Episode 1 of 3

Monday 14 June 9.00-10.00pm BBC FOUR

BBC Four presents a three-part history exploding the national stereotype of Britain as a polite country of restraint and decorum. From Hogarth in the 18th century to Little Britain in the early 21st, this challenging and provocative series explores British traditions of satire, bawdy and lewd humour, and the nation’s deeply offensive taste for ridicule and mockery.

The series follows the enduring and spiky battle over four centuries between Rude and Prude and charts how a mischief-making people have always demanded their right to be rude.

In the company of scholars of British Rude, writers, singers, music hall performers, poets, comedians, artists and cartoonists, all manner of rudeness is revealed.

This opening episode looks at the beginnings of Rude Britannia in the early 18th century and travels through the years of the Georgian age to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837. Here is a Britain openly, gloriously and often shockingly rude.

The programme looks at the lewd graphic art of Hogarth, Gillray, Rowlandson and George Cruikshank, and reveals the earthy theatrical world of John Gay and Henry Fielding.

With the help of singer Lucie Skeaping, it shows the Georgian taste for lewd and bawdy ballads.

And it dips in to a literary tradition of rude words in the poetry of Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Lord Byron and the novel Tristram Shandy, by Lawrence Sterne.

Rude Britannia continues on Tuesday and concludes on Wednesday.