Lenny films new sketches... about an absent wife

Newly separated Lenny Henry has filmed a series of BBC comedy sketches called Conversations With My Wife.

But the scenes have nothing to do with Dawn French; from whom he split last month after 25 years of marriage. Instead, in the online sketches he plays a stay-at-home dad Skyping with his executive wife who is jetting off around the world.

The series is included on the BBC’s comedy website, which officially launches today, following a revamp of the ‘beta’ version that has been online for a year. In the last 12 months, the online library has built up a collection of more than 600 clips – a mixture of archive moments, web-only series and behind-the-scenes footage – that have amassed 2.5 million views

A number of new web series are being launched to mark the full launch, including Conversations With My Wife. There is also a series of animations based around Mitchell and Webb sketches, Shooting Stars regular Angelos Epithemiou in Moving On and a fantasy horror series called BeastHunters, which stars James Corden, Jaime Winstone, Robert Llewellyn and Ewen Macintosh.

Other commissioned series on the BBC comedy website come from Jason Lewis, Idiot of Ants, Harry Partridge and Mr Khan, the character played by Adil Ray in Bellamy’s People, which was axed from TV last week.

Cheryl Taylor, controller of BBC comedy commissioning said: ‘The BBC comedy website represents an extraordinarily diverse array of classic and cutting edge humour and I would urge all comedy fans to check it out. [It] is hugely valuable to the genre and offers up brilliant development opportunities to both on and off screen talent. ’

The site is at bbc.co.uk/comedy – and here is the first episode of BeastHunters:

Published: 17 May 2010