News: New BBC Comedies Announced

Josh Widdicombe
Sam Bickley, Channel Editor, BBC Three, has announced a raft of original new comedy programmes, including a full series for Josh, the flatsharing sitcom starring Josh Widdicombe that was a Comedy Feeds pilot.

Fried

Fried follows the staff in a struggling branch of a low-rent fast food chain. There's Mary, the manager sent from head office who has grandiose plans for this fried chicken shop. Her job is openly coveted by bitter assistant manager Derek, who's been here 'since it were a Wimpy'. Then there's geeky teenager Joe, and the man who's decided they're best friends - foul-mouthed and relentlessly self-absorbed Ed. Every week the team has to deal with customers, with one another and with the indelible smell of oil.

Fried is created and written by Jack and Harry Williams.

Josh

Josh is a new sitcom written by Josh Widdicombe and Tom Craine, and, as the title suggests, stars Josh too. The show follows Josh and two mates living in a flatshare and features Elis James as Owen and Beattie Edmondson as Kate. Jack Dee also stars as the trio’s landlord, Geoff, who is a shoo-in for this year’s Most Irritating Landlord award. This sitcom will focus on the small things in life. Josh is like the rest of us: easily embarrassed, full of polite indignation and mildly irritated by having the teabag and hot water given to him separately on a train… but only for Josh can that irritation escalate within 30 minutes to him accidentally scalding the driver and causing a three train pile-up.

The series follows on from a pilot which was made as part of the BBC Comedy Feeds strand and is made by BBC In-house Comedy Production. It is directed by David Schneider (The Day Today, I’m Alan Partridge).

Top Coppers

Top Coppers is a big, silly, gag-filled, action comedy set in the colourful and fictional world of Justice City. We follow the adventures of police detectives Mahogany and Rust, as they attempt to rid the city of its deranged criminal underworld.

Made by Roughcut Television. Written by Cein McGillicuddy and Andy Kinnear. 

Together

Together is a brand-new romantic comedy written by and starring Jonny Sweet (Chickens, Babylon) and based on the Radio 4 comedy Hard To Tell, where each episode centres around a couple in a new relationship, dealing with the interferences, obstructions and general disasters wrought by their family and friends.

Sweet plays Tom, a charmless, witless but passionate 26-year-old prone to failure. He still has the same amount of self-possession as when he was aged 11 and, despite some genuine human potential, is yet to assemble anything close to what any other adult might call a 'life'.

Read a review of the Comedy Feed pilot of Josh here.

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