Bigipedia
Encyclopedia
Bigipedia is a comedy
sketch show broadcast on BBC Radio 4
that first aired between 23 July and 13 August 2009. A second series of four episodes began on 12 July, 2011. The show's storyline revolves around "Bigipedia", a fictional website broadcast on radio, intended to be a parody of Wikipedia
, the online encyclopedia
. The series mocks Wikipedia and other aspects of the Internet. The BBC Press Office described the show as, "a unique experiment in 'broadwebcasting' ". The series was created by co-star Nick Doody
, who also co-writes the show with Matt Kirshen
and a wider team of writers. It is produced by Pozzitive Productions
.
Critics have given Bigipedia positive reviews. The series was marketed by the BBC
as "The Sunday Format
for the online age", and critics have given Bigipedia favourable comparisons with its predecessor. The quality of the writing has also been praised. However, a few critics have expressed reservations about the way the show is presented. The first series of Bigipedia was made available to purchase as a download from Audible.co.uk
from 1 December, 2009.
and a "Did you know?" section for new articles. The articles cover a range of fictional celebrities, bands, films, television series, products and a running gag
series of articles on anthropomorphic
animal characters from Uruguay
an safety campaigns.
Bigipedia differs from Wikipedia in some ways. For example, Bigipedia includes puzzle
s and competition
s, sells its own software, has a range of screensaver
s, and a section for children called Bigikids, which has had different names in the past which have all had to be changed for different reasons. For example, the name changed from Kidipedia "due to a misunderstanding", and Underage Fun, "due to a copyright infringement".
Also, while Wikipedia does not have advertising, Bigipedia does and is also sponsored by a fictional wine
-like drink called "Chianto" which is referred to as "this horrific drink". The Bigipedia article on Chianto says: "Over the years it has been sold as a hair remover, self-defence spray, hair restorer, and to farmers as a humane way of killing chickens – by putting it into the pig's feed and leaving the gate open. By morning not only were the chickens killed, but often plucked, too."
The first series ended with Bigipedia attempting to take over the world, having crushed a rebellion in the Philippines
and feeding nanobots into the heads of anyone listening to the programme. At the start of the second series, Bigipedia acknowledges that the original Bigipedia, dubbed Bigipedia 1.0 suffered from "security and sentient omniscience issues" and apologises for, "the temporary cyber enslavement of 88% of mankind and the forming of a BigiHuman hybrid hivemind
centred in the Philippines", in an incident they refer to as "The Glitch". The site has been updated and is now known as Bigipedia 2.0.
The second series begins with reports of a gigantic Chianto slick in the Gulf of Mexico
, a parody of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
. At the end of the series, a mix of white and red Chianto in the slick result in the creation of a Chianto "ovum
", which hatches at the bottom of the sea as a monstrous party-animal being called the Chianto Leviathan, which makes its way to the Bigipedia servers
in Mexico. The Leviathan attempts to gain all the world's knowledge by accessing the system. The programme ends with Bigipedia playing "prerecorded programmes" while they attempt to stop the Leviathan.
on another BBC Radio 4 comedy series, Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive
. Doody attended a meeting where people were discussing new ideas for radio shows, and Kirshen suggested the idea, and both he and Kirshen wrote the full proposal. Radio 4 liked the idea and a pilot was made. Tyler went on to produce and direct Bigipedia.
Doody and Kirshen describe the show as "writing-heavy". Doody said in an interview with the British Comedy Guide
: "Compared to most radio shows, it's incredibly dense, material-wise, and very fast-moving. I think Matt and I would like some of it to be even faster, but sometimes people who've heard the pilot say things like, "It's almost too much." I really like that. I like that it's something you kind of need to hear twice to catch everything. When we got the series, I honestly didn't know where we'd come up with the material of the quality we were determined to keep up."
Some of the sketches in Bigipedia are inspired directly by articles on Wikipedia. Kirshen said in the same interview: "There's a 'Bee Whisperer' in Episode 3 that came from clicking the "Random article" link on Wikipedia. I don't remember what the page we got was, but about three logical leaps later we landed on that idea."
