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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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<\/em>. It covers mental health, food, money, sex and love through the experience of her generation.<\/p>\n John Tothill Forgives Your Sins<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n Bennett’s One Man Panic Attack<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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:<\/p>\n \u201cThese new series and specials we are announcing today…\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The five pilot formats are Yalla Habibi<\/em>, Say! Less!<\/em>, Chutney<\/em>, So You Want To Play?<\/em> and Nish Kumar’s Utopia<\/em>. The first three are sketch projects: Yalla Habibi<\/em> approaches British Arab life, Say! Less!<\/em> uses an all-Black cast to skewer modern culture, and Chutney<\/em> centres British Asian comic voices.<\/p>\n Say! Less!<\/em> has already had an ITV pilot, broadcast in 2025, so \u201cnew\u201d 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.<\/p>\n The other two pilots move beyond sketch. So You Want To Play?<\/em> has Jake Bhardwaj putting four comedians through deliberately ridiculous challenges. In Nish Kumar’s Utopia<\/em>, comedians and celebrity guests are asked how they would redesign the world from scratch.<\/p>\n Elsewhere in the slate, Paul Longley has gone straight to a sitcom series with The Gossip Couple<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n Richard Curtis supplies the headline name with Greatest Living Writer<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n Six established programmes have also been recommissioned: Why In The Name Of Pierre Novellie<\/em>, Rum Punch<\/em>, Do Gooders<\/em>, It’s A Fair Cop<\/em>, Icklewick FM<\/em> and Whatever Happened To Baby Jane Austen?<\/em>. Icklewick FM<\/em>, co-created by Amy Gledhill and Chris Cantrill<\/a>, is entering its third series.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The studio slate also arrives alongside the return of Live From The UK<\/em><\/a>, 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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nSixteen one-offs go into the Sounds feed<\/h2>\n
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Five pilots get their turn at the microphone<\/h2>\n
Curtis has a date; the stand-ups are still waiting<\/h2>\n
Sources<\/h2>\n
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