Comedy gets serious

In this week's 'on demand' round-up

The best comedy on demand.

A Funny Kind Of Life And Death

In a new series for BBC Radio Scotland, Julia Sutherland talks to comics who tackle taboo subjects such as life-threatening illness and euthanasia. In this first of two episodes, recorded at last year's Edinburgh Fringe and now on iPlayer, she meets Alistair Barrie, who make comedy from his Emily's cancer diagnosis; Scott Gibson, who came face to face with his own mortality when he suffered a brain haemorrhage' and Mel Moon became so ill she considered euthanasia.

Boom Bust Boom

New to Netflix is this comic documentary in which Monty Python's Terry Jones tries to make sense of the economic system with animation, puppetry and live action – his main argument being that the economists should have seen the 2008 crash coming, since bubbles always burst. Here's a trailer.

Level Up Human

This new comedy podcast tries to figure out how to make the human race better. 'We think human BEINGS are not Fit for purpose,' host Simon Watt explains and invites experts to pitch ideas for the next stage of our evolution. In this first episode, recorded at the Cheltenham Science Festival, Red Dwarf star Robert Llewellyn passes judgment on the suggestions made by chemist Kathryn Harkup, and evolutionary biologist Ben Garrod.

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Private Eye is not known for embracing new technology – it's website is the definition of the word 'basic' – but it does have a podcast, which concentrates on some of the more serious whistle-blowing journalism the magazine is known for. The latest covers the deaths at the Deepcut Army barracks, although others mix humour with the series with interviews with the Eye's joke writers and other staff about how Britain's foremost satirical mag is put together. It's hosted by Andrew Hunter Murray, of Austentatious and No Such Thing As A Fish Listen here