BBC Radio 2 treatment

The treatment that helped win a pitch for Radio 2’s Christmas Day programme. David Jason’s Christmas Comedy Classics aired on 25/12/11.

Working title: Comedy’s Christmas Classics / ‘Tis The Season To Be Jolly

Comedy should be shared. At no point is this more true than at Christmas when whole families gather around televisions and radios to see and/or hear what their favourite comedy stars have cooked up for their delectation. Whether it was The Goon Show, Hancock, Morecambe and Wise, Porridge, Only Fools and Horses or Blackadder the Christmas edition of a hit comedy show was, and is still, a hugely anticipated occasion. Of course, the nature of comedy being what it is, what is on offer is hardly a Christmas card vision of the holiday season but all the best shows pick up on the obvious themes that make this such a unique occasion; the food, the family strife and reunions, the inappropriate gifts, the entertainments (board games, TV etc), the Queen’s speech, the snow and the cold and so on and so forth.

Comedy’s Christmas Classics will encapsulate all of this, bottling the spirit of Christmas and serving it up as classic moments from an array of classic British television and radio comedy from the Billy Cotton era at the London Palladium to the Extras Christmas special. Along the way changing social attitudes and habits will be traced, ones that reflect the way in which we celebrate Christmas but also the way in which comedy has changed. The cipher of the Christmas comedy show offers us a unique journey through the mores of comedy and society and we’d very much like you to take us on that journey.