Showing titles in Satire

BBC Audio presents all three original albums from the ground-breaking comedy series that launched the careers of Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith, Pamela Stephenson and Griff Rhys-Jones. Not the Nine O'Clock News is one of the great classics of British television comedy. The show ran from 1979 to 1982...

The table in the centre of The Harp eats pork scratchings. It arranges its own beer mats into impossible patterns. And tonight, for the first time in twenty years, it's waking up. The Harp is a decent pub. Decent pint. Pork scratchings that vanish when you're not looking. Arguments about who took the last one. Friendships tested. Decades of quiet, simmering resentment. Brian sits in his usual seat every night. He can't remember what you're drinking – even after ordering the same pint for twenty years. But he remembers exactly who stole whiskey from his cabinet in 1982.

With its wickedly funny mimicry and on-point parodies, Dead Ringers became an instant classic when it hit the airwaves in January 2000. In these four series, first broadcast between 2020 and 2023, the team give us their inimitable impersonations of the famous and infamous: from Donald Trump and Joe Biden to Liz Truss, Professor Chris Whitty and Holly Willoughby.

Entrusted with the lives of Jesus Christ's top servicemen, YouTube superstars Matt Watson and Ryan Magee must travel to the farthest reaches of the earth and terminate public enemy number one: Osama bin Laden. Discovering along their journey that things aren't always so easy for two incredibly rich and handsome celebrities, the dynamic duo is put through the ultimate trial of courage, patriotism, and friendship.

A delivery driver finds himself inside a world occupied by characters from unfinished novels and must accept he is not real. But the world around him doesn’t feel right, and when he starts asking questions, the authorities soon take extreme measures to stop him finding the truth about Fiction Land.

Everyone - even Augustus the cat - has cause to be obliged to Jeeves when he manages to retrieve the infamous Book - the book which lays bare the private lives of three-quarters of the upper classes. And which could prove to be political dynamite at the Market Snodsbury by-election.

Brought to you by Penguin. I felt like I was living in a world teetering on the brink ... Life as a stay-in-bed husband turned out to be a lot more complicated than I expected. My wife was pregnant with a baby that possibly wasn't mine. My old man was engaged in a war with the feminist movement...

For amiable City trader Jimmy Corby money was the new Rock n' Roll. His whole life was a party, adrenalin charged and cocaine fuelled. If he hadn't met Monica he would probably have ended up either dead or in rehab. But Jimmy was as lucky in love as he was at betting on dodgy derivatives, so...

Set during the time of the Napoleonic Wars, this classic gives a satirical picture of a worldly society. The novel revolves around the exploits of the impoverished but beautiful and devious Becky Sharp who craves wealth and a position in society. Calculating and determined to succeed, she charms, deceives and manipulates everyone she meets. A novel of early 19th-century English society, it takes its title from the place designated as the centre of human corruption in John Bunyan's 17th-century allegory.

Penguin Classics presents Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, adapted for audio and available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by Joanna David. 'No sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than...

The wonderful story collection from the author of Standard Deviation ‘Heiny's work does something magical: gives women's interior lives the gravity they so richly deserve and makes you laugh along the way’ Lena Dunham ‘Like Cheever mixed with Ephron’ New York Times ‘Simply wonderful, I...

Despite the title, Dickens's portrayal of early industrial society is less relentlessly grim than that in novels by contemporaries such as Elizabeth Gaskell or Charles Kingsley. Hard Times weaves the tale of Thomas Gradgrind, a hard-headed politician who raises his children Louisa and Tom without love and to have no empathy, their lives completely devoid of beauty, culture, or imagination. Only after a series of crises does their father realise that the manner in which he raised his children has ruined their lives.

The third novel in the Portuguese Irregular Verbs trilogy sees von Igelfeld suffering the slings of academic intrigue as a visiting fellow at Cambridge, and the arrows of outrageous fortune in an eventful Columbian adventure. Between trips, von Igelfeld returns to his beloved Regensburg only that to discover while he has been away his murine colleagues have been at play.

For the past 13 years, as England became an increasingly unhappy and fearful place, Prince Charles has been living quietly on a bleak council estate with his wife and love of his life, Camilla. He enjoys gardening and poultry keeping while Camilla spends her days doing as little as possible. But life is about to change.

Hello. I'm Oliver Tate, the protagonist. I am likely to use words like protagonist and, moments later, words like twonk. My ambitions are as follows: to find out why my father sometimes stays in bed for days at a time; to find out why my mother's getting surfing lessons - and probably more - from a hippy-looking twonk; and to lose my virginity before it becomes legal - in just over a year.

Expelled from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly unsurprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle. Hi colleagues are an assortment of misfits, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or...

Winner of The Gilpin Hotel Prize for Fiction 2023 Eyes down to find a killer who’s playing to win… An irresistible slice of murder and mystery – there’s a killer on the loose in the Lake District, and the members of the Penrith Bingo Club have decided they’re the ones to catch the...

Frustrated copy man Ken Handley cannot help but conceive of the world in advert form. Over three series witness Ken coping with a drunken boss, straight-laced colleagues and an overactive mind, as we follow his exploits and moral dilemmas in this advertising satire. Martin Jarvis stars as Ken, alongside a cast that includes Miriam Margolyes, Imelda Staunton, Christopher Godwin and Joss Ackland.

When it comes to life's fun and games, always know: The rules. What's at stake. When to quit. Wise words from...well...my fortune cookie. But wise words, nonetheless.

In these globally unprecedented times, Ed is also experiencing new and unusual circumstances. For the first time in 20 years, he's financially independent thanks to the timely arrival of his state pension, and living in a stylish, newly affordable 'capsule urban living unit' (a former office space converted into a flat). He has the luxury of three (organic) meals a day, all the premier catfood Edgar can eat, and even a new car - as well as free time to devote himself to his own long-cherished projects.