This week we review - Hebburn (Series 2 Episode 1) Hebburn is a warm and affectionate tale of north east family life. It tells the tale of the Pearson family and their impetuous and ambitious son, Jack. After years living in Manchester - and secretly marrying the sweet, middle class and Jewish Sarah - he's now back Tyne-side with his new wife, a new job as the local newspaper's editor, and a baby on the way. Jack's parents, Joe and Pauline, are devoted to their family and their hometown, and, fo...
Oct 21, 2019•53 min
This week we review - Clare In The Community (Series 12 Episode 2) Radio sitcom set around the professional and personal life of the social worker Clare Barker. Control freak Clare likes nothing better than interfering in other people's lives on both a professional and personal basis. Using constant professional and technical jargon while working with colleagues and at home with her partner Brian, Clare rarely finds time to solve her own problems. She is too involved improving her client's lives...
Oct 14, 2019•53 min
This week we review - The Mind Of Herbert Clunkerdunk (Series 1 Episodes 1 & 2) Spencer Jones writes and stars in the The Mind Of Herbert Clunkerdunk, which sees the BAFTA and 2017 Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee as the titular Herbert Clunkerdunk. This show is an introduction into the mind of Herbert Clunkerdunk, as he talks to us down the lens of the camera and attempts to move around his everyday life - only to be constantly interrupted by his own inventively animated imagination. Starring...
Oct 07, 2019•56 min
This week we review - Listen To Les (From 18th November 1979) If You Can’t Laugh At Your Troubles Then Laugh At His, As You ….. Listen To Les Listen To Les was a long running BBC Radio series starring the late great Les Dawson. Very little information about the series exists, although it’s regularly repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra. As far as we can ascertain the show ran for ten series between 1975 and 1985, although we have been unable to completely verify this. Listen To Les was a sketch show in...
Sep 30, 2019•52 min
This week we review - Brian Gulliver's Travels (Series 2, Episode 2) A BBC Radio 4 satirical comedy series about a seasoned presenter of travel documentaries, Brian Gulliver, who finds himself in a hospital's secure unit after claiming to have experienced a succession of bizarre adventures. Originally broadcast 21 February 2011 - 28 March 2011. Brian Gulliver's Travels is a new adventure story from Bill Dare (producer of Spitting Image, Dead Ringers and I've Never Seen Star Wars). The series has...
Sep 23, 2019•58 min
This week we review - W1A (Series 3, Episode 1) Ian Fletcher, the ex Head of the Olympic Deliverance Commission, takes up his next big job - the Head of Values at the BBC. His task is to clarify, define, or re-define the core purpose of the BBC across all its functions and to position it confidently for the future, in particular for Licence Fee Renegotiation and Charter Renewal in 2016 and 2017 respectively. Reith was then; this is now. The post is sold to Ian as a chance to influence and shape ...
Sep 16, 2019•51 min
This week we review - This Way Up (Series 1, Episode 1) This Way Up is a comedy about moving on, moving forward and trying to find happiness. Written by Aisling Bea, she also stars as the charming and funny Aine, who is trying to pull her life back together after a "teeny little nervous breakdown". Her sister Shona, played by Sharon Horgan, is increasingly worried about both her sister and her own mortality. And whether or not there's room in her apartment for her boyfriend, Vish, now that she's...
Sep 09, 2019•58 min
This week we review - The Absolutely Radio Show (Series 3, Episode 4) The original television series, produced by Absolutely Productions, aired on Channel 4 for four series between May 1989 and February 1993. Following an award-winning (BBC Audio Drama award for best live scripted comedy) reunion special for BBC Radio 4, the show returned for a new four-part radio series with most of the original cast in September 2015. The new series, a co-production between Absolutely Productions Ltd and The C...
Sep 02, 2019•52 min
This week we review - Simon Evans Goes To Market (Series 2, Episode 1) Simon Evans sets himself the challenge to make economics funny in this comprehensive guide to global markets. Each week, Simon takes on a different commodity market with a little help from Tim Harford, Merryn Somerset Webb and a guest expert. By looking at four products that are so fundamental to our lives, the series brings us closer to understanding how the world economy affects us and how we affect it. Featuring Simon Evan...
Aug 26, 2019•53 min
This week we review - Lobbyland (Series 2, Episode 4) Topical sitcom following life in Westminster through the eyes of Sam Peakes, a young political editor at a clickbait website, as she tries to make sense of the madness engulfing British politics. Starring Ophelia Lovibond as Samantha Peakes, Charlie Higson as Tom Shriver MP, Cariad Lloyd as Mia Hamilton, Lewis Macleod as Dom Bell and Ryan Sampson as Lawrence Mills. Written by Christopher Davies, Alistair Griggs, Jon Harvey and Sarah Dempster ...
