New BBC comedy comedy guide

[Jonsmad]

“We’re relaunching the Comedy Guide so that it covers more
classic BBC comedy programming, on radio as well as telly,
and sits alongside all our other great content.”

Good idea.

“We thought the Guide was looking a bit tired too, so we’ve given it a refresh.”

Fair enough.

“If you bear with us, our brand spanking new service will be fully rolled out in
the next few weeks. Written by comedy writers, it’ll be a funny insight on all
the comedy shows produced by the BBC in the last 50 years.”

Hmmm. A comedy guide, written comedically? Hmm. Not sure I like the idea.
I will reserve judgement, Until I see it. But I like Comedy covered fairly
seriously when it’s details I’m interested in. If I wanted to laugh I would
do so at the actual shows. Still we shall see, might be great. They might
have given it to Rob or Doug to do.

“The old Guide by Mark Lewisohn can still be found in book form,
published by The Radio Times and available in all good bookshops.”

I guess I’ll have to update my 1997 edition now then to what ever the most
recent version was, cus I really liked Lewisohn Journalism, he rarely slagged
a show I liked that much.”

So in a couple of weeks or less there will be a newly written guide to
red dwarf up.

Topic

[pfm]

> So in a couple of weeks or less there will be a newly written guide to
red dwarf up.

Let’s get ready to count how many times the word ‘smeg’ is used.

[Tonguetied]

To ganymede and titan, yes sir I’ve been around.

[thomasaevans]

It;s bene like this for quite a while. Some of the articles are available, and they have removed the details about episode transmissions. Usually coz most of them were incomplete.

[John Hoare]

It’s really, really bloody irritating. I used that guide nearly every day! True, I’ve got it on the bookshelf here, but it’s so useful it being online.

Why the hell couldn’t it have at least been left up until the new guide was online? To say nothing about the fact that if the new guide is ANYTHING like as comprehensive as the old one, I’ll be fucking surprised.

[Seb Patrick]

The Lewisohn guide was excellent – I’m quite miffed that they’ve ditched it. I suppose I’ll have to pick up the book – but then, part of the joy of the online version was its hyperlinked, cross-referenced nature. It’s not a difficult thing to keep updated, irrespective of whether or not Lewisohn himself was writing new content, and like John says, I’ll be very surprised if the new one is anywhere near as comprehensive, or good. Clearly they’ll be rolling it out in stages, so it’ll take a long time to bring it anywhere near up to scratch…

[Somebody]

http://web.archive.org/web/20070202092543/www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/

[Author]

Replies