1.
Armando Iannucci
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Armando Giovanni Iannucci, OBE is a Scottish satirist, writer, television director, and radio producer. Born in Glasgow, Iannucci studied at Oxford University and left work on a PhD about John Milton to pursue a career in comedy. Starting on BBC Scotland and BBC Radio 4, his work with Chris Morris on the radio series On the Hour was transferred to television as The Day Today. A character from series, Alan Partridge, went on to feature in a number of Iannuccis television and radio programmes including Knowing Me, Knowing You. In the meantime, Iannucci also fronted the satirical Armistice review shows and in 2001 created his most personal work, The Armando Iannucci Shows, for Channel 4. Moving back to the BBC in 2005, Iannucci created the political sitcom The Thick of It as well as the spoof documentary Time Trumpet in 2006. Winning funding from the UK Film Council, he directed an acclaimed feature film, In the Loop. As a result of works, he has been described by The Daily Telegraph as the hardman of political satire. Iannucci created the HBO political satire Veep, and was its showrunner for four seasons from 2012 to 2015, other works during this period include an operetta libretto, Skin Deep, and his radio series Charm Offensive. In March 2012, it was announced that he is working on his first novel, Tongue International and his father, also called Armando, is from Naples, while his mother was born in Glasgow to an Italian family. His father, who came to Scotland in 1950, ran a pizza factory, Iannucci has two brothers and a sister. He was educated at St Peters Primary School, St. Aloysius College, Glasgow, the University of Glasgow, and University College, Oxford, in his teens, he thought seriously about becoming a Roman Catholic priest. He abandoned graduate work on 17th-century religious language, with reference to Miltons Paradise Lost. Iannucci first received fame as the producer for On the Hour on Radio 4. Baynham was closely involved with both Morriss and Lee & Herrings work – simultaneously at one point, between 1995 and 1999, Iannucci produced and hosted The Saturday Night Armistice. In 2000, he created two pilot episodes for Channel 4, which became The Armando Iannucci Shows and this was an eight-part series for Channel 4 broadcast in 2001, written with Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil. The series consisted of Iannucci pondering pseudo-philosophical and jocular ideas and fantasies in between surreal sketches, Iannucci has been quoted as saying it is the comedy series he is most proud of making. He told The Metro in April 2007 The Armando Iannucci Show on Channel 4 came out around 9/11, people had other things on their minds
2.
David Schneider (actor)
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David Schneider is an English actor, comedian and director. Schneider was born in London, England, during his time at university, Schneider performed a predominantly physical comedy act that contrasted with the trend towards stand-up comedy in live performance comedy in the 1980s. It was at time that he met Armando Iannucci, who in 1991 recruited him for news-radio spoof On the Hour. In the late 1990s he appeared in the topical satire The Saturday Night Armistice alongside Armando Iannucci, in 1997 and 2000, Schneider played the part of Bradley Wilson in the BBC sitcom The Peter Principle. Schneider wrote the screenplay for the 2001 feature film All the Queens Men, directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky and starring Matt LeBlanc, Schneider has also performed in the BBC sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme and appeared on BBC Radio 4 panel show The 99p Challenge. He had small roles in movies, including The Saint,28 Days Later, A Knights Tale and Mission, Impossible. In 2004, Schneider played Joseph Goebbels in the satirical tongue-in-cheek comedy Churchill, following this, in 2006 Schneider took his first lead role when he made Uncle Max, a series of 13 dialogue-free shorts for CITV. They focus on humour, with Schneider saying he wanted to be a human cartoon. In April 2008, he featured in an episode of Hotel Babylon as a magician, Schneider provides the voice of Blink for the CBBC series One Minute Wonders. In 2008, he took part in BBC Threes Most Annoying People of 2008, relaying his views about celebrities including Prince William, Mark Ronson and Peaches Geldof. He has written a play, called Making Stalin Laugh, based on the slaughter of the Moscow State Jewish Theater on the orders of Joseph Stalin. He also directed a pilot in 2007 called Up Close and Personal, set in the offices of a celebrity magazine. The pilot was rejected by ITV2. In 2011, he played Soggy Sid in Horrid Henry, The Movie and his radio sitcom Births, Deaths and Marriages, set in a Register office and starring himself, premiered on BBC Radio 4 in May 2012. Official website David Schneider at the Internet Movie Database
3.
