BBC Comedy Boss Discusses Industry Challenges and Future Plans

BBC comedy boss Jon Petrie is all about returners as the corporation’s annual Comedy Festival gets underway. Petrie has given second and third season greenlights to six shows plus an eighth for stalwart Two Doors Down and a documentary about Not Going Out, the BBC’s longest-running sitco

“The Prince Harry of the TV Royal Family.” That is how BBC comedy boss Jon Petrie characterized his genre competing with the popularity and big budgets of high-end drama, with comedy “having to fight harder than it should for attention, for status and sometimes for survival.”