Channel 4 gets behind new comedy

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Channel 4 gets behind new comedy


The 11 O'Clock Show with MacKenzie Crook, Iain Lee and Daisy Donovan.



Channel 4 is to launch a new nightly 11 O'Clock Show-style topical comedy series in a bid to showcase fresh talent.
The Nightly Show, a working title, announced today as part of Channel 4's spring and summer line-up, will air on weeknights across three weeks in August as part of Channel 4's new talent month.
Channel 4 said the new show had been "specially commissioned to promote a new generation of comics".

The 11 O'Clock Show, which aired on Channel 4 in the late 1990s, got mixed reviews at the time, but helped launch the careers of Ricky Gervais, Sacha Baron Cohen, Daisy Donovan and Iain Lee.
Other new comedy will include two commissions from last year's new talent initiative Comedy Showcase - The Kevin Bishop Show, produced by the team behind Star Stories, and Plus One, from writing partnership Tim Allsop and Stewart Williams. Peep Show will also return for a new fifth series.

In drama, The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall is billed as a "compelling account" of the aftermath of the shooting of the British peace activist in 2003; and will star The Hours' Stephen Dillane and Shallow Grave's Kerry Fox.
The "darkly comic" Poppy Shakespeare, based on Clare Allan's best-selling novel about life on a psychiatric hospital day ward, will star White Teeth's Naomie Harris and Bleak House's Anna Maxwell Martin.
Following the Big Food Fight season, Channel 4 will focus on gun and knife crime in the spring and summer with a season of shows entitled The Truth about Street Weapons.

This will include five, two-hour programmes that will record a number of nationwide hearings conducted by a commission of experts assembled to examine the problem.
The series will culminate in a peaktime programme to discuss the findings of a report produced by the commission and intended to contain practical ideas to tackle the proliferation of street weapons among young people.
Channel 4's gun and knife crime season also encompasses topical single drama Fallout, starring Buried's Lennie James and adapted from Roy Williams' stage play of the same name.

Two special editions of Dispatches, a Cutting Edge and a week of peaktime short films featuring the victims of street crime will also air as part of the season.
In documentaries, the broadcaster will mark the 150th anniversary of Darwin's theory of evolution with a three-part series featuring Professor Richard Dawkins; while In the Shadow of the Moon will recount, for the first time in their own words, the stories of crew members from every Apollo mission.

The Wonders of Islam will feature a week of documentaries aiming to "get to the heart of this most misunderstood religion".
Documentaries to be broadcast during the Islam week include a feature-length film about the Qur'an; and In Reverend Death, filmed over a period of six years, in which journalist Jon Ronson shadows a Virginian minister who helps people commit suicide.

Chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall will front a new magazine series, River Cottage Spring, while Gordon Ramsay's F Word also returns.
Style guru Gok Wan will also present a new fashion series, Gok's Clothes Show.