Comedy Comedy Just A Minute Highlights from the new series include IT support Monday 5 January, 6.30pm for Alan Turing, passive laughing, the price of love (VAT included), the use of offshore accounts by 11 parts pirates, medieval investment advice and how laser eye surgery was invented.The series also has some new features with the Radio 4 panel shows Who Gives A Toss and Give Me Strength. Concrete Cow stars Robert Webb, Beth Chalmers, Steven Kynman, Catherine Shepherd, Chris Pavlo and Abigail Burdess, and is written by Milton Jones, James Cary,Adam Bromley and the cast. Producer/Adam Bromley Bearded Ladies Wednesday 7 January, 6.30pm Four parts Radio 4’s most devious panel game returns. Chairman Nicholas Parsons (above) continues to attempt to keep control over a roll-call of celebrity contenders attempting to talk about a subject for 60 seconds without hesitation, repetition or deviation. Panellists in this series include: Graham Norton, Paul Merton, Ross Noble,Tony Hawks, Clement Freud,Tim Rice and Linda Smith. Bearded Ladies (L-R): Fay Rusling, Orianne Messina, Producer/Chris Neill Ewan Bailey, Charlotte McDougall and Susie Donkin Concrete Cow Bearded Ladies continues into the New Year with Tuesday 6 January, 6.30pm the sketch show that asks: if it really is a woman’s world, why is there always a man to leave his socks Six parts in the middle of the floor? The team behind Radio 4’s award-winning Think The Combining the comedic talents of two critically Unthinkable returns for a second series of the acclaimed double acts, Orianne Messina and Fay strange, irreverent and highly entertaining sketch Rusling and Charlotte McDougall and Susie Donkin, show, Concrete Cow. along with actor/writer Ewan Bailey, Bearded Ladies BBC Radio 4: Quarter 1 2 Comedy is a fresh, contemporary sketch show that explores lists, celebrity features and competitions that modern themes and situations.The sketches cover inhabit them. everything from work, play and being a mother to having a mother, last dates, getting a job and Producer/Helen Williams hosting a party. Orianne, Fay, Charlotte and Susie were part of the Absolute Power award-winning writing team behind Channel 4’s Thursday 5 February, 6.30pm smash hit Smack The Pony. Four parts Producer/Carol Smith Stephen Fry and John Bird return as the masters of spin, Charles Prentiss (Fry) and Martin McCabe The Department (Bird), for the third and final series of Absolute Power. Wednesday 7 January, 11.00pm Three parts With more machinations than Machiavelli and contacts at the highest level of government, top media and government relations firm Prentiss Far from the gaze of an unsuspecting public and untouched by the tentacles of Westminster, The McCabe will be wheezing the wheezes and spinning Department has been secretly running the country the spin in the sharply satirical comedy penned by for some time. Deep within its labyrinthine Mark Tavener. headquarters works a dedicated three-man think- tank: Oscar Proud, historian, pedant and competent The cast includes Tom George as Clive, the office juggler;Victor Gooch, financial wizard and legal junior, and Tony Gardner as Archie, Labour’s “man parasite; and Lazlo Woolf, scientific hypothesist and in the shadows”. Sagittarian. Each week they investigate possible solutions to one of the nation’s major problems Producer/Dawn Ellis and, each week, your future is in their hands … Welcome to The Department, a new comedy series Old Harry’s Game in which Oscar,Victor and Lazlo apply their various Thursday 19 February, 11.00pm skills to dream up ludicrous, irritating and pointless Six parts changes to the way people do things. The Sony Award-winning sitcom set in Hell, and The Department is written by and features hot new starring writer Andy Hamilton as Satan, returns for comedy talents Chris Addison, John Oliver and a fifth series. Andy Zaltzman, with assistance from Matthew Holness, Lucy Montgomery and Peter Dickson. Producer/Paul Mayhew Archer Producer/Jon Naismith This Is Craig Brown The Sunday Format Wednesday 25 February, 11.00pm Wednesday 28 January, 6.30pm Six parts The Sony and British Comedy Award-winning team Craig Brown is widely regarded as one of today’s returns with a brand-new series of The Sunday leading satirists.The series is taken from his award- Format featuring smoothly spliced, quick-fire winning scribblings for Private Eye and his Way Of parodies of all the supplements, and the lifestyle The World column in the Telegraph. BBC Radio 4: Quarter 1 3 Comedy The cast includes Edward Fox, Harry Enfield, Rory and each programme includes extracts from his Bremner, Felicity Montagu, Geoffrey McGivern and comedy shows, specially recorded in these areas Mel Hudson.There are cameos from the real John for the series. Humphrys and Barry Norman.The narrator/links man for the series is Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith in Producer/Simon Nicholls The Matrix and Lord Elrond in Lord Of The Rings). The series is a selection of sketches and The Now Show monologues, linked seamlessly by music.There are Friday 5 March, 6.30pm six episodes, each one focusing on a particular topic, which include: politics, travel, communications, Six parts the arts, celebrity and hallucinations. Producer Simon Nicholls says:“The best way to describe the series, and this is how I pitched it to Radio 4, is Chris Morris’s Blue Jam meets Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads – weird and wonderful. Items include John Humphrys grilling a Home Office Minister about a storm that’s currently raging in a teacup; The Complete Works Of Shakespeare For Telephone; and the diary of Queen Elizabeth II.” Producer/Simon Nicholls Dedicated Troublemaker Thursday 4 March, 6.30pm Four parts Comedian Mark Steel began questioning authority, inequality and conventional behaviour at an early age. He says:“As an angry 13-year-old, during one of my first days in the main building of Swanley Comprehensive, the headmaster, Dr Henry, caught Steve Punt (top) and Hugh Dennis me eating a banana in the corridor.This was an outrageous breach of the school code. It may seem The Now Show returns for another series of a trivial rule to me, he insisted, but if we only kept brilliantly observed radio satire. Steve Punt and to the rules we liked, where would that lead?” In Hugh Dennis star with Mitch Benn, Marcus Mark’s case it led to a career as a comedian, Brigstocke and Jon Holmes, in a show that deals journalist and popular historian. with everything that’s “now” and nothing that’s “then”. Recorded in front of a live audience and Passionate, parochial and personal moments from featuring a potent mix of sketches, songs and Mark’s life are detailed in this series of four observational humour, The Now Show takes programmes, in which he returns to the places and a hilarious swipe at current trends and people he knew back then, to see what’s changed, perceived wisdom. including himself. Mark talks to local residents in the pub, on the street, or wherever he finds them, Producer/Adam Bromley BBC Radio 4: Quarter 1 4 Comedy Inner Voices Written by Tom Jamieson and Nev Fountain, the Wednesday 10 March, 11.15pm two main writers on BBC Radio 4 and BBC One’s Dead Ringers, Elephants To Catch Eels is produced by Four Parts Dead Ringers star Jan Ravens. Four male comedy talents perform comic Producer/Jan Ravens monologues they’ve scripted themselves for the latest series of Inner Voices.The fantastic line-up features actor and comedian Dylan Moran; top The Museum Of Everything stand-up comic Curtis Walker; Reginald D Hunter, one of the nominees for this year’s Thursday 1 April, 11.00pm prestigious Perrier Awards; and Stewart Lee, Six parts half of the comedy duo Lee and Herring and a talented writer in his own right. The Museum Of Everything is a brand-new comedy series written and performed by Danny Robins, Producer/Liz Webb Dan Tetsell and Marcus Brigstocke, the team behind BBC Two’s We Are History and the first series of 2000 Years Of Radio on Radio 4. Quote … Unquote Monday 22 March, 6.30pm Based on the trio’s successful 2002 Edinburgh Festival show, The Museum Of Everything is a witty Ten parts and original sketch show in disguise. Set in the mystical and apparently infinite environs of the Museum of Everything, the series is themed around Nigel Rees chairs the 34th series of the the world of museums, galleries, guided tours, stately long-running panel game based on quotations. homes, historical re-enactors and obsessive Quote ... Unquote has been broadcast on Radio 4 collectors. Listeners might bump into Merlin, find out since 1976 and there have been over 300 editions how wicker shaped today’s society and meet some of the show. rather disgruntled museum staff along the way. Producer/Carol Smith Robins,Tetsell and Brigstocke have been performing together as Club Seals for nearly a decade and, between them, have contributed to many Radio 4 Elephants To Catch Eels programmes, including The Now Show, Dead Ringers, Tuesday 30 March, 6.30pm The Way It Is, Hudson And Pepperdine, The Sunday Six parts Format, Giles Wemmbley Hogg Goes Off and BBC One’s The Basil Brush Show. The Cornish smuggling comedy returns for a Producer/Alex Walsh Taylor second series, penned by the award-winning team behind Dead Ringers. Set in Drumlin Bay, Cornwall, at the end of the 18th century, Elephants To Catch Eels follows the story of Tamsyn Trelawney, the area’s most celebrated smuggler, and her drunken father, Jago. Highlights from the new series include Tamsyn and Captain Marriott swapping places for charity, a group of handsome highwaymen who unwittingly win Tamsyn’s fans away from her, and a trip to London to rescue Jago when he’s kidnapped.