and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. There's been times when I've just wanted to go on Twitter and just let people know everyone that we talk about, but not allowed to say."

cross-posted from: https://rabbitea.rs/post/374644

Filming starts on series two of Tom Basden comedy

cross-posted from: https://rabbitea.rs/post/373526

It launched the careers of Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, Mitchell and Webb, plus Olivia Colman – but it nearly got cancelled. Two decades since its first episode, its stars reflect on the show that made them.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/2434990

Two of the UK’s top comedy stars, Richard Ayoade and Jonathan Ross, have received backlash on social media after reviewing The IT Crowd writer Graham Linehan’s memoir.

Irish scribe Linehan has gone from the writer of much-loved Channel 4 comedies The IT Crowd, Father Ted and Black Books to an outspoken anti-transgender activist in recent years, leading many in the UK and Ireland to boycott him.

He fell out of public favour after several incidents where he expressed anti-transgender or transphobic views, including comparing the use of puberty blockers to Nazi eugenics and experiments on children.

Linehan has repeatedly expressed his belief that he is a victim of cancel culture, and that his views have lost him work and caused his divorce.

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Some early reviews of the book have been included as part of its online marketing. One notable name quoted alongside the memoir is Linehan’s former IT Crowd colleague, Ayoade, who played shy computer technician Maurice Moss in the Channel 4 comedy.

Ayoade’s quote reads: “Graham Linehan has long been one of my favourite writers – and this book shows that his brilliance in prose is equal to his brilliance as a screenwriter. It unfolds with the urgency of a Sam Fuller film: that of a man who has been through something that few have experienced but has managed to return, undaunted, to tell us the tale.”

A review from Ross hails Linehan as “one of the best TV comedy writers of all time”. The quote goes on to declare the book “a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered: a) how to create a hit sit-com and b) how it feels to lose everything. It’s funny, complicated and utterly compelling”.

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Journalist and transgender activist India Willoughby wrote: “The Richard Ayoade endorsement of Graham Linehan is really disappointment – because at this point in the gender war, you’d have to use a lot of cognitive dissonance not to see Glinner for who he is.”

cross-posted from: https://rabbitea.rs/post/361365

Comedian and actor Russell Brand has been accused of rape, sexual assaults and emotional abuse during a seven-year period at the height of his fame.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/2296156

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/2296041

The full commentary track is here. Looks like the Beeb slap down anyone trying to sync the whole footage, hence the YouTube Short. Here's another bit from them leaving the palace.

cross-posted from: https://rabbitea.rs/post/331747

New horror epic out on Halloween