Comedy writer, producer, director, performer and all round virtuoso, Armando
Iannucci, has been named as the latest News International Visiting Professor of
Broadcast Media at Oxford University for the '05 - '06 academic year and will be
presenting a short series of lectures at the beginning of 2006.
Iannucci is probably best known for his collaborative work with Steve Coogan
on The Day Today, I'm Alan Partridge and Knowing Me,
Knowing You but has been working in comedy broadcasting since graduating
from University College, Oxford and producing The Mary Whitehouse
Experience for BBC Radio. He has received numerous awards including two
Sony Radio Awards and three British Comedy Awards.
His lecture series for the University is entitled, 'British TV Comedy: Dead
or Alive?' of which he surmises thus;
'If British TV has a heritage, then comedy is its most precious commodity.
Most people's lists of the best television from the past forty years invariably
have great moments of comedy at the top. Today, though, British Television
Comedy is at a crossroads. Just as it get more daring and varied in format and
technique, and just as audiences get more and more sophisticated in the breadth
of comedy they're willing to watch, viewing figures for comedy shows are in
decline. Less comedy is being made for the mass audience channels BBC1 and ITV,
while the commissioning of comedy shows is increasingly in the hands of TV
professionals from outside comedy production, under pressure from advertisers
and schedulers not to take risks. And reality TV has recently shown that mass
audiences can be won over by programmes far cheaper to make than the average
comedy show. Over the next five years, TV comedy has the chance either to
reclaim the mass-appeal, large viewing-figure slots that were previously theirs
by right, or become a fragmented web of innovative, interesting but niche
programmes. These lectures will outline precisely how British TV comedy arrived
at this crossroads, and the possible routes it can take.'
Iannucci's lectures will be given on 24 January 2006, 31 January 2006, 7
February 2006, and 14 February 2006.