BBC Two
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BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. It covers a range of subject matter, but tending towards more highbrow programmes than the more mainstream. Like the BBCs other domestic TV and radio channels, it is funded by the television licence and it is a comparatively well-funded public service network, regularly attaining a much higher audience share than most public service networks worldwide. Originally styled BBC2, it was the third British television station to be launched, a high-definition version of the channel launched on 26 March 2013, replacing BBC HD. British television at the time of BBC2s launch consisted of two channels, the BBC Television Service and the ITV network made up of regional companies. Both channels had existed in a state of competition since ITVs launch in 1955, the 1962 Pilkington Report on the future of broadcasting noticed this, and that ITV lacked any serious programming. It therefore decided that Britains third television station should be awarded to the BBC, prior to its launch, the new BBC2 was promoted on the BBC Television Service, the soon to be renamed BBC1. The animated adverts featured the campaign mascots Hullabaloo, a mother kangaroo, however, at around 18,45 a huge power failure, originating from a fire at Battersea Power Station, caused Television Centre, and indeed much of west London, to lose all power. BBC1 was able to continue broadcasting via its facilities at Alexandra Palace, associated-Rediffusion, the London weekday ITV franchise-holder, offered to transmit on the BBCs behalf, but their gesture was rejected. At 22,00 programming was officially postponed until the following morning, there was believed to be no recording made of this bulletin, but a videotape was discovered in early 2003. By 11,00 on 21 April, power had restored to the studios and programming began. The launch schedule, postponed from the night before, was successfully shown that evening. In reference to the cut, the transmission opened with a shot of a lit candle which was then sarcastically blown out by presenter Denis Tuohy. To establish the new identity and draw viewers to it. The production chosen was The Forsyte Saga, a adaptation of the novels by John Galsworthy, featuring well-established actors Kenneth More. Unlike BBC1 and ITV, BBC2 was broadcast only on the 625 line UHF system and this created a market for dual standard receivers which could switch between the two systems. On 1 July 1967, during the Wimbledon Championships, BBC2 became the first channel in Europe to begin broadcasts in colour. The thirteen part series Civilisation was created as a celebration of two millennia of western art and culture to showpiece the new colour technology, BBC1 and ITV later joined BBC2 on 625-line UHF band, but continued to simulcast on 405-line VHF until 1985
4.
Satirical
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Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. This militant irony or sarcasm often professes to approve of the things the satirist wishes to attack. Satire is nowadays found in artistic forms of expression, including literature, plays, commentary, television shows. The word satire comes from the Latin word satur and the subsequent phrase lanx satura, satur meant full but the juxtaposition with lanx shifted the meaning to miscellany or medley, the expression lanx satura literally means a full dish of various kinds of fruits. The word satura as used by Quintilian, however, was used to denote only Roman verse satire, a genre that imposed hexameter form. Quintilian famously said that satura, that is a satire in hexameter verses, was a genre of wholly Roman origin. He was aware of and commented on Greek satire, but at the time did not label it as such, the first critic to use the term satire in the modern broader sense was Apuleius. To Quintilian, the satire was a literary form. The odd result is that the English “satire” comes from the Latin satura, by about the 4th century AD the writer of satires came to be known as satyricus, St. Jerome, for example, was called by one of his enemies a satirist in prose. Subsequent orthographic modifications obscured the Latin origin of the satire, satura becomes satyra. The word satire derives from satura, and its origin was not influenced by the Greek mythological figure of the satyr, in the 17th century, philologist Isaac Casaubon was the first to dispute the etymology of satire from satyr, contrary to the belief up to that time. Laughter is not a component of satire, in fact there are types of satire that are not meant to be funny at all. Conversely, not all humour, even on such topics as politics, religion or art is necessarily satirical, even when it uses the tools of irony, parody. Even light-hearted satire has a serious after-taste, the organizers of the Ig Nobel Prize describe this as first make people laugh, Satire and irony in some cases have been regarded as the most effective source to understand a society, the oldest form of social study. They provide the keenest insights into a groups collective psyche, reveal its deepest values and tastes, some authors have regarded satire as superior to non-comic and non-artistic disciplines like history or anthropology. In a prominent example from ancient Greece, philosopher Plato, when asked by a friend for a book to understand Athenian society, historically, satire has satisfied the popular need to debunk and ridicule the leading figures in politics, economy, religion and other prominent realms of power. Satire confronts public discourse and the imaginary, playing as a public opinion counterweight to power, by challenging leaders. For instance, it forces administrations to clarify, amend or establish their policies, Satires job is to expose problems and contradictions, and its not obligated to solve them
5.