It was revealed by Doody on his Doubling Up podcast
with Rob Heeney that there was an extended edition of "The Line" sketch, which he broadcast on the show.
compared Bigipedia to The Sunday Format
, saying: "Indeed, the comparison even makes it into the BBC's own press notes. Will this version, which takes the mickey out of online communication, deserve the comparison? That's something we'll have to wait and see." Chris Maume in The Independent on Sunday also commented that there are references to Spinal Tap
, On the Hour
and Brass Eye
.
Elisabeth Mahoney in The Guardian
said that she liked the Chianto running gag, while Gillian Reynolds
from the Daily Telegraph commented positively on Bigipedia saying it was, "the first late-night comedy in ages that has made me laugh, about computers and why I'm scared of them, about vile TV shows and meaningless commercials. Written by Nick Doody and Matt Kirshen, performed with zest by a sparkling cast. Bound to become a cult." Reviewing the second series Elizabeth Day in The Observer
described Bigipedia as, "a hilariously mad portrayal of information overload in the computer age."
Clare Heal in the Sunday Express gave a mixed review, saying that while she found it amusing, it was too similar to the Internet saying, "The programme's only failing was that on occasion it was a little to [sic] reminiscent of the real Internet, ie a virtual ocean full of morons willing to shout loudly about things even (or perhaps especially) if they know nothing about them. You wouldn't want more than half an hour of Bigipedia, no matter how amusing it is."
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
sketch show broadcast on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
that first aired between 23 July and 13 August 2009. A second series of four episodes began on 12 July, 2011. The show's storyline revolves around "Bigipedia", a fictional website broadcast on radio, intended to be a parody of Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, the online encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
. The series mocks Wikipedia and other aspects of the Internet. The BBC Press Office described the show as, "a unique experiment in 'broadwebcasting' ". The series was created by co-star Nick Doody
Nick Doody
Nick Doody is a British stand-up comedian. He features frequently as a guest on radio broadcasts such as Political Animal and vox-pop television shows, although he is known primarily as a live stand-up comic....
, who also co-writes the show with Matt Kirshen
Matt Kirshen
Matt Kirshen is a British comedian. Kirshen has performed around the world, including Singapore, Dubai, Holland, Germany, and France. In 2007, he enjoyed a successful run in NBC's Last Comic Standing...
and a wider team of writers. It is produced by Pozzitive Productions
Pozzitive Television
Pozzitive Television is a production company formed by producers Geoff Posner and David Tyler in 1992. Between them, they have produced and directed comedy shows in the UK including Spitting Image, Coogan's Run, Not The Nine O'Clock News, French & Saunders, Harry Enfield and Chums, dinnerladies,...
.
Critics have given Bigipedia positive reviews. The series was marketed by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
as "The Sunday Format
The Sunday Format
The Sunday Format, "BBC Radio 4's first high-quality weekend broadsheet newspaper", is a British satirical radio comedy. The programme is a parody of British middle class newspapers, in particular the lifestyle supplements and glossy celebrity magazines that fill Sunday papers...
for the online age", and critics have given Bigipedia favourable comparisons with its predecessor. The quality of the writing has also been praised. However, a few critics have expressed reservations about the way the show is presented. The first series of Bigipedia was made available to purchase as a download from Audible.co.uk
Audible.com
Audible.com is an Internet provider of spoken audio entertainment, information, and educational programming.Audible sells digital audiobooks, radio and TV programs, and audio versions of magazines and newspapers....
from 1 December, 2009.
Plot
Bigipedia is a website broadcast on the radio. Like Wikipedia, it contains articles and discussion pages about a range of different subjects, which can be edited by anyone. Among the similarities are articles, discussion pages, disambiguation pages, featured articles, a news sectionWikinews
Wikinews is a free-content news source wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. The site works through collaborative journalism. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying "on Wikinews, each story is to be written as a news story as opposed to an...
and a "Did you know?" section for new articles. The articles cover a range of fictional celebrities, bands, films, television series, products and a running gag
Running gag
A running gag, or running joke, is a literary device that takes the form of an amusing joke or a comical reference and appears repeatedly throughout a work of literature or other form of storytelling....
series of articles on anthropomorphic
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...
animal characters from Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
an safety campaigns.
