Comedies head BBC2's new schedule

Alan Partridge, The League of Gentlemen and The Office are all returning to TV in BBC2's autumn schedule.

Steve Coogan's inept chat show host is back after a five-year absence, in which time the character suffered a nervous breakdown.

Partridge now has the third best slot on Radio Norwich and hosts a military-based quiz show for cable TV called Skirmish.

"And you might find he's got a bit of a love interest," said a BBC spokeswoman.

The second series of The Office will detail how David Brent deals with a fresh intake of enthusiastic staff.

Also in the new schedules is Dave Gorman's Important Astrology Experiment, in which the comic lives his life for 40 days and 40 nights according to newspaper horoscopes.

Coupling is also returning, as is Paul Whitehouse's Happiness, and Dead Ringers makes the transition from radio to TV.

Other comedies include a spoof on Open University-type programmes called Look Around You, and Posh Nosh, starring Arabella Weir and Richard E Grant as TV chefs.

The League Of Gentlemen's Reece Shearsmith and Alexander Armstrong from Armstrong And Miller, star in a new black comedy set in an NHS hospital, tlc.

And Bernard Manning is to be the subject of a fly-on-the wall documentary as part of a strand called The Entertainers, for which Louis Theroux has been an adviser.

Published: 21 Aug 2002