Comedy Connections - Season 2

Season 2

Episodes

The Goodies
The inside story of 1970s hit show The Goodies, from the beginnings at the Cambridge Footlights to national stardom.

Birds of a Feather

Father Ted

The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
The behind the scenes story of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin reveals how unlikely a comedy success Reggie really was. In writer David Nobbs's original book, The Death of Reginald Perrin, the central character's midlife crisis saw him to a mental hospital - hardly the stuff of comedy. And when the writer was told to take the jokes out of the first draft of the script to make the show funnier it was clear Reggie Perrin was going to be unusual on television too.
Despite not getting his first choice of Ronnie Barker to play the lead, writer David Nobbs created a hero for a generation and changed British comedy by proving that sitcom could be successful with a serial storyline.
The show has connections to The Two Ronnies, Steptoe and Son, Fawlty Towers, The Good Life and Fairly Secret Army.

Keeping Up Appearances
Mapping the careers of the people who made Keeping Up Appearances sees them come together from shows as diverse as That Was the Week We Watched, The Dick Emery Show, Last of the Summer Wine, Victoria Wood-As Seen on TV and Ever Decreasing Circles.
Interviews with the cast and crew reveal how writer Roy Clarke created a world that revolved around Hyacinth Bucket, where the inspiration for her surname came from, and exactly why the show ended when practically everyone wanted it to keep on going. Hyacinth is now sold around the world and finds that , perhaps surprisingly, she's big in Botswana.

The Young Ones
The Young Ones thrust a new sort of comedy into the television mainstream in the early 1980s. At first glance The Young Ones seemed to tear up all the rules of sitcom, but despite its enormous energy and anarchic invention it was a more conventional programme than it might have appeared. But alongside Channel 4's The Comic Strip Presents...
The Young Ones transported a new generation of comedy writers and performers out of the clubs and into the nation's living rooms. And in a few short years the one time young pretenders had become the new comedy establishment. Their number one single for Comic Relief apart, the legacy of The Young Ones includes Saturday Live, Filthy, Rich and Catflap and Bottom.

Hi-de-Hi

Red Dwarf
Series charting the history of some of the best British comedy shows looks at the inside story of intergalactic sitcom Red Dwarf, written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. Interviewees include the two writers, stars Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Robert Llewellyn, Norman Lovett and Chloe Annett, and there's a look at how their careers have involved programmes such as Spitting Image, Saturday Live, Carrott's Lib, Happy Families and Robot Wars.
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Crystal Lake
Prequel series to Friday the 13th, follows a doomed small town where camp counselors come to die.

Family Guy
Family Guy follows Peter Griffin the endearingly ignorant dad, and his hilariously offbeat family of middle-class New Englanders in Quahog, RI. Lois is Peter's wife, a stay-at-home mom with no patience for her family's antics. Then there are their kids: 18-year-old Meg is an outcast at school and the Griffin family punching bag; 13-year-old Chris is a socially awkward teen who doesn't have a clue about the opposite sex; and one-year-old Stewie is a diabolically clever baby whose burgeoning sexuality is very much a work in progress. Rounding out the Griffin household is Brian the family dog and a ladies' man who is one step away from AA.

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
Emmy Award and Grammy Award winner Jimmy Fallon brought NBC's "The Tonight Show" back to its New York origins when he launched The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon from Rockefeller Center. Fallon puts his own stamp on the storied NBC late-night franchise with his unique comedic wit, on-point pop culture awareness, welcoming style and impeccable taste in music with the award-winning house band, The Roots.