programmes: Get programmes by category

API: co.uk:bbc-iplayer-business-layer-api
Endpoint: /categories/{category}/programmes
Response format: application/json
Auth: unknown
Method: GET
Last Status: 200
Latency: 451ms

Description

Returns programmes belonging to a specific genre or category (comedy, documentaries, drama-and-soaps, etc.). Each category contains programme metadata, images, and episode counts. Use this to browse content by genre.

From spec: Returns programmes for a specific category ID.

Usage Tips

- Valid categories: comedy, documentaries, drama-and-soaps, films, sport, news, entertainment, music, food, lifestyle, history, science-and-nature, arts, archive - Also supports accessibility categories: audio-described, signed - Regional categories: northern-ireland, scotland, wales - Childrens categories: cbeebies, cbbc

Parameters (3)

category (string, path, required)

Category ID (e.g., drama-and-soaps, documentaries, comedy)

page (integer, query, optional, default: 1)

Page number for pagination

per_page (integer, query, optional, default: 20)

Number of items per page

Examples (1)

Browse documentaries category probe-gate

Demonstrates fetching programmes in the 'documentaries' category with full metadata

curl 'https://ibl.api.bbci.co.uk/ibl/v1/categories/documentaries/programmes'
import requests

resp = requests.get("https://ibl.api.bbci.co.uk/ibl/v1/categories/documentaries/programmes")
data = resp.json()
import zingu_apis

api = zingu_apis.api("bbc-iplayer-business-layer")
result = api.fetch("categories/{category}/programmes")

for item in result:
    print(item)
const resp = await fetch("https://ibl.api.bbci.co.uk/ibl/v1/categories/documentaries/programmes");
const data = await resp.json();

Probe History

Latency

Status Codes

TimeStatusLatencySize
2026-04-16 17:49:46.307507 200 451ms
2026-04-16 04:04:18.985058 200 667ms
2026-04-15 00:28:26.563606 200 661ms
2026-04-14 03:27:51.116965 200 490ms
2026-04-12 13:46:13.926382 200 513ms
2026-04-10 04:21:43.814454 200 491ms
2026-04-09 01:40:27.059891 200 450ms