Dear Joan and Jericha
Julia Davis has spent the past 15 years cementing her position as the doyenne of dark British comedy, and Dear Joan and Jericha may be her most disturbing work to date. This two-hander with her actor pal Vicki Pepperdine (Getting On, The Windsors) sees the pair play agony aunts who tackle their listeners’ relationship problems with relentless misogyny – the woman is always, always at fault, while the invariably wonderful “guys” get off scot-free – and constant recommendations for some variety of incest or bestiality, however tenuous its link to the topic at hand. Always troubling, occasionally terrifying, this is character comedy at its most thrillingly transgressive.
Microscope
Mysteries, conspiracies and unsolved crimes provide apparently limitless fodder for the podcast world. In Microscope, the comedians John Kearns and Matt Ewins tackle a few contemporary conundrums of their own, and literally: they’re making them all up as they go along. In each episode Ewins unsympathetically grills a man (played by Kearns) with the inside scoop on a strange phenomenon: the BT engineer who perfected 5G’s mind-controlling powers; the gameshow host embroiled in a notorious cheating scandal; the libarian (not librarian) who discovered a golden book of Shakespeare sequels under his parking space. Entirely improvised and extremely giddy, Microscope showcases the full extent of the pair’s off-the-cuff comic powers.
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Capital
In 2016, political satire was widely declared dead, Brexit and Trump seemingly too peculiar and unpredictable to parody. As it turned out, all a great spoof required was a bit of imagination. Set in the months after Britain voted to bring back the death penalty, Capital follows the clueless young civil servants tasked with making the referendum result a reality. Liam Williams’s furious everyman favours hanging, while his overwhelmed boss (Charlotte Ritchie) ponders death by algorithm. The pressure is on: their equally hapless minister (Harry Enfield) has promised the public a killing by Christmas. Made in 2017, this impeccably observed sitcom feels just as sharp and satisfying as ever.
Sound Heap
These days, we have podcasts coming out of our ears: there are shows on pretty much any conceivable subject. That’s where the podcast-parodying podcast Sound Heap comes in. Presented by the standup John-Luke Roberts, pretend CEO of the titular podcast platform, it provides tasters of a slew of fake-but-believable shows, such as Passwords of My Life, a perfect spoof of banal celebrity chat-shows, in which Tom Allen reads out his pin. Other guests include Isy Suttie, Josie Long and Mark Watson (all of whom, naturally, have real podcasts of their own).
The Kurupt FM Podkast
Kurupt FM are masters of diversification. Having started life as a YouTube concern, the pirate radio-spoofing, UK garage-obsessed comedy crew have since turned their talents to a BBC sitcom (People Just Do Nothing), a feature film, a club night (the evocatively titled Champagne Steam Rooms), and a full-length album. They also have their own podcast, in which they tackle topics – nature, politics, the future – that would intimidate most. But not MC Grindah and co, whose deep dives are equal parts extreme obliviousness and delusion. Highlights include every time Asim Chaudhry’s wheeler-dealer hanger-on Chabuddy G opens his mouth.