get_iplayer is certainly more powerful than nip. However, afaik you cannot search for programmes by category with get_iplayer, which you can do with nip.
alan@hal:~$ get-iplayer --help | grep category
--category <string> Narrow search to matched categories (comma-separated regex list). Defaults to substring match. Only works with --history.
--exclude-category <string> Narrow search to exclude matched categories (comma-separated regex list). Defaults to substring match. Only works with --history.
