Taking Liberties season to include Bremner and Novak comedies
The BBC has announced details of January's Taking Liberties programming season, marking 800 years since the signing of Magna Carta, on January 20th 2015.
The Magna Carta ('Great Charter') set out limits to the powers of the monarch and codified ideals of liberty and justice which have underpinned British society, as well as the establishment of Parliamentary democracy and the development of the legal system in the UK and around the world.
Taking Liberties will include a range of comedy programming, including new shows from Kayvan Novak, Paul Sinha and Rory Bremner.
Novak has co-conceived and will star in BBC Four comedy Asylum, a satire of the plight of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been stuck inside London's Ecuadorian Embassy since 2012, having been granted political asylum from UK authorities.
Aylum is also the name of a 1996 sitcom from the Paramount Comedy Channel, which starred Simon Pegg and was set in an actual asylum in the English countryside.
Novak's new programme, co-created with Tom Thostrup, his long-term collaborator and producer, has been written by Thom Phipps and Peter Bowden, and is described as "a satirical comedy about a government whistle-blower and a millionaire internet entrepreneur trapped together in a London embassy".
The season will also see the return of Jessica Hynes's Up The Women, now promoted from BBC Four to BBC Two for a full six-part series.
The channel will also present Rory Bremner's Coalition Derby, a new one-off special from the impressionist and satirist, looking at the successes, failures, and goings-on of the Coalition Government since 2010, ahead of May's General Election.
On BBC Three, The Revolution Will Be Televised star Jolyon Rubinstein will present comic documentary Magna Carta 2.0.
The BBC say: "Jolyon feels it's time for a brand new contract between the people and their elected representatives and to this end, presents Magna Carta 2.0, a new documentary packed full of stunts, fun and comedy."
Taking Liberties will also include a brand new Horrible Histories special, King John And The Magna Carta.
Starring Ben Miller (pictured) as King John, the episode will "explore what was happening in the world during King John's life, such as the rise of Genghis Khan, and the Crusades as well as looking at the King himself, as he went from problem child to angry adult and how, just a year before his rotten death, he signed the Magna Carta in 1215 - the greatest thing to come out of his reign and a document that still affects our lives today".
On radio, presenter and comedian Paul Sinha will host The Sinha Carta.
The Radio 4 special will see Sinha explain "why what's in it is brilliant, as well as looking at what's been taken out that shouldn't have been, what's not been taken out that should have been, and what he would like to see added 800 years on".
Exact broadcast dates and times of the programmes will be revealed in early January.