Lead Balloon is a British television series produced by Open Mike Productions for BBC Four. The series was created and is co-written by comedian Jack Dee and Pete Sinclair. It stars Dee as Rick Spleen, a cynical and misanthropic comedian whose life is plagued by petty annoyances, disappointments and embarrassments. Raquel Cassidy, Sean Power and Tony Gardner also star. The first series of six episodes was broadcast on BBC Four in 2006, with the first episode achieving the highest ratings for a comedy on the channel. Repeats of the series were run on BBC Two and BBC HD, bringing it to a larger audience. A second series of eight episodes aired on BBC Two in November 2007, and a third series began airing in November 2008. A fourth and final series commenced broadcast on 31 May 2011 on BBC Two and ended on 5 July. Comparisons were made by critics to the successful American comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm, and positive comments were made about Lead Balloon's characters, particularly Magda, the Eastern European housekeeper. The first series was released on DVD in November 2007. The show's theme tune is a cover version of "One Way Road", written by Noel Gallagher and performed by Paul Weller.
An un-scripted comedy show in which four guest performers improvise their way through a series of games, many of which rely on audience suggestions.
It's Marcella's 30th. She's found a life coach who's prepared to help sort her life out.
Oblivious is a comedy game show that aired within the United States of America on TNN/Spike TV at various points between 2002 and 2004. It was also aired on Challenge in the UK, Ireland and The Comedy Channel in Australia and still airs on Real TV in South Korea and on TV2 Zebra in Norway. It no longer airs on Spike TV. Comedian Regan Burns served as host. A DVD was later released featuring the best clips of both seasons.
The fast-paced comedy panel show will see each country’s greatest comedian’s pitted against each other to find out who knows their country best, with our host the only thing keeping them apart.
French adaptation of the British game show Don't Forget Your Toothbrush hosted bu Nagui.
In this newsroom, breaking means losing. Our reporters don't know what's about to be on the teleprompter, and every laugh is a point against them.
Tu cara me suena
The long running NPR news quiz hosted by Peter Sagal since 1998, replacing Dan Coffey. Carl Kasell served as announcer & scorekeeper until 2014 and ceded duties to Bill Kurtis. WWDTM came to television for the first time in 2011 with a BBC America one-off special, then in 2013 a special live broadcast was shown in movie theaters across the U.S. and Canada
Hilarious, totally-irreverent, near-slanderous political quiz show, based mainly on news stories from the last week or so, that leaves no party, personality or action unscathed in pursuit of laughs.
Shooting Stars is a British television comedy panel game broadcast on BBC Two as a pilot in 1993, then as 3 full series from 1995 to 1997, then on BBC Choice from January to December 2002 with 2 series before returning to BBC Two for another 3 series from 2008 until its cancellation in 2011. Created and hosted by double-act Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, it uses the panel show format but with the comedians' often slapstick, surreal and anarchic humour does not rely on rules in order to function, with the pair apparently ignoring existing rules or inventing new ones as and when the mood takes them.
A British stand-up comedy programme performed from the Hammersmith Apollo Theatre in west London.
Hollywood Squares is an American panel game show, in which two contestants play tic-tac-toe to win cash and prizes. The "board" for the game is a 3 × 3 vertical stack of open-faced cubes, each occupied by a celebrity seated at a desk and facing the contestants. The stars are asked questions by the host, or "Square-Master", and the contestants judge the veracity of their answers in order to win the game. Although Hollywood Squares was a legitimate game show, the game largely acted as the background for the show's comedy in the form of joke answers, often given by the stars prior to their "real" answer. The show's writers usually supplied the jokes. In addition, the stars were given question subjects and plausible incorrect answers prior to the show. The show was scripted in this sense, but the gameplay was not. In any case, as host Peter Marshall, the best-known "Square-Master" and the man in whose honor the show's first announcer, Kenny Williams, actually "coined" the term, would explain at the beginning of the Secret Square game, the celebrities were briefed prior to show to help them with bluff answers, but they otherwise heard the actual questions for the first time as they were asked on air.
Unsuspecting members of the public secretly will be recruited to pull a prank on their unwitting companions with absolutely no time to prepare. If they agree to participate, they must obey all instructions given through an earpiece from a secret control room nearby. With the opportunity to prank their way to cash and prizes, these everyday people will be shown no mercy as they are tasked with pulling off some of the most ridiculous behavior ever caught on hidden camera.
The world’s best comedic acts perform in one competition, including stand-ups, sketch troupes, and comedic variety acts. Anyone who can make audiences laugh will have the chance to receive a career-changing $250,000 prize package and see their name in lights in the “Bring the Funny” showcase.
A gameshow hosted by Ant and Dec filled with stunts, sketches, and special guest appearances.
Comedian Daniel Sloss is ready to find the funny in some very dark topics, from the deeply personal to the truly irreverent.
The Generation Game was a British game show produced by the BBC in which four teams of two competed to win prizes. The programme was first broadcast in 1971 under the title Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game and ran until 1982, and again from 1990 until 2002. The show was based on the Dutch TV show Een van de acht, "One of the Eight", the format devised in 1969 by Theo Uittenbogaard for VARA Television. Mrs. Mies Bouwman - a popular Dutch talk show host and presenter of the show - came up with the idea of the conveyor belt. She had seen it on a German programme and wanted to incorporate it into the show. Another antecedent for the gameshow was 'Sunday Night at the London Palladium' on ATV, which had a game called Beat the Clock, taken from an American gameshow. It featured married couples playing silly games within a certain time to win prize money. This was hosted by Bruce Forsyth from 1958, and he took the idea with him when he went over to the BBC. During the 1970s, gameshows became more popular and started to replace expensive variety shows. Creating new studio shows was cheaper than hiring a theatre and paying for long rehearsals and a large orchestra, and could secure a similar number of viewers. With less money for their own productions, a gameshow seemed the obvious idea for ITV. As a result many variety performers were recruited for gameshows. The BBC, suffering poor ratings, decided to make its own gameshow. Bill Cotton, the BBC's Head of Light Entertainment, believed that Bruce Forsyth was best for the job. For years, The Generation Game was one of the strong shows in the BBC's Saturday night line-up, and became the number one gameshow on British television during the 1970s, regularly gaining over 21 million viewers. However, things were about to change. LWT, desperate to end the BBC's long-running ratings success on a Saturday night, offered Forsyth a chance to change channel to host The Big Night.
Footage from the popular game show, Takeshi's Castle has been re-edited, re-written and re-voiced into a hilarious, intentionally over-produced, modern "action/X-treme" sports show.
This variety series from writer, comedian and internet sensation, Ziwe is a no-holds-barred mix of musical numbers, interviews and sketches that challenge America’s discomfort with race, politics, & other cultural issues.