Lenny Henry lands two Channel 4 shows
- Lenny Henry has interviewed Paul Whitehouse, Alexei Sayle, Sally Phillips and Romesh Ranganathan for Legends Of Comedy, a four-part Channel 4 interview series
- He said: "It was great fun spending time with my friends and hearing about what makes them laugh and what they take inspiration from"
- The comedian is also co-writing the pilot of a dark comedy drama for the channel called Kriss Kross
Lenny Henry is making two new shows for Channel 4, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal, a series in which he interviews fellow comedians and a dark comedy drama.
Paul Whitehouse, Alexei Sayle, Sally Phillips, Romesh Ranganathan are the subjects of Legends Of Comedy With Lenny Henry, a four-part series in which Henry chats to his guests about their career.
Conducted with the informality of a podcast, each hour-long episode will also include archive footage of them performing, "taking a deep dive to discover how they - and other comedy icons - made their mark".
"It was great fun spending time with my friends and hearing about what makes them laugh and what they take inspiration from" Henry told BCG. "I hope the audience enjoys it as much as I did."
Sayle played various characters in The Lenny Henry Show on BBC One and interviewed Henry on the Radio 4 show Chain Reaction in 2006. Ranganathan interviewed Henry around the publication of his 2019 memoir Who Am I Again? and invited him onto his Radio 2 show, For The Love Of Hip Hop, last year.
Henry was portrayed by Harry Enfield in An Evening With Harry Enfield And Paul Whitehouse on BBC Two in 2015, in a satirical sketch about "blacking up" on British television, in which Enfield and Whitehouse both blacked up.
Henry, who has spoken of his guilt about appearing as a teenager in 1975 on The Black And White Minstrel Show, in which white performers donned blackface to perform minstrel songs, has repeatedly criticised and mocked the practice in recent years, including in his 2019 documentary series for Gold, Lenny Henry's Race Through Comedy. Channel 4 have not disclosed to BCG whether Henry and Whitehouse discussed the An Evening With... sketch.
Legends Of Comedy With Lenny Henry is a co-production between Red Sauce (Blackadder: The Lost Pilot) and Henry's own Douglas Road Productions (Lenny Henry's Race Through Comedy, The Lenny Henry Show on Radio 4). The director is Andy Dunn (The Secret Lives Of Dad's Army) and the producer is Sefunmi Olatunbosun (The Big Narstie Show), with Dominic Wells-Martin (Mel Giedroyc: Unforgivable) series producing.
It was commissioned for Channel 4 by Deborah Dunnett and Jayne Stanger, commissioning editors for daytime and features, with Jo Street, head of daytime and features. The executive producers are Ben Smith for Red Sauce and Angela Ferreira for Douglas Road Productions.
"It's a true privilege to be bringing the legendary Sir Lenny Henry together with such a fantastic line-up of talented and brilliantly funny comedians to learn more their careers, their heroes and their craft" said Dunnett. "I can't wait to see the chats between Lenny and his fabulous guests, which are guaranteed to be very, very funny."
Tom Edwards, creative director for Red Sauce, added: "It's a joy to craft an entirely new comedy-ents format with a performer like Sir Lenny. It's a really fresh way to carve up the comedy space, full of genuine insight and hearty laughs."
Meanwhile, Henry is also co-writing the pilot of a dark comedy drama for Channel 4, Kriss Kross, with Hannah Robinson, script editor of his drama Three Little Birds. Airing in October on ITV, Three Little Birds is loosely based on Henry's mother's journey from Jamaica to the UK in the 1950s.
Plot details for Kriss Kross currently remain under wraps. But like the ITV drama, it is being produced by Tiger Aspect (Man Like Mobeen, The Vicar Of Dibley) with Douglas Road.
Henry is currently starring in his playwriting debut, August In England, at the Bush Theatre in London, a one-man, tragi-comic play about the Windrush scandal that is attracting rave reviews.