New TV panel show

Patrick Kielty is to host a BBC panel show about the English language.

Susan Calman and Paul Sinha will join him as team captains on Bad Language, in which they and a guest comic compete to show who has the best grasp of their native tongue.

Phill Jupitus, Rich Hall, Mark Watson, Lucy Porter, Des Clarke, Jarred Christmas and Micky Bartlett will appear as guests on the series, which begins on BBC One Northern Ireland on January 22.

Recorded in Belfast in the autumn, the show is adapted from the 2013 radio show of the same name.

Producer Stephen Stewart told Chortle that the television version is 'substantially different' from the original, which aired on both BBC Radio Ulster and BBC Radio Scotland and was hosted by Richard Herring with Clarke and Keith Farnan as team captains.

New rounds have been added but it retains 'the same premise, the use of language, the words we use and the words we don't want to use' he explained, adding that it would play with the 'cultural differences' of the contestants' different nationalities.

Bad Language is made by Green Inc, the production company set up by Kielty and Stewart in 1996.

Green Inc previously made the BBC panel shows Ask Rhod Gilbert and Monumental, hosted by Adam Hills, as well as documentaries fronted by Kielty and Michael Smiley.

-by Jay Richardson

Published: 8 Jan 2016