Baddiel and Skinner unplanned was a free-form talk show hosted by British comedians/personalities David Baddiel and Frank Skinner and produced by Avalon Television. Its concept was developed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and had a run in the West End at the Shaftesbury Theatre in 2001. The show features the two hosts sitting on a couch on-stage and responding to questions from the audience — at times rather seriously, but usually with bizarre digressions into satirical comedy. An audience member is chosen as "Secretary" and has the job of keeping a note of the topics covered on a white board. In practice, the personality of the secretary will also prompt many jokes — usually at his or her expense. At the end of the show, Skinner asks either the secretary or the audience to choose between two song books, and to pick a page number between 1 and 20. This process determines which song is performed by the duo, sung by Skinner with Baddiel accompanying him on piano. Topics of discussion are wholly mandated by the audience and have ranged from discussions of the war against Iraq and other political events to comments on the latest plot twists of popular soap operas and the Atkins diet. Skinner's Catholicism and Baddiel's Jewish faith are also occasional targets of humour.
På benken
Terry Wogan's Friday Night
Epic series spanning three generations of the upwardly mobile Forsyte family at the turn of the 20th century.
Spanning 1919 to 1982, in the fictional village of Schabbach, lives Maria Simon and her family, whose lives and community are changed by historical events around them.
The short-lived variety show, hosted by Gene Di Novi on piano and vocalist Jodie Drake, offered a captivating blend of music and conversation in its half-hour format. Renowned musicians like Clark Terry, Joe Venuti, Gene Lees, and Phyllis Marshall graced the show as guests, showcasing the best in jazz. The rhythm section boasted talents like Michel Donato on bass and Jerry Fuller on drums, enriching the performances. Produced in Toronto by Bob Gibbons, the series highlighted exceptional musical collaborations and remains a testament to the era's jazz brilliance.
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.
TV Heaven, Telly Hell is a comedy television show on Channel 4, presented and produced by Sean Lock. The format is similar to Room 101, with guests discussing their likes and dislikes of items on television. The show also allows the guest to reconstruct any moment in television history in the way they wanted it to happen, in a short sketch shown at the end of the show usually parodying a clip discussed earlier.
A sketch comedy show featuring some of Britain's great comedic talents of the 1980s and 1990s in one of their earliest TV appearances.
Maid Marian and her Merry Men is a British children's sitcom created and written by Tony Robinson and directed by David Bell. It began in 1989 on BBC One and ran for four series, with the last episode shown in 1994. The show was a partially musical comic retelling of the legend of Robin Hood, placing Maid Marian in the role of leader of the Merry Men, and reducing Robin to an incompetent ex-tailor. The programme was much appreciated by children and adults alike, and has been likened to Blackadder, not only for its historical setting and the presence of Tony Robinson, but also for its comic style. It is more surreal than Blackadder, however, and drops even more anachronisms. Many of the show's cast such as Howard Lew Lewis, Forbes Collins, Ramsay Gilderdale and Patsy Byrne had previously appeared in various episodes of Blackadder alongside Robinson. Like many British children's programmes, there is a lot of social commentary sneakily inserted, as well as witty asides about the Royal family, buses running on time, etc. Many of the plots spoofed or referenced film and television shows including other incarnations of Robin Hood in those mediums.
Catterick, aka Vic and Bob in Catterick, is a surreal 2004 BBC situation comedy in 6 episodes, written by and starring Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, with Reece Shearsmith, Matt Lucas, Morwenna Banks, Tim Healy, Mark Benton and Charlie Higson. The series was originally broadcast on BBC Three and later rerun on BBC2. Reeves has said that the BBC do not want another series of Catterick, though he may produce a spin-off centring on the DI Fowler character. Catterick is arguably Vic and Bob's darkest and most bizarre programme to date, balancing their typically odd, idiosyncratic comedy with some genuinely dark scenes. It plays like a darkly comic road movie, albeit full of Vic and Bob's bizarre, often inscrutable and frequently silly humour. Catterick is probably Vic and Bob's most uncompromising show since their notorious and frequently baffling 1999 sketch series Bang Bang, It's Reeves and Mortimer, from which most of the characters are taken. It is in some ways stylistically similar to their short film The Weekenders first broadcast in 1992 on British television as part of Channel 4's "Bunch of Five" series. The series is named after Catterick in North Yorkshire, Britain's largest army base. It is about 10 miles away from Darlington where Vic Reeves grew up. It is also about 20 miles away from Middlesbrough where Bob Mortimer grew up.
The big-collared comic gives his own spin on TV clips from recent programmes, plus contributions from a set of regular characters
Peep Show follows the lives of two men from their twenties to thirties, Mark Corrigan, who has steady employment for most of the series, and Jeremy "Jez" Usbourne, an unemployed would-be musician.
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.
Barbara is a British sitcom starring Gwen Taylor in the title role. A pilot was broadcast in 1995, and three series were then televised from 1999 to 2003. It was made by Central Television, and filmed at their Lenton Lane studios in Nottingham in front of a live studio audience. The majority of location scenes for the series were filmed in various suburbs of Nottingham, including Mapperley and West Bridgford, with other scenes filmed around Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Despite winning awards and respectable viewing figures, it was axed by ITV in 2003.
Adapted from Forrest Wilson's books, the children's programme revolves around a grandmother with super powers and her arch nemesis, The Scunner Campbell.
A British stand-up comedy programme performed from the Hammersmith Apollo Theatre in west London.
The programme focuses on the British and the worldwide deaf community and covers a broad range of topics from areas such as education, deaf people's rights, technology and language. The programme is presented entirely in BSL and is broadcast with voice-over and subtitles in English throughout the programme.
Greg the Bunny is an American television sitcom that originally aired on Fox TV in 2002. It starred Seth Green and a hand puppet named Greg the Bunny, originally invented by the team of Sean S. Baker, Spencer Chinoy and Dan Milano. Milano and Chinoy wrote and co-produced the Fox show. The show was spun off from The Greg the Bunny Show, a series of short segments that aired on the Independent Film Channel, which were based on the Public-access television cable TV show Junktape. A show spin-off, called Warren the Ape, premiered on June 14, 2010 on MTV.
A single woman, Ellie Riggs, tries to navigate her way through the Los Angeles music scene and her own messy personal life.