Gash is a satirical British television comedy created by Armando Iannucci that was broadcast each weeknight from Monday 28 April to Thursday 1 May 2003 on Channel 4 to coincide with the 2003 local elections. [1] Written and filmed on the day of transmission, the programme was a topical review show featuring sketches, modified VT footage, talk, discussion and jokes. The name derives from a television term for footage surplus to requirements. [1] The show featured appearances from Olivia Colman, Dominic Holland, Jon Holmes and John Oliver, amongst others. [2] [3]
In a modern sense, comedy is a genre of fiction that refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film, stand-up comedy, or any other medium of entertainment. The origins of the term are found in Ancient Greece. In the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance which pits two groups or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old." A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth is understood to be constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to take recourse in ruses which engender very dramatic irony which provokes laughter.
Armando Giovanni Iannucci is a Scottish satirist, writer, director, and radio producer. Born in Glasgow to Italian parents, Iannucci studied at the University of Glasgow followed by the University of Oxford, leaving graduate work on a D.Phil about John Milton to pursue a career in comedy. Starting on BBC Scotland and BBC Radio 4, his early work with Chris Morris on the radio series On the Hour transferred to television as The Day Today. A character from this series, Alan Partridge, co-created by Iannucci, went on to feature in a number of Iannucci's television and radio programmes, including Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge and I'm Alan Partridge. Iannucci also fronted the satirical Armistice review shows and in 2001 created his most personal work, The Armando Iannucci Shows, for Channel 4.
Channel 4 is a British public-service free-to-air television network headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It began transmission on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the station is now owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation, a public corporation of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which was established in 1990 and came into operation in 1993. With the conversion of the Wenvoe transmitter group in Wales to digital terrestrial broadcasting on 31 March 2010, Channel 4 became a UK-wide television channel for the first time.
Many of the writers of the show – Simon Blackwell, Roger Drew, Tony Roche and Will Smith – went on to collaborate with Iannucci on the political sitcom The Thick of It (2005–2012) and Time Trumpet (2006). Other writers included Dan Tetsell, Danny Robins and Jon Holmes. [2] Perhaps due to its topical nature, the series is not available on any commercial media formats or even via 4oD. It was produced by David Tyler.
Simon John Blackwell is a comedy writer and producer. He is best known for his work on The Thick of It, In The Loop and Veep, and for his collaborations with Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain on Peep Show, Four Lions and The Old Guys.
Roger Drew is a British illustrator and television screenwriter, and was educated at Victoria College, Jersey. He has written material for TV shows such as The Thick of It and won an Emmy for his work on Veep.
Tony Roche is an English television, radio and film comedy writer and producer, best known as a writer of the HBO comedy Veep, the BBC Television series The Thick of It and its film spin-off In the Loop.
