welcome to unusual
we are a multi-award-winning production and creative content company.
we are unusual.
we are a multi-award-winning production and creative content company.
we are unusual.
The Naked Week is a fresh way of dressing the week’s news in the altogether and parading it around for everyone to laugh at. Host Andrew Hunter Murray (No Such Thing As A Fish) and Chief Correspondent Amy Hoggart (Almost Royal, Full Frontal With Amy Hoggart) will strip away the curtain and slide into not only the big stories, but also across the way in which news is packaged and presented.
Listen every Friday at 18:30 on BBC Radio 4, or on catch up on BBC Sounds
THE SKEWER: THREE TWISTED YEARS
BAFTA nominated, animated special of the Radio 4 format The Skewer - Revisits the past three years, with a unique visual interpretation of the show's critically acclaimed sharp, nightmarish style.
Outrageously funny and, well, just outrageous, The Naked Week is BBC Radio 4's answer to impartiality. With Andrew Hunter Murray at the helm, no one is safe from this satirically witty roasting of the week’s headlines. It’s sharp, fearless (much to the dismay of our lawyers) and will leave you laughing out loud while wondering how on earth we got here.
Producer: Jon Holmes
The Skewer is a bold, fresh take on topical satire, blending humour and poignancy by remixing real words from politicians, celebrities, and world leaders into a weekly current affair ‘concept album’.
Proudly diverse, the show has given over 150 writers their first credit, featuring voices from all walks of life—NHS workers, drivers, vicars, and pole-dancers. Open to anyone, The Skewer brings these unique perspectives together.
Producer: Jon Holmes
Fresh from a BAFTA nomination, the multi-award winning The Skewer burrows its way into the 2024 General Election, rounding it all up like a satirical sheepdog barking at a specially commissioned double-length episode, and cutting through all the noise.
Producer: Jon Holmes
In 2023, Jon Holmes was diagnosed with cancer – which came as a bit of a surprise because, quite frankly, he was far too busy for all of that nonsense. After a very odd, intense, unexpected, ridiculous year, Jon realised that men don’t tend to talk openly about the preposterous indignity of dealing with cancer. So he decided he would, with other men who are going through it, or who’ve been through it.
Here – inevitably – comes his new chatty podcast.
Across the series, Jon will be joined by the comedians Stephen Fry, Mark Steel, Richard Herring, Matt Forde and Eric Idle, actors Colin McFarlane and Ben Richards, rock star and The Alarm frontman Mike Peters, and journalists Jeremy Langmead, Nick Owen and Jeremy Bowen. Jon and his guests will demystify all things cancer in raw, honest, difficult, often absurd and – yes – funny detail, from fingers up the bum to blood tests via biopsies, surgery, catheters, stomas, feeding tubes, penis pumps (no, really) and incontinence pads.
Producer: Laura Grimshaw
Artificially Stupid comedy. We forced Artificial Intelligence to digest massive amounts of human media and then write its own versions. Everything from The One Show, Game of Thrones, Friends, Songs of Praise and more via movies, fables, adverts, Shakespeare, poetry and, er, gardening tips (and much much more) are all forever ruined by technology. We take the scripts, push them word-for-word into the mouths of actors, and the result is absurdly, joyously - and then absurdly again - hilarious. This is the comedy that conclusively proves that AI is an absolute idiot.
Based on the book by Keaton Patti.
Producer / Director Jon Holmes
As the 2024 General Election comes to an end and politicians and their aides turn their minds to who should serve in the Cabinet and where they'll sit in Downing Street, civil servants all over Whitehall are busy preparing for a new government. Ex-Deputy Cabinet Secretary Helen MacNamara and former Downing Street aide Cleo Watson speak to former officials and SpAds about access talks, policy implementation and the tiny details (fonts, sandwiches, mints) that make all the difference.
For BBC Radio 4
Producer: Eliane Glaser
From the makers of the Moral Maze and The Skewer, this is the story of our time viewed through a cracked retrospectoscope. Featuring a host of recognisable voices, it examines society’s ethical and moral conundrums via bogus talking heads, fake archive footage, and made-up news broadcasts, as we chart everything that went wrong.
Some of the tape is damaged, but what remains is played out because the budget won’t stretch to repairing it. Put together in haste by a BBC producer decades from now and narrated by Michael Buerk, Pillar of Salt looks back over the shoulder of the intervening years and shines a light on why and how everything crumbled into dust.
A BBC Audio North Production in association with unusual.
Producers: Jon Holmes / Dan Tierney
BAFTA NOMINATED TV DEBUT
FOR AWARD-WINNING SATIRE
After three years on air and after winning Gold for Best Comedy at the Radio Academy Aria Awards three years running, Jon Holmes’s satirical Radio 4 comedy The Skewer twists its way onto the screen for the first time., and finds itself nominated for a Bafta in the process.
The Skewer: Three Twisted Years is an experimental short film that revisits some of the key political and news moments from the last three years with a unique visual interpretation of the show’s critically acclaimed sharp, nightmarish style.