Television
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Television or TV is a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving images in monochrome, or in color, and in two or three dimensions and sound. The term can refer to a set, a television program. Television is a medium for entertainment, education, news, politics, gossip. Television became available in experimental forms in the late 1920s. After World War II, a form of black-and-white TV broadcasting became popular in the United States and Britain, and television sets became commonplace in homes, businesses. During the 1950s, television was the medium for influencing public opinion. In the mid-1960s, color broadcasting was introduced in the US, for many reasons, the storage of television and video programming now occurs on the cloud. At the end of the first decade of the 2000s, digital television transmissions greatly increased in popularity, another development was the move from standard-definition television to high-definition television, which provides a resolution that is substantially higher. HDTV may be transmitted in various formats, 1080p, 1080i, in 2013, 79% of the worlds households owned a television set. Most TV sets sold in the 2000s were flat-panel, mainly LEDs, major manufacturers announced the discontinuation of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-backlit LCDs by the mid-2010s. In the near future, LEDs are gradually expected to be replaced by OLEDs, also, major manufacturers have announced that they will increasingly produce smart TVs in the mid-2010s. Smart TVs with integrated Internet and Web 2.0 functions became the dominant form of television by the late 2010s, Television signals were initially distributed only as terrestrial television using high-powered radio-frequency transmitters to broadcast the signal to individual television receivers. Alternatively television signals are distributed by cable or optical fiber, satellite systems and. Until the early 2000s, these were transmitted as analog signals, a standard television set is composed of multiple internal electronic circuits, including a tuner for receiving and decoding broadcast signals. A visual display device which lacks a tuner is correctly called a video monitor rather than a television, the word television comes from Ancient Greek τῆλε, meaning far, and Latin visio, meaning sight. The Anglicised version of the term is first attested in 1907 and it was. formed in English or borrowed from French télévision. In the 19th century and early 20th century, other. proposals for the name of a technology for sending pictures over distance were telephote. The abbreviation TV is from 1948, the use of the term to mean a television set dates from 1941
6.
Comedy
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In a modern sense, comedy refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film, and stand-up comedy. The origins of the term are found in Ancient Greece, in the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a performance which pits two groups or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a Society of Youth and a Society of the Old, a revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes. Satire and political satire use comedy to portray persons or social institutions as ridiculous or corrupt, parody subverts popular genres and forms, critiquing those forms without necessarily condemning them. Similarly scatological humour, sexual humour, and race humour create comedy by violating social conventions or taboos in comic ways, a comedy of manners typically takes as its subject a particular part of society and uses humor to parody or satirize the behaviour and mannerisms of its members. Romantic comedy is a genre that depicts burgeoning romance in humorous terms. The adjective comic, which means that which relates to comedy is, in modern usage. Of this, the word came into usage through the Latin comoedia and Italian commedia and has, over time. The Greeks and Romans confined their use of the comedy to descriptions of stage-plays with happy endings. Aristotle defined comedy as an imitation of men worse than the average, however, the characters portrayed in comedies were not worse than average in every way, only insofar as they are Ridiculous, which is a species of the Ugly. The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others, the mask, for instance, in the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings. It is in this sense that Dante used the term in the title of his poem, as time progressed, the word came more and more to be associated with any sort of performance intended to cause laughter. During the Middle Ages, the comedy became synonymous with satire. They disassociated comedy from Greek dramatic representation and instead identified it with Arabic poetic themes and forms and they viewed comedy as simply the art of reprehension, and made no reference to light and cheerful events, or to the troubling beginnings and happy endings associated with classical Greek comedy. After the Latin translations of the 12th century, the term gained a more general meaning in medieval literature. Starting from 425 BCE, Aristophanes, a playwright and satirical author of the Ancient Greek Theater wrote 40 comedies,11 of which survive. Aristophanes developed his type of comedy from the satyr plays
7.