Bigipedia differs from Wikipedia in some ways. For example, Bigipedia includes puzzle
Puzzle
A puzzle is a problem or enigma that tests the ingenuity of the solver. In a basic puzzle, one is intended to put together pieces in a logical way in order to come up with the desired solution...
s and competition
Competition
Competition is a contest between individuals, groups, animals, etc. for territory, a niche, or a location of resources. It arises whenever two and only two strive for a goal which cannot be shared. Competition occurs naturally between living organisms which co-exist in the same environment. For...
s, sells its own software, has a range of screensaver
Screensaver
A screensaver is a type of computer program initially designed to prevent phosphor burn-in on CRT and plasma computer monitors by blanking the screen or filling it with moving images or patterns when the computer is not in use...
s, and a section for children called Bigikids, which has had different names in the past which have all had to be changed for different reasons. For example, the name changed from Kidipedia "due to a misunderstanding", and Underage Fun, "due to a copyright infringement".
Also, while Wikipedia does not have advertising, Bigipedia does and is also sponsored by a fictional wine
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...
-like drink called "Chianto" which is referred to as "this horrific drink". The Bigipedia article on Chianto says: "Over the years it has been sold as a hair remover, self-defence spray, hair restorer, and to farmers as a humane way of killing chickens – by putting it into the pig's feed and leaving the gate open. By morning not only were the chickens killed, but often plucked, too."
The first series ended with Bigipedia attempting to take over the world, having crushed a rebellion in the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
and feeding nanobots into the heads of anyone listening to the programme. At the start of the second series, Bigipedia acknowledges that the original Bigipedia, dubbed Bigipedia 1.0 suffered from "security and sentient omniscience issues" and apologises for, "the temporary cyber enslavement of 88% of mankind and the forming of a BigiHuman hybrid hivemind
Group mind (science fiction)
A group mind, hive mind or group ego in science fiction is a single consciousness occupying many bodies. Its use in literature goes back at least as far as Olaf Stapledon's science fiction novel Last and First Men ....
centred in the Philippines", in an incident they refer to as "The Glitch". The site has been updated and is now known as Bigipedia 2.0.
The second series begins with reports of a gigantic Chianto slick in the Gulf of Mexico
Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico is a partially landlocked ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In...
, a parody of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Deepwater Horizon oil spill
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which flowed unabated for three months in 2010, and continues to leak fresh oil. It is the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry...
. At the end of the series, a mix of white and red Chianto in the slick result in the creation of a Chianto "ovum
Ovum
An ovum is a haploid female reproductive cell or gamete. Both animals and embryophytes have ova. The term ovule is used for the young ovum of an animal, as well as the plant structure that carries the female gametophyte and egg cell and develops into a seed after fertilization...
", which hatches at the bottom of the sea as a monstrous party-animal being called the Chianto Leviathan, which makes its way to the Bigipedia servers
Server (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
in Mexico. The Leviathan attempts to gain all the world's knowledge by accessing the system. The programme ends with Bigipedia playing "prerecorded programmes" while they attempt to stop the Leviathan.
Production
The series was originally conceived by Doody, who was working with producer David TylerDavid Tyler (UK)
David Tyler is a British television and radio comedy producer, executive producer and director. He is also the co-founder of the independent production company Pozzitive Television, which he set up in 1992 with Geoff Posner....
on another BBC Radio 4 comedy series, Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive
Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive
Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive is a British radio comedy programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in 2005 with a second series in 2006, a third in 2007 and a fourth in 2008. Series 2, 3 and 4 of the show were broadcast in the popular Friday evening slot, which it has shared with The...
. Doody attended a meeting where people were discussing new ideas for radio shows, and Kirshen suggested the idea, and both he and Kirshen wrote the full proposal. Radio 4 liked the idea and a pilot was made. Tyler went on to produce and direct Bigipedia.
Doody and Kirshen describe the show as "writing-heavy". Doody said in an interview with the British Comedy Guide
British Comedy Guide
The British Comedy Guide or BCG is a British website covering all forms of British comedy, across all media. At the time of writing, the BCG has published guides to more than 1,200 individual British comedies - primarily TV and radio situation comedy, sketch shows, comedy dramas, satire, variety...
