Monty Python would not be commissioned today, BBC bosses say

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Shane Allen said programmes featuring “six Oxbridge white blokes” were no longer of interest to viewers who “crave sketch shows and sitcoms with a sense of place”. Comedy stars from John Cleese and Eric Idle to Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie all built successful television careers after learning their trade at Cambridge Footlights but the Beeb is now after more diversity . Footlights also produced Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie, who went on to form The Goodies. Peter Cook, Emma Thompson and Olivia Colman were also members.

If we’re going to assemble a team now it’s not going to be six Oxbridge white blokes Shane Allen

But speaking as the BBC unveiled a raft of new comedies starring female and ethnic minority leads, Mr Allen said audiences had seen enough of the “metropolitan, educated experience”. He cited BBC Three sketch show Famalam, which has an all-black cast, as an example of how the corporation was giving a platform to new talent 50 years after Python, which he described as a “producer-led gang show”. Mr Allen said: “If we’re going to assemble a team now it’s not going to be six Oxbridge white blokes, it’s going to be a diverse range of people who reflect the modern world and have got something to say that’s different and we haven’t seen before.”

Comedies such as Famalam are more popular with modern audiences, according to Beeb chiefs

He insisted there was no class war ban on “posh people” appearing on television but said shows like Channel 4’s Peep Show, about the lives of two middle-class graduates who share a flat after university, were not a priority for the BBC. Referring to popular BBC Three comedies This Country, a mockumentary set in a deprived Cotswolds village, and The Young Offenders, about two Irish teenagers, Mr Allen said: He said: “It’s about telling stories that haven’t been told. “When you look at the recent comedies that have done well they’ve got a really specific sense of place. “If a sitcom comes in about three guys who move to London in a flatshare, the jokes feel quite familiar and it feels like you’re not breaking any new ground or telling or a new story, then that’s not interesting. “It’s about how original the voice you have, rather than what school you went to.”

Award-winning shows like This Country give viewers a 'sense of place'