New series for Radio 4 Extra

Radio 4 Extra is to launch a new series looking behind the scenes of some of Britain’s biggest television comedies.
 
What’s Funny About… will include Armando Iannucci and Rebecca Front talking about The Thick of It; Meera Syal and Anil Gupta on Goodness Gracious Me; Jennifer Saunders on Absolutely Fabulous and Hugh Bonneville and John Morton on W1A.

In the first episode, to air on May 13, Dawn French and Richard Curtis talk about The Vicar of Dibley, including how to make a fundamentally nice character funny, Curtis’s curious appetite for writing abut weddings, and Dawn’s strangest ever Vicar of Dibley gig.

While in the Absolutely Fabulous episode, Saunders says: ‘I wrote it out of necessity more than anything else. Needing to be employed! It was terrifying because I’d never written on my own before, and I’d never written a sitcom or anything that was dramatic or longer than a sketch.

‘Maybe they should all be kinder to each other? Maybe they should have a dog? I didn’t know what sitcoms had in them. And I just thought, no, I’m going to write it as I would write it.’

The series will be fronted by former BBC One controller and ITV head of television Peter Fincham and veteran comedy producer Jon Plowman, who oversaw several of the shows being discussed. 

Fincham said: ‘Jon Plowman gave me my first job in television in the mid-1980s. Since then, we’ve both been lucky enough to be involved in some of the best comedy programmes of recent decades. So it seemed entirely natural that if we were going to make a programme together today, it should be all about TV comedy.

‘In our programme about W1A, John Morton, its creator, says, "I think generally comedy doesn’t last very well. I may be wrong about this, but I think it goes off faster than other things in the larder". The truth is that comedy endures longer than almost anything else on television. 

‘At its best, great comedy is timeless. And in these difficult days, more and more viewers and listeners are rediscovering the best of TV comedy, and enjoying it afresh. So this is a series that looks back with no anger at all at some wonderful television programmes made by some brilliantly talented people, some of whom are called John.’

Plowman added: ‘I worked on some of these shows from a distance but it’s always interesting to hear from the people at the heart of a project why they wrote it and then to find out why they think it worked.
 
‘I’ve sometimes been told that trying to take a TV comedy apart to see what makes it work is rather like pulling the wings off a butterfly, or even a Boeing 747. But I think we’ve found with this series that this is far from the case. The things that keep the ship afloat or the plane in the air, or the butterflies making butter is not a mystery, it’s the sheer talent of the writers and performers involved.
 
‘What makes a hit TV show funny? Frankly, I’ve no idea, but the people we meet in this series have so let’s listen to them and learn.’

Tony Pilgrim, head of programming for 4 Extra said: ‘What’s Funny About hears from the best comedy minds in the business, and gives listeners deeper insight and behind-the-scenes access to some of the UK’s best TV comedies.’ 

What’s Funny About… is made by Expectation Production and the producer is Owen Braben, the grandson of Morecambe and Wise’s legendary writer Eddie.
 

Published: 5 May 2020