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
2020: This House Is Full Of Music
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BBC 4
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BBC 4
2021: Tom Stoppard: A Charmed Life
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BBC 4
2021: Bernardine Evaristo: Never Give Up
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BBC 4
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20-05-2025
BBC 4
Winter 2017/18: 6. Andrew Lloyd Webber: Memories
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18-05-2025
BBC 4
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 ...
06-05-2025
BBC 4
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24-02-2021
BBC 4
Arthur Miller - Finishing The Picture
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04-08-2022
BBC 4
2023/24: Pet Shop Boys: Then And Now
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19-04-2024
BBC 4
2023: The Factory: Made In Manchester
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11-12-2023
BBC 4
Winter 2005: Amos Oz: The Conscience Of Israel
Alan Yentob presents a portrait of Israel's most celebrated writer and political commentator, Amos Oz, whose childhood memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness gives an eyewitness acc ...
05-01-2019
BBC 4
2022: Wayne Mcgregor: Dancing On The Edge
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07-05-2023
BBC 4
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 ...
08-06-2025
BBC 4
Spring 2018: 1. Rupert Everett: Born To Be Wilde
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04-06-2018
BBC 4