News

Pub- based comedy drama Mother’s Pride will be in cinemas next year, and the cast has now been confirmed.

The British film industry has been releasing a steady stream of comedy dramas over the last few years, full of homegrown talent both in front of and behind the camera.

In 2018, Stephen Graham and comedian Dave Johns led the cast of wrestling comedy Walk Like A Panther, although perhaps the most notable example is the Fisherman’s Friends series, which chronicled the unlikely story of a group of fisherman who form a band and release an album of sea shanties to critical and commercial acclaim.

This led to life imitating art, as the actual band the film was based on saw a huge surge in popularity, with albums climbing up the charts and multiple sell out national tours.

According to the British Comedy Guide, the team behind Fisherman’s Friends is now producing...

BAFTA has announced the winners of the BAFTA Television Craft Awards, presented at a ceremony held on Sunday night in London. The awards celebrate the creativity, skill, and craft of behind-the-scenes television talent and the best programs of 2023.

The following won two BAFTAs each:

Charlie Brooker and Bisha K Ali won the Writer Drama category and Stephan Pehrsson won for Photography & Lighting Fiction for Demon 79 (Black Mirror). Nikki Parsons, Ollie Bartlett and Richard Valentine won the Director: Multi-camera category, and Julio Himede, Tim Routledge, Kojo Samuel, Michael Sharp and Dan Shipton won Entertainment Craft Team for Eurovision Song Contest 2023. The Editing Team behind Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland won Editing: Factual and the documentary’s composer Simon Russell won Original Music: Factual. Atli Örvarsson won Original Music: Fiction and Gavin Bocquet and Amanda Bernstein won Production Design for their work on Silo. The Sound Team behind Slow Horses won Sound: Fiction,...

Wondery, an Amazon company, the global podcast studio and network responsible for over 55 #1 hit shows globally, today announces the launch of Wondery+, a curated subscription service for podcast fans in the UK.

The podcast subscription service, available now, offers subscribers exclusive podcast content, ad-free listening as well as early access to new episodes of popular shows. The revamped Wondery app provides a localised and curated experience for podcast fans to discover new, immersive content including:

The Price of Paradise: Hosted by Alice Levine, of British Scandal, this brand-new UK original limited series follows the tumultuous real-life story of a woman who swaps her life in suburban Hampshire to buy a private island in the Caribbean, sees all episodes available to Wondery+ subscribers to binge now.

The Bachelor of Buckingham Palace: From Vespucci UK, this podcast explores one of the world’s most unusual reality dating shows. Also from Vespucci, the previously released One Click,...

Death In Paradise spin-off Beyond Paradise is back for a second series, and here’s the trailer.

As Death In Paradise nears the end of its 13th series, the BBC is preparing to launch the second series of successful spin-off Beyond Paradise, the most watched new drama of last year

The new series will see the return of Kris Marshall as Di Humphrey Goodman, Sally Bretton as Martha Lloyd, Zahra Ahmadi as DS Esther Williams, Dylan Llewellyn PC Kelby Hartford, Barbara Flynn as Anne Lloyd, Felicity Montagu as Margo Martins, Jade Harison as Cs Charlie Woods, Melina Sinadinou as Zoe, Eva Feiler as Lucy, Isaac Vincent-Norgate as Ryan, Amelia Vitale as Hannah. Also returning is Selwyn the Duck.

The official synopsis reads as follows:

Shipton Abbott continues to keep Di Humphrey Goodman and his team busy, with a baffling new crime each episode. From a death on a steam train to a missing teacher,...

BBC Radio 4 has today launched Jokes, a new comedy podcast feed that brings together top picks from the station’s original comedy in one place. Available to subscribe on BBC Sounds and RSS, Jokes will combine brand new series with highlights from the archive, providing comedy fans with an easy way to find the latest content from their favourite comedians.

First up in the feed will be Nora Meadows’ Week of Wellness, a new sitcom starring Katy Wix as a therapist trying to help her clients (and herself) find wellness. This series is a joint commission between BBC Comedy and Radio 4 following a non-broadcast pilot last year.

Jokes is set to include further TV co-commissions too, including Icklewick FM, written by and starring Amy Gledhill and Chris Cantrill of The Delightful Sausage. Set in a fictional Yorkshire radio station, the show follows the residents of Icklewick as they discuss...

Wondery and Amazon Music today announce Terribly Famous, a brand new UK original podcast taking listeners inside Britain’s unique celebrity culture to chart the lives of its most iconic stars. From the career highs to controversies, meteoric rises to missteps, each season tells the story of one of our biggest stars, launching with best-selling artist Adele, with later seasons confirmed for Victoria Beckham, Zayn Malik and Lily Allen.

Hosting the podcast with a mix of cultural commentary, salient storytelling and razor-sharp wit are actor, improviser and stand-up comedian Emily Lloyd-Saini (Code 404) and fellow actor, comedian and writer Anna Leong Brophy (Shadow & Bone).

Terribly Famous uncovers what it's really like to be famous. Through the rollercoaster rides of the series’ star subjects, the show explores our national obsession with celebrity by placing the audience inside the lives of icons. Celebrities may enjoy a world most of us can only imagine,...

Terribly Famous is a new podcast taking listeners inside Britain’s unique celebrity culture to chart the lives of its most iconic stars. From the career highs to controversies, meteoric rises to missteps, each season tells the story of one of our biggest stars, launching with best-selling artist Adele, with later seasons confirmed for Victoria Beckham, Zayn Malik and Lily Allen. Hosting the Wondery and Amazon Music podcast are actor, improviser and stand-up comedian Emily Lloyd-Saini and fellow actor, comedian and writer Anna Leong Brophy.

Tennis Coverage

Coverage of the iconic Wimbledon tennis tournament has led to record-breaking numbers for U.K. broadcaster BBC. There were 54.3 million streams of the BBC’s coverage on streamer iPlayer and BBC Sport online during the two-week long competition – up from 53.8 million in 2022. On BBC One, there was a peak audience of 11.3 million to watch Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz beat Serbia’s Novak Djokovic in five sets in the men’s singles finals, the highest since the U.K.’s Andy Murray won in 2016. The match was also streamed live 4.1 million times on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport online, an increase of 58% from 2022.

During the women’s singles final, where Czech player Markéta Vondroušová triumphed over Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur, there was a peak audience of 4.5 million on BBC One – an increase from 2022’s 3.1 million. The match was streamed 1.3 million times on BBC iPlayer, an 85% increase from 2022. Across the tournament,...

This fresh take on the satirical comedy slot will feature new programmes from the likes of Rachel Parris, who will kick off the series with a range of comic characters including digital stars Rosie Holt and Michael Spicer; Dom Joly, who will take a mischievous approach to investigating the week’s biggest stories; Ria Lina, bringing a global perspective to the news with comedians from around the world sharing news from their countries; Catherine Bohart, who will take a deep dive into the roots of a news story; Rhys James, bringing his trademark quick wit to interrogate the news; and Andrew Hunter Murray hosts the latest creation from The Skewer’s Jon Holmes, which takes aim at the way the news is packaged and presented.

The specials will be broadcast in Radio 4’s popular Friday Night Comedy slot this summer, between series of Dead Ringers and The News Quiz. Friday...