BBC Comedy

The six-part series is based on an original idea by Simon Evans and Phin Glynn, with the series written and directed by Evans.

Staged follows the cast of a play forced to halt their upcoming West End Production and sent home on furlough.

Classed as some of the best British actors of their generation, the cast try to keep up rehearsals at home during lockdown.

The series finds the comedy and challenges of creating a drama in lockdown both on and off stage.

The bursary has been named after Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, the comedy writing duo who after first meeting in a TB sanatorium back in 1948 went on to create Hancock and Steptoe & Son.

Driven by boredom and alienation as a pair of young men in a sanatorium surrounded by older occupants, Galton and Simpson turned to writing. The duo went on to become one of the best loved and most enduring writing partnerships in comedy history.

The six-part series will become available on BBC iPlayer from the 15^th December.

Executive produced by Lorne Michaels and Elizabeth Banks, Shrill stars Aidy Bryant (Saturday Night Live) as Annie, an overweight young woman who wants to change her life, but not her body.

Changing her life won’t be easy though.

As Annie tries to start her career in journalism, she is also dealing with bad boyfriends, a sick parent and a perfectionist boss.

How her career began: "I’m from a very small town in Wales. No-one I knew ever worked in TV. I had no in. I just followed my dream and worked really hard to get my foot in the door.

"I’m not an extraordinary person. I am very lucky to work with some quite extraordinary people. It’s hard to get into telly and it’s getting harder.

"I am a massive comedy fan. I wanted to do something in comedy although I didn’t know what that would be. I read politics at Liverpool’s John Moores University where I joined the student radio station.

How to Produce Comedy Bronze is a glorious blend of memoir and manual. It looks back on Jon Plowman’s 30-year career as a freelance producer and BBC Comedy impresario, and speaks to the next generation of aspiring TV producers with various learnings accumulated along the way.

Both Monty Python’s Flying Circus and W1A – shows produced by the BBC Comedy department five decades apart – featured a gag in which the BBC head of comedy is revealed to be a dour, humourless figure on the brink of clinical depression.

“Yes. And Episodes did a bit of that, as well,” laughs Shane Allen, when the long-running gag about his job is mentioned, thereby establishing that it could not apply to him. The tape of our conversation is fittingly – though, given some of his predecessors, not inevitably – punctuated with his deep laugh.

BBC One and BBC Entertainment have commissioned a new Saturday night series with Agnes Brown.

Mrs Brown's Boys, created and written by its star Brendan O'Carroll, has proved a ratings hit, with 11 million people tuning in for its live episode.

The new series, filmed in front of a live audience, will see Mrs Brown getting up to all sorts of mischief and shenanigans, with stunts and celebrity guests.

Brendan O’Carroll said: "I think Agnes may be worried that she'll need a bigger kettle to make tea for everyone that's coming round!"

A Brief History of Tim, Motherland, and Porridge will all return to television with a full series. Each programme was piloted as part of the BBC's celebration of 60 years of the sitcom, marking the anniversary of the first TV episode of Hancock's Half Hour.

Porridge was brought back by the creative time behind the original 1974 sitcom of the same name. A reimagining of the BBC One favourite, the new Porridge stars Kevin Bishop as the cyber criminal grandson of Ronnie Barker's iconic inmate Fletcher.