This week, as the Edinburgh Fringe gets underway, Peter and Jimmy ask whether having success at the Fringe is still a worthwhile route for performers who want to carve out a career on television. 

And we talk Netflix’s new (but decidedly retro) sitcom Leanne. Given that Friends is still one of the streamer’s most watched shows, is the only surprising thing about Leanne that it’s taken Netflix quite so long to start commissioning audience sitcoms that feel like they were made in the 1990s? 

Plus, cocaine at Strictly, the weather in Norway, and, at long last, a definitive answer to that most pressing of questions from the world of the TV executive - how to tell the difference between Perrier and San Pellegrino. 

Jimmy Mulville is the co-founder and Chief Executive of Hat Trick Productions. His list of hit shows includes Have I Got News For You, Father Ted, Derry Girls, Outnumbered, and Episodes. In the US Hat Trick launched Whose Line Is It Anyway in 1997 which ran on ABC for seven years and was the first British series to be recreated for American network television by a British producer.

Peter Fincham ran TalkBack, where he executive produced many of their biggest shows including I’m Alan Partridge, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, and Da Ali G Show. He went on to be Controller of BBC1, then he was Director of Television at ITV, before returning to the independent sector as the co-CEO of Expectation, the company behind Clarkson's Farm and Alma's Not Normal.

New episodes every Friday.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@InsidersTVPodcast

Email: InsidersTVPod@expectationtv.com 

Instagram: @InsidersTVPod

Insiders: The TV Podcast is an Expectation and Hat Trick co-production.

The producer is Owen Braben.

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