Shortlisted in the 2024 British Comedy Guide Awards for Best TV Sketch Show
Produced and Directed by Jon Holmes
A five part series in which former Downing street strategist and adviser to Boris Johnson, Cleo Watson investigates the dark arts of political campaigning. Guests include Dominic Cummings and Craig Oliver,
Writer / Presenter: Cleo Watson
Producer: Eliane Glaser
When Italy’s greatest cyclist is mysteriously found dead, sensational allegations of mafia involvement see the world of cycling collide head on with the murky underworld of organised crime. For BBC Radio 5 Live's Sports Strangest Crimes brand, Hugh Dennis narrates this ten part series.
Presenter: Hugh Dennis
Writer / Producer Katie Sayer
Fresh from winning Gold for Best Comedy for the third year running at the Radio Academy Awards, Gold for Best Comedy at the British Podcast Awards and Highly Commended runner up as Podcast of The Year, the hit 'comedy concept album' and 'satirical river of sound' returns September 2024. .
Creator / Producer: Jon Holmes
1/6
unusual is a mutlti-award-winning production company, which has been in business for over a decade. We produce a wide range of long- and short-form programming for traditional broadcasters and online platforms across the genres of factual, comedy, music and entertainment. Our documentaries have covered topics as diverse as global sanitation, circumcision, sub-ocean exploration, the Holocaust, gambling, Justin Bieber and My Chemical Romance super fans,
and WW1. We’ve travelled to India, the US, Macau, Rwanda, Pakistan and er, Huddersfield in search of the story.
We’ve also made listeners to BBC Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 4, 6Music, 5Live, commercial radio and podcasts laugh with a mix of sitcoms, sketch material, parodies, satire and some genuinely surreal silliness. Music and entertainment projects have seen us work with everyone from Slash to Dame Vera Lynn and from Marcus Mumford to Miranda Hart. We work with brands as diverse as Bulmers, Pathe, and Swarovski Optik, and have produced events for Advertising Week Europe.
We continue to work closely with the travel industry on all aspects of audio creative, including consultancy and podcast production.
We've won Cannes Lions, Third Sector, and LIA Awards for our commercial work, alongside Radio Academy, Bafta, and industry awards for broadcasting.
WE ARE UNUSUAL
From writer Bill Dare genuine investigative journalism meets podcast spoof as Truth Hunter Amber Jolt (Rosie Holt) goes after Amazon. Involved quite a lot of lawyers.
From The Skewer’s Jon Holmes and host Andrew Hunter Murray comes a fresh way of dressing the week’s news in the altogether and parading it around for everyone to laugh at. New Friday night topical comedy
for BBC Radio 4.
Between 1949-1976, 185,000 babies of unmarried mothers were put up for adoption in England & Wales, many by force. Jon Holmes investigates whether he was
one of them.
Produced by BBC Studios in association with unusual for Radio 4's File on Four strand,
SERIES 10 TX October 2023
For BBC Radio 4 we make the multi -award winning satire The Skewer, featuring new and diverse talent. A "satirical river of sound", The Skewer is designed for headphone listening, attaching you to a late night drip of current events as they melt into your brain, evoking that feeling of drifting off but with the occasional uncomfortable sleep-twitch, as though you've accidentally stepped off a kerb.
"A freeform assault on the senses..deeply haunting.. an eerily beautiful discombobulating mosaic"comedy.co.uk
You are welcome to contribute. Contributor Guide is here
For one day only on Friday 12th August Absolute Radio 60s presents Absolute Radio Pirates! A day celebrating the music and personalities of the pirate radio stations of the 1960s 55 years after they were brought to an end.
To mark the anniversary, Absolute Radio Pirates combines new interviews with archive broadcasts - and loads of great music - to tell the real story of the pirates, their love of music and the move into illegality.
With Tony Blackburn, Johnnie Walker, and archive from (among others) John Peel, Kenny Everett, and Tommy Vance.
Made with the assistance of the
A eco-comedy hybrid magazine show as comedian Jon Long teams up with scientist Dr Tara Shine that emits entertainment and education as they aim to (carbon) capture all things climate.
Carbon Lifeforms returns in 2023
Three members of staff, one dysfunctional railway station, zero passengers. Brand new comedy that drives a train through sitcom-land via a platform crowded with big name cameos, absurd goings-on, and very silly jokes.
Sitcom written by Gareth Ceredig. Starring Geoff McGivern, Tim Downie, and Alexandra Mardell.
with Olivia Williams, Tracy Ann Oberman, Hugh Dennis, Rufus Jones
Sitcom for Audible Originals
Meet Miranda, happy-go-lucky single girl who just happens to be a dominatrix with a dungeon in her flat. Sure she's got to whip clients for money, but she's also got the hoovering to do. Stars Miranda Kane, Hugh Dennis, Richard Herring, Jon Holmes, Kevin Eldon., Anthony Head and more....
Slaving Away continues to top Audible's download chart.
New series for 2023 BBC Radio 4
Diversity of thought, though provoking debate and comedy in the unsafe space.
