The Comedy Years

The Comedy Years 1998 features interviews with stars of comedy past and present - revealing the comedy moments that inspired them - including the likes of Shobna Gulati, Kulvinder Ghir, Sherrie Hewson, John Culshaw,Debra Stephenson, Ingrid Lacey, Robert Duncan and Susannah Doyle. This episode looks back at 1998. It was the era of New Labour and Blair’s Britain - and also a year that saw some ground-breaking new comedy series. The Royle Family brought a new, social realist style of filming to the world of sitcom. Meanwhile, the BBC launched the first all-Asian sketch show, Goodness Gracious Me. Victoria Wood made her first foray into the world of situation comedy with the award-winning series Dinnerladies. 1998 also saw the final series of two much-loved shows of the Nineties - satirical comedy Drop The Dead Donkey and cult sitcom Father Ted.