The comedy week ahead

The comedy week ahead...

Today

LIVE IN WORCESTER: There’s top-notch club comedy for a fiver with Adam Bloom, Tom Stade and Duncan Oakley all on the same bill at Worcester’s Mode Lounge. It’s compered by Ryan Gough.

RADIO: Miles Jupp’s charming In And Out Of The Kitchen - in which he plays food writer Damien Trench - returns to Radio 4 for a new six-part series, just as work starts on making it into a TV show for BBC4. The show also stars Justin Edwards, Brendan Dempsey and Ade Oyefeso. Radio 4, 11.30am

LIVE IN LONDON: In-jokes and insanity at the Invisible Dot as Adam Hess, Fin Taylor, John Kearns, Mat Ewins,Matthew Winning, Mike Wozniak and Richard Gadd present the latest Bearpit Comedy Podcast (Podcast).

Tuesday Febuary 4

RADIO: 2525 is a new sketch series, set 511 years hence, from Matt Lucas’s production company John Stanley Productions that ‘takes its stylistic cue from Little Britain’. And it stars a bunch of people you may well recognise from the character comedy circuit: Jenny Bede, Jamie Demetriou, Kieran Hodgson, Catriona Knox and Waen Shepherd. Radio 4, 11pm

RADIO: From the future to the past, and a rerun of the Eric Morecambe And Ernie Wise Show which originally ran on Radio 2 in 1975. The six-part series, which starts this morning, was written and adapted for radio by their long-time collaborator Eddie Braben. Radio 4 Extra 8.30am

Wednesday February 5

TV: Little competition for the most-anticipated new show of the week as Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith follow up The League Of Gentlemen and Psychoville with Inside No 9, a new anthology of darkly comic tales. Each of the six episodes is set in a different house No 9 - starting with this one, set in a grand country mansion where a game of Sardines leads to some chilling revelations… The stellar cast also includes Timothy West, Anne Reid, Anna Chancellor, Mark Wootton, Tim Ke, Katherine Parkinson, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Ben Willbond. Here is a Chortle interview with Shearsmith about the show. BBC Two, 10pm

Thursday February 6

TV: Ja’mie: Private School Girl had a mixed reaction when it aired in Australia and America this year, but many still loved the bitchy, snobbish schoolgirl created by comedia Chris Lilley for We Could Be Heroes and Summer Heights High. Now it hits the UK… BBC Three, 10pm

Friday February 7

TV: Lee Mack turns from panel-show captain to panel show host in Sky1’s Duck Quacks Don’t Echo, which puts received wisdom to scientific test. Episode 1 features Dara O Briain, Ruth Jones and ex-Spice Girl Melanie C. Sky1, 10pm

LIVE IN LEICESTER There’s just the small matter of 600+ shows in the city over the next 17 days. There must be SOMETHING you like in Britain’s best-established comedy-only festival.. Opening night highlights are the apologetically middle-class Hal Cruttenden, smart stand-up from up-and-comer Ivo Graham, musical comedy from Rachel Parris, spoof spiritualism (as if there’s a real thing…) from Ian D Montfort or a fine double-bill at the Belmont Hotel with Mike Wozniak followed by Michael Fabbri. Website

Saturday February 8

LIVE IN LEICESTER: For scale alone, the highlight of Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival tonight is probably Rainer Hersch, who gets to play with 100 singers and 80 musicians of the Leicester Symphony Orchestra as he mixes comedy and classical music at De Montfort Hall.

LIVE IN LONDON: There are no massive TV names on the bill of the benefit for the Royal Free hospital being held at the Bloomsbury Theatre tonight, beyond Plebs’s Tom Rosenthal, but it’s a strong showcase of up-and-comers with a line-up that uncludes Aisling Bea, Brett Goldstein, James Acaster, Katherine Ryan, Naz Osmanoglu and Sara Pascoe.

Published: 2 Feb 2014