It's That Man Again (commonly contracted to ITMA) was a BBC radio comedy programme which ran for twelve series from 1939 to 1949. The shows featured Tommy Handley in the central role, a fast-talking figure, around whom the other characters orbited. The programmes were written by Ted Kavanagh and produced by Francis Worsley. Handley died during the twelfth series, the remaining programmes of which were immediately cancelled: ITMA could not work without him, and no further series were commissioned.
ITMA was a character-driven comedy whose satirical targets included officialdom and the proliferation of minor wartime regulations. Parts of the scripts were rewritten in the hour before the broadcast, to ensure topicality. ITMA broke away from the conventions of previous radio comedies, and from the humour of the music halls. The shows used sound effects in a novel manner, which, alongside a wide range of voices and accents, created the programme's atmosphere.
