So far this week I’ve been looking at some series that will be appearing on our screens in the coming months. Today, a very brief look at two one-off British comedy specials I’m looking forward to seeing this year.
First up, Bad Sugar, a 30-minute pilot starring some of the country’s best comic actresses – Olivia Colman, Julia Davis and Sharon Horgan. It’s written by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, creators of Peep Show and Fresh Meat, both of which will return later this year. Bad Sugar is described as “a peculiarly British take on telenovela style melodramas” focusing on a dysfunctional, wealthy mining dynasty, with an ailing patriarch and some greedy siblings. Directed by Ben Palmer, fresh from helming the hugely successful Inbetweeners Movie, the pilot will guest star Reece Shearsmith, Peter Serafinowicz and David Bradley. With these talents in front of and behind the camera, this looks like it’ll be worth waiting for.
Sky 1’s line-up of home-grown comedies continues to grow, with one of the latest being A Touch of Cloth, a feature-length spoof of British crime dramas written by Charlie Brooker and Daniel Maier. Starring John Hannah as maverick, boozing DCI Jack Cloth, Suranne Jones as his plucky partner DC Anne Oldman and Julian Rhind-Tutt as their boss, A.C.C. Tom Boss, it follows an investigation into a series of increasingly grisly murders while taking in all of the regular locations seen in detective shows, from the leafy forests and luxury homes of Sunday afternoon fare to the sinister lock-ups and cold forensic labs of the more gritty dramas. It sounds like it’s taking a more silly route than most of Brooker’s scripts, which would be ideal for this sort of thing – as Maier says, “It’s like Airplane! for a detective series except for not being Police Squad”.
No air dates for either of these shows yet, but as soon as I find out I’ll let you know.
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