imagine... Catch up, 2023: French & Saunders: Pointed, Bitchy, Bitter on BBC 4

imagine...

2023: French & Saunders: Pointed, Bitchy, Bitter

imagine... profiles the UK’s most successful double act of the last 40 years, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, and explores their unique brand of comedy, based on satire, silliness and, above all, friendship.\n\nFrench and Saunders’s relationship started when they were college flatmates, entertaining each other by playing pranks and inventing characters. Behind the scenes at a recording of their successful podcast, Titting About, it’s clear that they’re still sparking off each other to create comedy.\n\nAlan Yentob charts their journey from the game-changing Comic Strip team, which helped launch the new Channel 4 in 1982, to their domination of BBC schedules over the decades and their recent ventures on the stage, the page and in film.\n\nDawn and Jennifer revisit the former site of the Comic Strip Club in Soho, where a group of young comedians revolutionised the comedy scene. Alongside interviews with Comic Strip comedians Alexei Sayle, Adrian Edmondson and Nigel Planer, Dawn and Jennifer tell the story of being the women in a team that would change the face of television. Just five years after Dawn and Jennifer met, they would be part of The Comic Strip Presents… Five Go Mad in Dorset, shown on the launch night of the new Channel 4.\n\nAt the start of French and Saunders’s career, comedy was still firmly a male domain. Interviews with later generations of female comics like Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, who Dawn and Jennifer encouraged when they were a young double act, reveal how empowering their presence on TV was at the time.\n\nDawn and Jennifer are joined by a cast of collaborators, including Dame Joanna Lumley, Ruby Wax, Richard Curtis and Alexei Sayle. These interviewees help to reveal the caustic wit behind their cosy exterior and show the huge impact that French and Saunders had on the generations of comedians that followed.

Source: BBC 4

Most recent episodes of imagine...

Imagine...

2022: Jacob Collier: In The Room Where It Happens

Twenty-something virtuoso multi-instrumentalist, singer and arranger Jacob Collier has managed to outdo the Beatles by winning Grammy Awards for each of his first four albums. A ...

06-07-2026

BBC 4

All episodes

Imagine...

Winter 2017/18: 2. Mel Brooks: Unwrapped

At the age of 91, Mel Brooks is unstoppable, with his musical Young Frankenstein opening to great critical acclaim in London in late 2017. Alan Yentob visits Mel at home in Holl ...

25-06-2026

BBC 4

All episodes

Imagine...

Summer 2009: 2. David Hockney - A Bigger Picture

Filmed over three years with unprecedented access, this documentary captures the return from California of England's favourite living artist.\n\nAs Hockney approaches the age of ...

12-06-2026

BBC 4

All episodes

Imagine...

Summer 2018: 1. Rose Wylie: This Rose Is Blooming

Very few people would have recognised the name Rose Wylie until this remarkable artist was in her mid 70s. Youthful, playful and unpredictable at the age of 83, this is an artis ...

28-03-2026

BBC 4

All episodes

Imagine...

2018: Tracey Emin: Where Do You Draw The Line?

2018 has been an extraordinary year for British artist Tracey Emin. With large-scale commissions catapulting her from London's St Pancras station to the streets of downtown Sydn ...

17-03-2026

BBC 4

All episodes

Imagine...

Summer 2015: 1. Frank Gehry: The Architect Says "why Can't I?"

05-01-2026

BBC 4

All episodes

Imagine...

2021: Tom Stoppard: A Charmed Life

Tom Stoppard is perhaps the world’s leading, funniest and cleverest playwright. Ever since he hit the ground running in the 1960s with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dea ...

29-12-2025

BBC 4

All episodes

Imagine...

2020: 1. Lenny Henry: Young, Gifted And Black

Alan Yentob follows one of our best loved performers as he releases his first autobiography charting his early years in show business. In this revealing and poignant film Sir Le ...

16-12-2025

BBC 4

All episodes