class BBCCoUkArticleIE(InfoExtractor):
-    _VALID_URL = r'https?://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/(?P<id>[a-zA-Z0-9]+)'
+    _VALID_URL = r'https?://(?:www\.)?bbc\.co\.uk/programmes/articles/(?P<id>[a-zA-Z0-9]+)'
     IE_NAME = 'bbc.co.uk:article'
     IE_DESC = 'BBC articles'