Little Britain Live

Little Britain is one of the most popular comedy series to have appeared on British television in the last decade. It has also had great success abroad, and has been re-fashioned for other markets, notably in the USA. However, the series had its roots in both radio and live theatre performance. Its originators, Matt Lucas and David Walliams, first developed many of the characters that peopled the eventual TV series on the Edinburgh Fringe, and a live show based on the TV series has toured regularly since. Also, ‘liveness’ was important to the way that the TV version was made, and many of the sketches were either filmed before a live audience or, if shot on location, screened before an audience rather than relying on a recorded laughter track. This chapter examines both the live show itself, and the ways in which it draws on and re-configures performance elements from the TV series (in particular modes of audience engagement), and considers the importance of ‘liveness’ to television drama comedy.