British Comedy Guide

About British Comedy Guide

British Comedy Guide (BCG) is the UK's most comprehensive online reference for British comedy — a searchable database of television and radio comedies, films, live comedy, comedians and industry news, run from London. Founded in 2003 by web developer and comedy enthusiast Mark Boosey, it has grown from a hobbyist site into the default research tool for the British comedy business, used by broadcasters, producers and fans alike. It is free to use, with a professional subscription tier called BCG Pro for industry users. Visit the official website at comedy.co.uk.

History and founding

British Comedy Guide was founded in 2003 by Mark Boosey, who built the site as a labour of love to catalogue British comedy on television and radio. In its early years it was a relatively simple listings and episode-guide site, but it expanded significantly in 2008 with a broader database and richer editorial content, and was relaunched in 2016 with a modernised design and expanded features. The site's growth mirrored the explosion of comedy output on British television and radio in the 2000s and 2010s, and BCG positioned itself as the authoritative record of that output — the comedy equivalent of a broadcast archive, maintained in real time.

Ownership and funding model

British Comedy Guide is an independent publication, founded and run by Mark Boosey. The site is free for general readers and funded through advertising and its professional subscription product. Unlike ad-driven entertainment news sites, BCG's core asset is its structured database, which gives it a durable, utility-like role in the comedy ecosystem. Its independence from broadcasters and production companies underpins its credibility as a neutral reference.

Editorial focus and coverage areas

BCG's defining feature is its guides: detailed, cross-referenced entries covering thousands of British comedy programmes, films, radio shows, live tours and the people who make them. The site maintains guides to more than 4,000 comedy shows, each with episode lists, cast and crew credits, broadcast dates and production details. Alongside the database, BCG publishes comedy news — commissioning announcements, casting news, transmission dates and obituaries — plus features, interviews, previews and reviews. Its TV and radio listings help viewers find what's on, while its "coming soon" sections track shows in production. For researchers, the site's structured credits and transmission histories make it a first port of call.

Notable journalists and contributors

The site was created and is edited by its founder Mark Boosey, who oversees its editorial direction and database development. BCG works with a team of contributors who write news stories, features and reviews, and it draws on its large community of registered users for corrections and additions to the guides — a crowdsourced model that keeps the database current across the huge volume of British comedy output. Its news coverage is widely picked up across the media, and its listings are treated as authoritative by the industry.

Audience and reach

British Comedy Guide serves two distinct audiences: comedy fans, who use it to look up shows, check what's on and read news and features; and industry professionals — producers, commissioners, agents and journalists — who use it as a research database. The launch of BCG Pro formalised the site's role as a professional tool, offering enhanced data and features for business users. Its guides are frequently cited in the press and appear prominently in search results for British comedy programmes, giving it enormous practical reach.

Business model

BCG operates a freemium model. The main site is free to readers and supported by advertising, while BCG Pro is a paid subscription aimed at industry users who need deeper data, advanced search and professional tools. This dual structure — free public reference plus paid professional tier — is unusual among UK entertainment websites and reflects the site's database-driven character: the underlying data is valuable enough to sell, while the editorial content drives the mass audience that sustains the free service.

Digital platforms, podcasts and newsletters

British Comedy Guide is a web-native publication centred on comedy.co.uk, with its searchable database, news section and TV listings forming the core product. The site maintains social media channels to promote news stories and features, and its content is heavily indexed by search engines, making it the default answer to queries about British comedy programmes. BCG Pro extends the platform into a professional SaaS-style product for the comedy business.

Awards and recognition

British Comedy Guide's authority is recognised across the comedy industry: its guides and news stories are routinely cited by national newspapers, broadcasters and production companies, and it is treated as the definitive record of British comedy output. The introduction of BCG Pro marked its formal recognition as an industry-standard research tool. While the site is not primarily an awards body, its data underpins coverage of comedy awards and its listings are used by awards organisers and voters researching eligible programmes.

Community and industry role

BCG functions as part encyclopedia, part trade paper and part fan community. Its correction and contribution system gives knowledgeable fans a direct role in maintaining the national record of British comedy, while its news coverage keeps the industry informed about commissions and movements. For new writers and performers, a BCG entry is a mark of having arrived; for historians and researchers, its archive is an increasingly important record of British broadcast comedy in the digital era.

Outlook

British Comedy Guide continues to expand its database and editorial coverage as British comedy fragments across broadcast, streaming and live platforms. Its challenge — and opportunity — is to remain the single authoritative guide as output multiplies across Netflix, Amazon, YouTube and beyond. With its freemium model, professional user base and two decades of accumulated data, BCG is well placed to remain the reference of record for British comedy for years to come.

The database: guides, credits and transmission histories

The heart of British Comedy Guide is its database of programme guides, and understanding how it works explains why the site has become indispensable. Each guide — covering more than 4,000 comedy shows — brings together episode lists, cast and crew credits, character details, broadcast dates and channels, production companies and, where relevant, information about repeats, streaming availability and DVD releases. For long-running series the guides run to hundreds of episodes, each individually credited; for obscure one-off pilots and regional radio comedies, BCG is often the only place on the internet where a reliable record exists at all. This comprehensiveness is the product of years of patient accumulation: the site's founder and contributors have built the archive title by title, cross-checking broadcast records, production paperwork and contributor submissions. The database is genuinely relational — a performer's page links to every show they have appeared in, a writer's page to everything they have written — which makes it a powerful research tool for tracing careers through the industry. Journalists writing obituaries or profiles routinely start with BCG to establish the factual spine of a comedian's broadcast career; producers researching formats or casting use it to check credits; and awards voters use it to verify eligibility. The site's correction system, which invites knowledgeable readers to submit amendments, functions as a form of peer review by the comedy community itself — fans who spotted an uncredited appearance or a misdated transmission help keep the record straight. BCG Pro, the professional subscription tier, builds on this foundation with enhanced search, data exports and tools aimed at the business users — production companies, broadcasters and agencies — who treat the database as infrastructure. In an era when broadcasters' own online archives are patchy and streaming platforms rotate catalogues without ceremony, BCG's independent, painstakingly maintained record of British comedy output has only grown more valuable: it is, in effect, the national archive of broadcast comedy that no institution was funded to build.