Aug 19, 2019•55 min
This week we review - Gameface (Series 1, Episode 1) Comedy series following Marcella as she spiritedly crashes her way through life, assisted by her dubious life-coach, best friends and ever-patient driving instructor. Bouncing back from a seismic break-up, clinging on to her dreams of becoming an actress, and - when she remembers her lessons - finally learning to drive, Marcella is on a mission to change her future for the better. Starring Roisin Conaty as Marcella and packed with wry and idio...
Aug 12, 2019•54 min
This week we review - The Pin (Series 4, Episode 4) Award-winning comedy duo The Pin present their own sketch show. Strap in and delve in to a world of oddness, performed in front of a live studio audience. The Pin radio show sees double-act Alex Owen and Ben Ashenden revise, tweak and comment on their sketches as they go, deconstructing the boundary between them and the listener, revealing the twisted logic behind their skewed approach to comedy and life. After a sold-out run in Edinburgh and a...
Aug 05, 2019•56 min
This week we review - Archer (Series 1, Episode 1) Archer is an American adult animated sitcom created by Adam Reed for the basic cable network FX. It follows the exploits of the title character (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin), a dysfunctional, irreverent secret agent and seven of his colleagues. Domineering boss (and Archer's mother) Malory Archer (Jessica Walter), professional Lana Kane (Aisha Tyler), mild-mannered Cyril Figgis (Chris Parnell), delusional, psychotic Cheryl Tunt (Judy Greer), gossi...
Jul 29, 2019•49 min
This week we review - East Coast Listening Post (Series 2, Tattoo & Laugh) The East Coast Listening Post was created by Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated duo Lazy Susan and is part spoof, part homage to popular US podcasts. Across the series, Jenna and Dana (journalists, sisters, idiots) tour the UK and interview its inhabitants in their quest to reveal something meaningful - inadvertently revealing themselves in the process. Freya Parker is an actor and comedian and one half of Edinburgh Com...
Jul 22, 2019•54 min
This week we review - Cabin Pressure (Series 3 Episode 2) Set in a small airline business, Cabin Pressure is a comedy about the wing and a prayer world of a tiny, one-plane charter airline staffed by two pilots - one on his way down, and one who was never up to start with. Whether they're flying squaddies to Hamburg, metal sheets to Mozambique, transporting lads on a stag night or shifting a panther for the odd oil sheik, no job is too small - but many jobs prove to be too difficult - for MJN Ai...
Jul 15, 2019•51 min
This week we review - Year Of The Rabbit (Series 1 Episode 51) London, 1887. A lawless city. Jewel thieves and body snatchers stalk the streets and the police do their best to contain them - but it isn't easy. At the forefront of that fight is Detective Inspector Rabbit. Rabbit's been chasing bad guys for as long as he can remember, but now he's not as young as he was and his heart keeps stopping at inopportune moments. So Rabbit's boss, Chief Inspector Wisbech forces him to get a partner - youn...
Jul 08, 2019•52 min
This week we review - Don't Forget The Driver (Series 1 Episode 5) A dark comedy set in sunny seaside Bognor Regis. It explores what it means to live, work and parent at a point when the entire UK population is having to come to terms with the changing colour of their passports. Coach driver and single dad Peter Green leads a life of ordinary routine; clip on ties, limp packed lunches, vehicle checks, round-trip coach journeys ferrying church groups to donkey sanctuaries and Japanese tourists to...
Jul 01, 2019•57 min
This week we review - The Wrong Mans (Series 1 Episode 1) From actor/writer duo James Corden and Mathew Baynton, The Wrong Mans series centres on Sam Pinkett and Phil Bourne, office workers for Berkshire County Council, who have their menial existence turned upside-down by a chance phone call and a case of mistaken identity. After being sole witness to a car crash on a desolate country road, Sam answers an abandoned mobile telephone and hears a message that was clearly not meant for him: "If you...
Jun 24, 2019•51 min
This week we review - Good Omens (Series 1 Episode 1) According to The Nice And Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner. So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except Aziraphale, a somewhat fussy angel, and Crowley, a fast-living demon - both of whom have l...
Jun 17, 2019•55 min
This week we review - Benny Hill Time (From March 1964) Despite re-running this radio series, all the BBC can find to say about this show is "The master of double entendre presents sketches including Fred Scuttle. With Peter Vernon and Jan Waters. From March 1964." Perhaps they were still smarting from his choice to work with Thames Television for 20 years. However, we do know that Alfred Hawthorne Hill was born on 21 January 1924 in Southampton. After the Second World War, Hill worked as a perf...
