Lenny Henry combines topical stand-up, character sketches and music performance in his first topical series since Saturday Live. He is joined every week by a celebrity guest and Ninia Benjamin, Tameka Empson and Jocelyn Esien of 3 Non-Blondes fame.
A bumper recollection of the BAFTA-winning comedienne's most recent TV treats, including the definitive costume drama Lark Pies to Cranchesterford, the Midlife Olympics, and the further adventures of Acorn Antiques star Bo Beaumont - alias Julie Walters.
A series of pop-culture parodies using stop-motion animation of toys, action figures and dolls. The title character was an ordinary chicken until he was run down by a car and subsequently brought back to life in cyborg form by mad scientist Fritz Huhnmorder, who tortures Robot Chicken by forcing him to watch a random selection of TV shows, the sketches that make up the body of each episode.
Dave Chappelle's singular point of view is unleashed through a combination of laidback stand-up and street-smart sketches.
Little Miss Jocelyn is a British TV sketch comedy written by and starring Jocelyn Jee Esien. The show is made up of studio sketches and hidden camera footage in which unsuspecting members of the public become part of a sketch. The series ran for 2 series from 22 August 2006 until its cancellation on 14 February 2008. 12 episodes aired whilst a 13th episode was never broadcast for unknown reasons but is featured as a bonus extra on the Series 2 DVD. In 2007, Esien featured in Girls Aloud and Sugababes' Comic Relief video for "Walk This Way", where she puts a parking ticket on Ewen Macintosh, a reference to the character Jiffy from the show Little Miss Jocelyn.
Alphonse Président
Vic Reeves Big Night Out is a British cult comedy stage show and later TV series which ran on Channel 4 for two series in 1990 and 1991, as well as a New Year special. It marked the beginnings of the collaboration between Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer and started their Vic and Bob comedy double act. The show was later acknowledged as a seminal force in British comedy throughout the 1990s and which continues to the present day. Arguably the most surreal of the pair's work, Vic Reeves Big Night Out was effectively a parody of the variety shows which dominated the early years of television, but which were, by the early 1990s, falling from grace. Vic, introduced by Patrick Allen as "Britain's Top Light Entertainer and Singer", would sit behind a cluttered desk talking nonsense and introducing the various segments and surreal guests on the show. Vic Reeves Big Night Out is notable as the only time in their career where Vic solely took the role of host, while Bob was consigned to the back stage, appearing every few minutes as either himself or as a strange character. The two received equal billing in the series credits. On 3 October 2007, the first episode was re-broadcast on More4 as part of Channel 4 at 25, a season of classic Channel 4 programmes shown to celebrate the channel's 25th birthday.
A sketch comedy show featuring some of Britain's great comedic talents of the 1980s and 1990s in one of their earliest TV appearances.
A British sketch comedy series with the shows being composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines.
French and Saunders is a British sketch comedy television series written by and starring comic duo Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. It is also the name by which the performers are known on the occasions when they appear elsewhere as a double act.
A British comedy sketch television series featuring Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones that ran on BBC One and BBC Two from 31 January 1984 to 14 October 1998. From series 5 in 1989 the 'Alas' title was dropped and became simply Smith and Jones.
A groundbreaking, splendidly silly, surreal sketch comedy series written by and starring The Goodies' Tim Brooke-Taylor, Monty Python's Graham Chapman and John Cleese, and comedy legend Marty Feldman.
A British comedy television series with turns of phrase and elaborate wordplay, written by and starring former Cambridge Footlights members Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.
Chewin' the Fat is a Scottish comedy sketch show, starring Ford Kiernan, Greg Hemphill and Karen Dunbar. Comedians Paul Riley and Mark Cox also appeared regularly on the show. Chewin' the Fat first started as a radio series on BBC Radio Scotland. The later television show, which ran for four series, was first broadcast on BBC One Scotland, but series three and four, as well as highlights from the first two series, were later broadcast to the rest of the United Kingdom. Although the last series ended in February 2002, 6 Hogmanay specials were broadcast and offered on DVD when purchasing the Scottish Sun between 2000 to 2005, one every year. Chewin' the Fat gave rise to the spin-off show Still Game, a sitcom focusing on the two old male characters Jack and Victor. The series was mostly filmed in and around Glasgow and occasionally West Dunbartonshire. The English idiom to chew the fat means to chat casually, but thoroughly, about subjects of mutual interest.
Goodness Gracious Me is a BBC English language sketch comedy show originally aired on BBC Radio 4 from 1996 to 1998 and later televised on BBC Two from 1998 to 2001. The ensemble cast were four British Indian actors, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Kulvinder Ghir, Meera Syal and Nina Wadia. The show explored the conflict and integration between traditional Indian culture and modern British life. Some sketches reversed the roles to view the British from an Indian perspective, and others poked fun at Indian stereotypes. In the television series most of the white characters were played by Dave Lamb and Fiona Allen; in the radio series those parts were played by the cast themselves. The show's title and theme tune is a bhangra rearrangement of a hit comedy song of the same name. The original was performed by Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren reprising their characters from the 1960 film The Millionairess. The show's original working title was "Peter Sellers is Dead", but was changed because the cast generally liked Peter Sellers. In her 1996 novel Anita and Me, Syal had referred to British parodies of Asian speech as "a goodness-gracious-me accent". One of the more famous sketches featured the cast "going out for an English" after a few lassis. They mispronounce the waiter's name, order the blandest thing on the menu and ask for twenty-four plates of chips. The sketch parodies often-drunk English people "going out for an Indian", ordering chicken phall and too many papadums. This sketch was voted the 6th Greatest Comedy Sketch on a Channel 4 list show.
In 1988, renegade filmmaker Robert Altman and Pulitzer Prize–winning Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau created a presidential candidate, ran him alongside the other hopefuls during the primary season, and presented their media campaign as a cross between a soap opera and TV news. The result was the groundbreaking Tanner ’88, a piercing satire of media-age American politics.
2DTV is a British satirical animated television show that was broadcast on ITV in the United Kingdom from March 2001 to December 2004. Lasting a total of five series and thirty-three episodes, 2DTV became the successor of popular 80's TV series Spitting Image, and the predecessor of 2008 ITV satirical animation Headcases.
Flipside was a sketch and mockumentary comedy series broadcast late Saturday nights on ABC TV (Australia) in 2002. "Extremely popular amongst Australian TV fans in particular and comedy devotees in particular, Flipside offered a potpourri of zany sketches, music, monologues, and mockumentaries. The talented ensemble cast served up a bizarro world in which the normal was abnormal and vice versa. Though many of the segments were cleverly scripted, just as many more were spontaneous and off-the-cuff. Telecast by Australia's ABC network, the first of Flipside's seven half-hour episodes was seen on May 4, 2002." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Dolly is a television variety show that ran on ABC during the 1987-1988 season featuring Dolly Parton.
Absolutely is a popular UK television comedy sketch show shown on Channel 4 between 1989 and 1993. The cast and crew were mainly Scottish; the principal writers and performers were Moray Hunter, Jack Docherty, Peter Baikie, Gordon Kennedy, Morwenna Banks and John Sparkes. It was directed by Phil Chilvers, Alan Nixon, Alistair Clark, and Graham C Williams. The show's producers were Alan Nixon, and David Tyler