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Front Row: Illness in comedy series, Ned Beauman, Thomas Meehan

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24/08/2017

Illness in comedy series, Ned Beauman, Thomas Meehan

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Illness in comedy series, Ned Beauman, Thomas Meehan

Illness in comedy series with Peep Show creator Sam Bain.

Illness in comedy series with Peep Show creator Sam Bain and Alison Vernon Smith. Ned Beauman on his new novel Madness is Better Than Defeat. Thomas Meehan remembered.

Making TV comedy about of illness, with Peep Show writer Sam Bain, whose new series Ill Behaviour features a cancer sufferer refusing conventional treatment, and Alison Vernon Smith, producer of Bad Salsa, Radio 4's comedy drama about women who take up salsa dancing after their cancer treatment. 

Thomas Meehan was behind successful musicals including Annie, The Producers, and Hairspray but he's not the name you're likely to know because he wrote the book: the narrative glue that holds a musical together. Theatre critic Matt Wolf assesses his legacy and discusses his partnership with Mel Brooks. 

Ned Beauman on his latest novel Madness Is Better Than Defeat. Beauman is the author of four novels including Boxer, Beetle. He has been longlisted for the Man Booker prize, won a Somerset Maugham award, and in 2013 was named one of Granta's best British novelists under 40. This latest novel is inspired by the making of the films Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo, though its setting is the earlier Hollywood golden age of the 1930s. 

As Oscar-winning film-maker Michael Moore takes on Donald Trump in a new one man show Terms of My Surrender, Matt Wolf evaluates his attempt to "convert the unconverted" and whether the the stage is the best place to do it.

Main Image: Ill Behaviour: Nadia (Lizzy Caplan), Charlie (Tom Riley), Joel (Chris Geere), Tess (Jessican Regan) Image Credit: BBC / Fudge Park Productions / Jon Hall.

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