Jun 10, 2019•57 min
This week we review - Back To Life (Series 1 Episode 1) Back To Life follows Miranda 'Miri' Thomas, a woman who committed a terrible crime many years ago. It was a catastrophic mistake, one she paid for with well over a decade in prison. When we meet her, she has just returned to her family home, aged 36, with no job, no friends and no choice but to move back in with her parents. Miri is desperate to move on, put the past behind her and get back to her life; but, in a small-town where her crime ...
Jun 03, 2019•54 min
This week we review - Mum (Series 3 Episode 1) `Mum' is a critically well-received family sitcom by the hands of BAFTA Award-winning writer Stefan Golaszewski. The story follows lead character suburban mum Cathy, portrayed by Olivier Award-winning Lesley Manville, as she mourns her husband's death and tries to move on in the years that follow, starting with the funeral in January and ending on New Year's Eve. Each episode in the earlier series revolves around a month in which Cathy attempts to r...
May 27, 2019•55 min
This week we review - Ghosts (Series 1 Episode 1) The crumbling country pile of Button Hall is home to numerous restless spirits who have died there over the centuries - each ghost very much a product of their time, resigned to squabbling with each other for eternity over the most inane of daily gripes. But their lives - or, rather, afterlives - are thrown into turmoil when a young urban couple - Alison and Mike - surprisingly inherit the peaceful derelict house and make plans to turn it into a ...
May 20, 2019•54 min
This week we review - Inside No.9 (Series 2 Episode 2) Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith follow up the multi-award-winning Psychoville with an anthology of tales of the genuinely unexpected. What goes on behind closed doors on the street where you live? Each series of Inside No. 9 invites viewers into six very different No. 9s, where the ordinary and mundane rub shoulders with the extraordinary and macabre. From a grand country house to a séance in a Victorian villa, and a blood-soaked actor'...
May 13, 2019•56 min
This week we review - This Country (Series 1 Episode 1) This Country is a British mockumentary sitcom, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Three on 8 February 2017. Created, written by and starring siblings Daisy May Cooper and Charlie Cooper, the programme is about the day-to-day lives of two young people living in a small village in the Cotswolds. The programme centres on themes of social clumsiness, the trivialities of human behaviour, the eccentricities of living in rural England, a...
Apr 29, 2019•49 min
This week we review - Meet David Sedaris (Series 7 Episode 2) American humourist David Sedaris reads from his extensive collection of comedy essays for a live Radio 4 audience. With sardonic wit and incisive social critiques, David Sedaris has become one of America's pre-eminent humour writers. The great skill with which he slices through cultural euphemisms and political correctness proves that he is a master of satire and one of the most observant writers addressing the human condition today. ...
Apr 22, 2019•49 min
This week we review - My First Planet (Series 1 Episode 1) My First Planet is an audience sitcom set on a newly-founded space colony. Unfortunately, the leader of the colony died on the voyage, so his Number 2, Brian (Nicholas Lyndhurst) is now in charge. Brian's a nice enough chap, but no alpha male, and his desire to sort things out with a nice friendly meeting infuriates the colony's Senior Medical Officer Lillian, who'd really rather everyone was walking round in tight colour-coded tunics an...
Apr 15, 2019•54 min
This week we review - Terry Alderton - More Crazy Now (Series 2 Episode 4) The prolific, uncensored and self-assured Terry Alderton embarks on a four part series where he plays every character and sings every crazy song. ‘Terry Alderton’s All Crazy Now’ is not so much a radio show, but a piece of evidence against him, or possibly cathartic repugnance from years of frustration and self censorship. ‘All Crazy Now’ is unique – if Kenny Everett and Spike Milligan got together they would be making a ...
Apr 08, 2019•50 min
This week we review - You, Me & The Apocalypse (Series 1 Episode 1) With their days numbered, a group of people struggle with the inevitable apocalypse after it is discovered that a comet is on a collision course with Earth. Jamie Winton (Mathew Baynton) works as a bank manager in Slough, England, living with his best friend, Dave Bosley (Joel Fry), and his adoptive mother, Paula (Pauline Quirke). Jamie vows to find his wife, Layla (Karla Crome), who disappeared seven years ago, and his biol...
Apr 01, 2019•59 min
This week we review - Fleabag (Series 2 Episode 3) Hilarious and hurtful, a confession of the modern woman. Starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Olivia Colman and Bill Paterson, Fleabag is a hilarious and poignant window into the mind of a dry-witted, sexual, angry, porn-watching, grief-riddled woman trying to make sense of the world. As she hurls herself headlong at modern living, Fleabag is thrown roughly up against the walls of contemporary London, with all its frenetic energy, late nights and brig...
Mar 25, 2019•48 min