: "Compared to most radio shows, it's incredibly dense, material-wise, and very fast-moving. I think Matt and I would like some of it to be even faster, but sometimes people who've heard the pilot say things like, "It's almost too much." I really like that. I like that it's something you kind of need to hear twice to catch everything. When we got the series, I honestly didn't know where we'd come up with the material of the quality we were determined to keep up."
Some of the sketches in Bigipedia are inspired directly by articles on Wikipedia. Kirshen said in the same interview: "There's a 'Bee Whisperer' in Episode 3 that came from clicking the "Random article" link on Wikipedia. I don't remember what the page we got was, but about three logical leaps later we landed on that idea."
It was revealed by Doody on his Doubling Up podcast
Podcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
with Rob Heeney that there was an extended edition of "The Line" sketch, which he broadcast on the show.
Reception
The reviews of Bigipedia have been mainly positive. Before the series began, Scott Matthewman in The StageThe Stage
The Stage is a weekly British newspaper founded in 1880, available nationally and published on Thursdays. Covering all areas of the entertainment industry but focused primarily on theatre, it contains news, reviews, opinion, features and other items of interest, mainly to those who work within the...
compared Bigipedia to The Sunday Format
The Sunday Format
The Sunday Format, "BBC Radio 4's first high-quality weekend broadsheet newspaper", is a British satirical radio comedy. The programme is a parody of British middle class newspapers, in particular the lifestyle supplements and glossy celebrity magazines that fill Sunday papers...
, saying: "Indeed, the comparison even makes it into the BBC's own press notes. Will this version, which takes the mickey out of online communication, deserve the comparison? That's something we'll have to wait and see." Chris Maume in The Independent on Sunday also commented that there are references to Spinal Tap
Spinal Tap (band)
Spinal Tap is a parody heavy metal band that first appeared on a failed 1979 ABC TV sketch comedy pilot called "The T.V. Show", starring Rob Reiner...
, On the Hour
On the Hour
On the Hour was a British radio programme that parodied current affairs broadcasting, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 1991 and 1992.Written by Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci, Steven Wells, Andrew Glover, Stewart Lee, Richard Herring and David Quantick, it starred Morris as the overzealous and...
and Brass Eye
Brass Eye
Brass Eye is a UK television series of satirical spoof documentaries. A series of six aired on Channel 4 in 1997, and a further episode in 2001....
.
Elisabeth Mahoney in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
said that she liked the Chianto running gag, while Gillian Reynolds
Gillian Reynolds
Gillian Reynolds MBE, née Morton is a British radio critic, journalist and broadcaster. The daughter of market traders in Liverpool, she was educated at St Anne's College, Oxford University....
from the Daily Telegraph commented positively on Bigipedia saying it was, "the first late-night comedy in ages that has made me laugh, about computers and why I'm scared of them, about vile TV shows and meaningless commercials. Written by Nick Doody and Matt Kirshen, performed with zest by a sparkling cast. Bound to become a cult." Reviewing the second series Elizabeth Day in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
described Bigipedia as, "a hilariously mad portrayal of information overload in the computer age."
Clare Heal in the Sunday Express gave a mixed review, saying that while she found it amusing, it was too similar to the Internet saying, "The programme's only failing was that on occasion it was a little to [sic] reminiscent of the real Internet, ie a virtual ocean full of morons willing to shout loudly about things even (or perhaps especially) if they know nothing about them. You wouldn't want more than half an hour of Bigipedia, no matter how amusing it is."
Series 1
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| # | Title | The Sunday Format The Sunday Format The Sunday Format, "BBC Radio 4's first high-quality weekend broadsheet newspaper", is a British satirical radio comedy. The programme is a parody of British middle class newspapers, in particular the lifestyle supplements and glossy celebrity magazines that fill Sunday papers... The Harpoon The Harpoon was a BBC Radio 4 series broadcast between 1991 and 1994, written by Julian Dutton and Peter Baynham. It consisted of three four part series and two Christmas specials, and was performed by Julian Dutton, Peter Baynham, Susie Brann, Alistair McGowan and Mary Elliott-Nelson, and was... Wikipedia in culture References to Wikipedia in culture have increased as more people learn about and use the online encyclopedia project. Many parody Wikipedia's openness, with characters vandalising or modifying articles. Still others feature characters using the references as a source, or positively comparing a... External linksThe source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
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