Graham Linehan
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Graham Linehan is an Irish television comedy writer and director who, often in partnership with Arthur Mathews, has written or co-written a number of popular television comedies. He is most noted for the sitcoms Father Ted, Black Books, amongst others, he has also worked on Big Train, Count Arthur Strong, Brass Eye and The Fast Show. He also had a column with the magazine In Dublin before moving to London, Linehan is married to Helen Serafinowicz, a writer and the sister of Peter Serafinowicz, and the couple have two children. Linehan and Mathews first met while working at Hot Press, the two continued their collaboration with Paris and Father Ted. They then wrote the first series of the sketch show Big Train and they also wrote the Dearth of A Salesman episode for the series Coogans Run, which featured the character Gareth Cheeseman. In late 2003, they were named one of the 50 funniest acts to work in television by The Observer, Linehan has since written for other shows, including Brass Eye. With Dylan Moran, he co-wrote the first series of Black Books, Linehan has also contributed material to Blue Jam, and its television adaptation Jam. In November 2008, he was awarded an International Emmy for The IT Crowd, in 2013, he wrote and directed The Walshes. Linehan and Mathews have had one book published, Father Ted and they have also contributed to various magazines and written surreal liner notes for the popular Volume series of alternative music compilations. This film appears as an extra on The IT Crowd, Version 1.0 DVD and he was also an executive producer of the first series of The IT Crowd, and an associate producer of one episode of Father Ted. Both Linehan and Mathews have made appearances in programmes they have written. They also made an appearance in the sitcom Im Alan Partridge as two Irish TV producers considering Alan Partridge for a contract and he appeared in the Identity Parade round of Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Linehan was one of the writers interviewed by Charlie Brooker in a special episode of the fifth series of Brookers Screenwipe programme. Linehan also appeared as a guest panellist on Have I Got News for You in 2011 and again in 2012 and he received a score of −19 on his only appearance on QI. In 2007, a documentary about Linehan, his life and his career was produced by Wildfire Films for RTÉ One and this documentary explored the art, craft and deeply competitive business of creating contemporary television comedy. It was directed by Adrian McCarthy and produced by Martha ONeill, in 2011, Linehan also appeared with several members of the cast in Channel 4s Father Ted Night, an evening of the writers favourite episodes and two retrospective documentaries. On 6 June 2011, Linehan appeared on BBC Radio 4s Today programme to discuss his adaption of the Ealing comedy film The Ladykillers for the West End stage. During this appearance, Linehan took issue with Today presenter Justin Webb over what he saw as the staging of an artificial argument between himself and the critic Michael Billington
8.
Simon Pegg
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Simon John Pegg is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. He co-wrote and starred in the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy of films, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and he and Nick Frost wrote and starred in the sci-fi film Paul. Pegg portrayed Benji Dunn in the Mission, Impossible film series and Montgomery Scott in Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond, co-writing the latter. Pegg was born and raised in Brockworth, Gloucestershire, the son of Gillian Rosemary, a civil servant, and John Henry Beckingham. His parents divorced when he was seven and he took the surname of his stepfather after his mother remarried, Pegg attended Castle Hill Primary School, Brockworth Comprehensive Secondary School, and The Kings School, Gloucester. Pegg moved to Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire when he was 16 and studied English Literature and Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon College. He graduated from the University of Bristol in 1991 with a BA in Theatre, Film, while there, he performed as a member of a comedy troupe called David Icke and the Orphans of Jesus, alongside David Walliams, Dominik Diamond, and Jason Bradbury. Peggs early appearances in TV series and films include Asylum, Six Pairs of Pants, Faith in the Future, Big Train, between 1998 and 2004, Pegg was regularly featured on BBC Radio 4s The 99p Challenge. He played various roles during the tour of Steve Coogans 1998 live stage show The Man Who Thinks Hes It, in 1999, he created and co-wrote the Channel 4 sitcom Spaced with Jessica Stevenson. The series was directed by Edgar Wright, with whom Pegg and Stevenson had previously worked on Asylum, for his performance in this series, Pegg was nominated for a British Comedy Award as Best Male Comedy Newcomer. At George A. Romeros invitation, Pegg and Wright made cameo appearances in Romeros zombie film, in 2004, Pegg starred in a spin-off of the television show Danger. 50,000 Zombies. in which he played a hunter named Dr. Fell. He played mutant bounty hunter Johnny Alpha, the Strontium Dog and he also narrated the first series of the making-of documentary series Doctor Who Confidential. When the film Mission, Impossible III was subsequently made, Pegg appeared in it as Benji Dunn and he reprised the role of Benji Dunn in the 2011 film Mission, Impossible – Ghost Protocol and the 2015 film Mission, Impossible – Rogue Nation. In 2006, he played Gus in Big Nothing alongside David Schwimmer, the same year, Pegg and Wright completed their second film, Hot Fuzz, released in February 2007. In 2007, Pegg starred in The Good Night and Run Fatboy Run directed by David Schwimmer and co-starring Thandie Newton, in 2008, he wrote the dialogue for an English language re-release of the cult 2006 animated Norwegian film, Free Jimmy. Pegg received screenwriting credit for this, and Pegg also voiced one of the characters in the English-language version. Pegg co-wrote the script for a film called Paul, about two men who encounter a comedic extraterrestrial alien during a road trip across the US