Following a successful broadcast pilot, Unsafe Space returns for a full series in 2023.
Featuring (among many others) Simon Evans, Andrew Doyle, Billy Bragg, Owen Jones, Rosie Holt, Eeshan Ackbar, Graham Linehan, Zuby, Jake Yapp, Larry & Paul, April Reign and David Lammy MP.
Shaun Keaveny narrates apocryphal rock n'roll tales of debauchery in Absolute Radio's first ever scripted comedy.
Also stars Jake Yapp, Alasdair Beckett King, Naomi McDonald, Alex Sievewright
Original music: Jake Yapp, Nick Bosworth
2002 New York Festival Award Winner for 'Best Writing' and 'Best Comedy'
2022 Radio Academy Award Nominee for Best Comedy
Made with the assistance of the
We recently worked with the charity Pancreatic Cancer UK on a project called 'Lost Voices', creating a soundscape from the voices of celebrities, musicians, and Hollywood stars that have died from pancreatic cancer. People diagnosed with the disease usually die within 3 months, and we wanted to help 'break through the silence' by raising awareness - and money!
We created besoke audio guides
(narrated by Hugh Dennis) for the
Turner Contemporary art gallery
in Margate, Kent.
Galleries and museums are constantly looking for ways to engage new audiences, which is where we stepped in a brand new audio guide.
“A lot of people are put off art galleries because they think of art as a very high-brow subject which can only be enjoyed in a very serious and intellectual way. It isn’t, it is there to be enjoyed by everyone, and I hope a slightly irreverent gallery guide might help change that perception.”
Hugh Dennis
(Outnumbered, Mock the Week,
The Now Show)
Two Part Documentary for Absolute Radio
A commercial tie-in with e-One, for the cinema release of 'Stan and Ollie', comedian Jo Brand tells the story of the double act.
Features interviews with Steve Coogan, John C Reilly, director Jon C Baird, Trevor & Simon, Steve Punt, Mel Hudson, Jon Culshaw and comedy writers Jason Hazeley and
Joel Morris.
Live event at Bafta, Piccadilly
We worked with Global to write and produce a live event at Bafta in front of 200 industry bigwigs as part of Advertising Week Europe.
Written and directed by Jon Holmes it starred Debra Stephenson, Terry Mynott and Mitch Benn, accompanied by their takes on Madonna, Dame Judi Dench, Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, David Attenborough, Henry VIII, Paul McCartney, and ,er, the Caramel Bunny,
For BBC Radio 3, A sonic trip through our on-hold, tick-box, automated world, which turns bureaucracy into art and music.
Producers: Eliane Glaser and Jon Holmes Composer: Neil Luck Performers: Patricia Auchterlonie (soprano), Tom Jackson (saxophone), Rebecca Burden (cello) Sound Design: Tony Churnside and Jon Holmes. Readings: Hazel Holder
As part of Radio 2's festive line-up, The Skewer's Jon Holmes took to the turntables with a Boxing Day special celebrating the art of the musical mashup.
Turn it up to 11 and marvel at the magic of mash-ups like ABBA vs. Van Halen – ‘Super Jumper’, Adele vs. Daft Punk – ‘Something About The Fire’, and Coldplay vs. Oasis – ‘Don't Look Back At Yellow’.
With guests Ros Atkins, Zoe Ball, Sara Cox, Jeremy Vine, Ken Bruce, Scott Mills, Rylan, and more
Presenter Jon Holmes
Producer: Heather Davies
Cold Case Crime Cuts is a spoof true crime podcast – but where the ‘crimes’ investigated are those that have been committed in songs. (But without ever referencing the fact that they’re songs.)
"A pin-sharp parody of US true crime podcasts,"
Winner: New York Festival 2022
Winner: British Podcast Awards 2022
Winner: Radio Academy Awards 2022
Nominee: 2022 Rose D'or
Best Comedy Podcast
Hit podcast that adopts the forensic approach some take to analysing high-end box set television, and applies to the ultimate disposable TV: the BBC’s flagship light magazine programme The One Show.
A deep dive into TVs shallowest show.
Jon Holmes, Marc Haynes and guests including Fi Glover, Jay Rayner, Peter Baynham, and many more
"A joy" popbitch
Comedian Jayde Adams and guests dive into the feisty world of community apps and messageboards, sifting through the angry neighbourhood bins to find disgruntled comedy gold.
for BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4
Hugely popular comedy for BBC Radio 2. Jeremy Vine (as played by Lewis MacLeod) plays agony uncle to any number of celebrities who phone him up for advice during his show, while the records are on.
Documentary for Holocaust Day
for BBC Radio 4
Presented by Michael Rosen
Experimental sound-art-meets-comedy as comedians, poets, and presenters swap the stage for the great outdoors, and perform - more slowly - with nature as their audience.
Recorded on location in binaural stereo for BBC Radio 4
Starring:
Simon Evans, Natasha Hodgson, Lemn Sissay and Poppy & Rubina from the Brown Girls Do It Too podcast.
header art by @wintz_art
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