Showing results for "1.000" in Entertainment & Performing Arts

Welcome to the inside-out world of Mitchell and Webb, a strange and surreal place populated by misfits, eccentrics, talking animals and a few stray Radio 4 arts programme presenters. Included here are all five series of their fantastically skewed comedy show, packed with offbeat sketches and peculiar characters. Meet seedy snooker commentators Ted and Peter; poorly matched crime-fighting duo Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit; a cop who doesn't get results but, by God, he does things by the book; and some nervous Nazis who've just noticed their caps have skulls on them.

John Finnemore, writer and star of Cabin Pressure, returns in four episodes of his own sketches, as heard on BBC Radio. These episodes feature a tiger with a gun, reveal the truth behind the war effort, visit some documentary-makers, has a big debate and then treats itself to a little trophy. Plus, there are also some musical interludes from the zoo. John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme is written by and stars John Finnemore (The Now Show, Miranda, That Mitchell and Webb Look).

Twenty episodes from the first BBC Radio series plus an hour-long Christmas special, starring Arthur Lowe, John Le Mesurier, and Clive Dunn.

In 1973 the BBC adapted its hit TV series for radio, featuring the original TV cast and characters. Three series were broadcast between 1974 and 1976, with episodes adapted from their TV counterparts by Harold Snoad and Michael Knowles.

The hilarious comic lovechild of A Question of Sport and QI, Jest a Minute is a light-hearted, lively show that quizzes leading comedians on their knowledge of comedy. Host Rhod Gilbert accepts no backchat and gives short shrift to cheek as he recklessly awards points based on how quick, agile and witty he considers the panellists to be. In a series of fast-paced, chaotic rounds, they are tasked with answering quickfire questions on comedy history, sitcom titles, catchphrases and classic comedy films.

Ostensibly a quickfire quiz, The Guessing Game is really a show that pushes facts aside in favour of flights of fancy and rewards the funniest, luckiest and most bizarre guesses. The premise is simple: host Clive Anderson fires off a series of difficult and implausible questions, and awards points to the panellists for their outlandish answers. Included here are all 12 episodes of the witty, whimsical and wildly speculative show.

Chaired by Simon Brett (author of the hugely popular Charles Paris series), this intriguing, interactive panel show challenges professional crime novelists to put their experience and expertise to the test as they try to unravel various mind-bending mysteries. Each episode features a death and a denouement - with various red herrings and misdirections along the way. As the murder scenario is described and the clues laid out, our writer-detectives take turns cross-examining the suspects.

Wickedly funny and bitingly satirical, Dead Ringers has been lampooning politicans, celebrities and media pundits for over 20 years. In these seven series, first broadcast between 2000 and 2002, the team give us their peerless impressions of the personalities we love to laugh at: from Tony Blair and George W. Bush to Brian Sewell, Posh n' Becks and Kirsty Wark.

David Mitchell hosts the hilarious panel show which turns honest men into lying cheats. In this devious and delightfully funny competition, four comedians have the audacity to lie through their teeth for victory.

John Finnemore (Dead Ringers & Mitchell & Webb) has written this brilliant new sitcom starring Stephanie Cole, Roger Allam & Benedict Cumberbatch. Cabin Pressure is set in a small airline business. The flipside of the glamorous world of international airlines.

The show that grabs listeners by the waist, swirls them round in time to a Strauss waltz, and then trips over the banana skins of convention.

Tony Hancock stars with Sid James and Kenneth Williams in the legendary BBC Radio comedy series. Created by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson in 1954, Hancock’s Half Hour was the radio vehicle that made Tony Hancock a household name. Each week listeners would be admitted to the sometimes fantastical, sometimes mundane life of “the lad ‘imself”. Aided and abetted by Sid James, Andrée Melly, Bill Kerr, and Kenneth Williams, Hancock would enter into the spirit of each episode with characteristic dolefulness.

Three enhanced audiobooks performed by the stars of the classic BBC television series. These stories are set during series one. The Turing Test by Simon Guerrier, starring Paul Darrow as Avon and Michael Keating as Vila. Avon and Vila go undercover at a top secret research establishment. Solitary by Nigel Fairs, starring Michael Keating as Vila and Anthony Howell as Nyrron. Vila is alone and amnesiac. Why have his friends turned against him?

The all-conquering King Henry V is dead, and the throne is occupied by his infant son, Henry VI. The good Duke Humphrey of Gloucester has been appointed protector, but a struggle for power soon develops between the young king's Lancastrian relatives and the powerful house of York under Richard Plantagenet. Meanwhile the French, led by Joan of Arc, the maid of Orleans, threaten to win back the territories lost to Henry V.

Michael Palin's diaries begin when he was newly married and struggling to make a name for himself in the world of television comedy. But Monty Python was just around the corner...Enjoying an unlikely cult status early on, the Pythons then proceeded to tour the USA and Canada. As their popularity grew, so Palin relates how the group went their separate ways, later to re-form for stage shows and the celebrated films The Holy Grail and Life of Brian.

Series 1 and 2 of the hilarious radio sitcom starring Harry H. Corbett and Wilfred Brambell, adapted from the much-loved TV series. Steptoe and Son ran for eight series on BBC TV and even spawned two feature films. Such was the series' popularity in the mid-1960s that the cast specially recorded several episodes for BBC radio. Here, collected together for the first time, are all 21 episodes from the first and second radio series, scripted by Hancock's Half Hour creators Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.

Miles Jupp stars as James Boswell, Dr Johnson's time-travelling biographer, with a host of top actors and comedians as his celebrity interviewees. Before James Boswell penned a biography of his friend, Dr Johnson, they were both nobodies. But his Life of Samuel Johnson made them famous - so now Boswell's out to work his magic on other celebrities. Travelling through the centuries, he gives 12 legendary figures the Boswell treatment, hoping to do for them what he did for Johnson....

Probably the most eccentric man in Britain, Radio 4's John Shuttleworth will reduce you to tears of laughter with his unique mix of music and dialogue.

Set during World War Two, Hut 33 follows the adventures of a team of codebreakers at Bletchley Park as they work tirelessly to break German codes, matching wits with the fabled Enigma Machine. Unfortunately, they hate each other. Archie is a stroppy Geordie socialist revolutionary while Professor Charles Gardner is a toffee-nosed snob. In theory, the immensely stupid 3rd Lt. Joshua Featherstonhaugh-Marshall is in charge of the hut, but he is still struggling with even the most basic concepts....

David Sedaris's remarkable ability to uncover the hilarious absurdity teeming just below the surface of everyday life is surpassed only by his ability to make his stories even moire hilarious when he reads them aloud. This is his first series for Radio 4, and he reads essays and diary entries from across all seven of his books.

Dermot O'Leary interviews a range of people he greatly admires from the worlds of sport, fashion, politics and entertainment.