Comedy News Filed 21 Sep 2026 · 16:47
BBC Radio 4 commissions 19 stand-ups and five pilots
Nineteen stand-ups have got a piece of Radio 4’s new comedy slate. The most useful name in the pile may be John Tothill. His confession-and-absolution format has already made the trip from pilot to series. That is the bit of commissioning paperwork every comic and producer wants to see completed.
The broadcaster announced more than 30 comedy commissions on 16 September 2026. Three stand-ups received series orders, another 16 received one-off specials and five formats will be piloted. No broadcast dates have been announced for the new stand-up programmes. There are no diaries to circle yet, however optimistic your agent’s pencil may be.
Who got a Radio 4 stand-up commission?
Bella Hull, John Tothill and Scott Bennett are the three comics with stand-up series in the slate. Hull’s programme is Bella Hull’s Guide To More Or Less Being Okay. It covers mental health, food, money, sex and love through the experience of her generation.
John Tothill Forgives Your Sins follows a successful pilot. The premise has Tothill hearing the sort of regrets that make people wince, then offering absolution and a celebration of their vices. The published description even suggests a one-way trip to Nepal as the alternative. That is quite a journey to avoid telling Radio 4 what happened at the office Christmas party.
Bennett’s One Man Panic Attack is built around his worries about his children, parents, marriage and everything else. Chortle describes it as a two-parter. These three orders are the part of the announcement where a proven live voice gets room to stretch. The comics are not being asked to flatten an hour into one tidy recording.
The distinctions in the slate matter. A special is a one-off programme, a pilot tries a format before any full run is promised, and a series provides several instalments. A recommission brings back a programme that has already survived that process. Tothill’s route gives the cleanest example: pilot first, series order afterwards.
Sixteen one-offs go into the Sounds feed
The first eight stand-up specials belong to Vittorio Angelone, Miles Jupp, Desiree Burch, Sophie Garrad, Grace Campbell, Brodi Snook, Toussaint Douglass and Mark Simmons. The other eight go to Christopher Macarthur-Boyd, Nathan D’Arcy Roberts, Will Robbins, Jodie Mitchell, Susie McCabe, James Mullinger, Arabella Weir and Barry Ferns. It is a list long enough to make the average green-room tea order look admirably controlled.
Those specials and the three series are intended for the Stand-Up Specials feed on BBC Sounds. Julia McKenzie, the station’s comedy commissioner, introduced the spread with a line that is brief enough to survive its own edit:
“These new series and specials we are announcing today…”
The practical attraction for a comic is time. A radio special can retain storytelling, pauses and the bits that need more air than a panel-show answer. McKenzie said the commissions would give the performers space to expand their storytelling, although the announcement disclosed neither recording arrangements nor transmission dates.
This sits alongside other BBC routes without duplicating them. The Comedy Collective bursaries are aimed at writers, performers and production talent, while a stand-up commission begins with an individual voice and a programme-shaped idea. Anyone still trying to get the first tape through a door can start with the less glamorous business. That means recording a comedy clip that a booker will watch. Audio may spare you the lighting, though it remains brutally interested in whether the laugh arrived.
Five pilots get their turn at the microphone
The five pilot formats are Yalla Habibi, Say! Less!, Chutney, So You Want To Play? and Nish Kumar’s Utopia. The first three are sketch projects: Yalla Habibi approaches British Arab life, Say! Less! uses an all-Black cast to skewer modern culture, and Chutney centres British Asian comic voices.
Say! Less! has already had an ITV pilot, broadcast in 2025, so “new” needs a small qualification beside it. Audio gives the format another test without carrying over a series order. A pilot remains an audition with microphones and, if everybody is lucky, biscuits that were opened this morning.
The other two pilots move beyond sketch. So You Want To Play? has Jake Bhardwaj putting four comedians through deliberately ridiculous challenges. In Nish Kumar’s Utopia, comedians and celebrity guests are asked how they would redesign the world from scratch.
Elsewhere in the slate, Paul Longley has gone straight to a sitcom series with The Gossip Couple. He writes and stars in the adaptation of his TikTok premise about a married couple dissecting their friends’ choices while driving to and from social engagements. That route from an online format to radio is worth separating from the pilots: a commissioner can already see the characters, rhythm and repeatable engine before the first studio session.
Curtis has a date; the stand-ups are still waiting
Richard Curtis supplies the headline name with Greatest Living Writer, his first audio sitcom. The ten-part series stars Bill Nighy, Nicola Walker, Nick Mohammed, Meera Syal, Jim Broadbent and Madelyn Smedley. Its BBC Sounds box set is due on 14 December, followed by a Radio 4 broadcast from 11pm on Boxing Day, when much of the country will be pinned under a throw beside a plate of cheese.
Six established programmes have also been recommissioned: Why In The Name Of Pierre Novellie, Rum Punch, Do Gooders, It’s A Fair Cop, Icklewick FM and Whatever Happened To Baby Jane Austen?. Icklewick FM, co-created by Amy Gledhill and Chris Cantrill, is entering its third series.
Curtis brings the recognisable cast and the fixed Christmas transmission, while 19 working stand-ups receive programmes of their own and five ideas enter the pilot stage. Only Tothill’s order currently shows the whole ladder in one place, from a tested episode to a commissioned series.
The studio slate also arrives alongside the return of Live From The UK, the Angela Barnes mixed-bill programme due back this autumn. One route starts with a format document; the other starts in front of a club crowd. Whichever route they take, there is still a microphone, an allotted amount of time and an audience choosing exactly where the laugh is, with the format document safely out of earshot.
