News: Simon Callow To Star in New Sitcom

Simon Callow is to star in The Rebel, a new sitcom for the Gold channel inspired by Andrew Birch’s long-running cartoon strip in The Oldie Magazine.

The actor, best known for his appearances in Shakespeare in Love and Four Weddings and a Funeral, will play ageing non-conformist Henry Palmer. Talking about the role Callow says: "The Rebel is a wildly funny, edgy and sometimes rather searing new sitcom which could hardly be more now. Henry is very, very angry, and he has much to be angry about: essentially everything in the world around him. He sees himself as a fearless exposer of cant and folly. Others sometimes have a different view of him. It’s a part I can relate to very, very easily,” says Simon Callow. 

Henry Palmer is a near 70-year-old who looks every bit the respectable, fine, upstanding Brighton resident.  Except that underneath it all he’s not. For 50 years he’s been putting his youthful past behind him; or perhaps more accurately, brushing it under the floral patterned carpet. In the sixties he was a mod, a regular visitor to Brighton on his Vespa scooter, dressed in a Parka with a bullseye on the back, ready for a rumble with the rockers on their motorbikes.  Recently bereaved by the loss of his long-suffering wife, Henry shares this adjustment with his slightly impossible daughter, Cath and her utterly ineffectual husband, Jeremy. 

The three-part series will be directed and produced by Vadim Jean (Leon the Pig Farmer, The Hogfather, The Color of Magic). It is not Callow's first sitcom. He starred alongside Brenda Blethyn in the oddball comedy Chance in a Million (pictured) in the 1980s.

Gold continues to attract top comedy names to the channel for its original commissions, including John Hannah, Jo Joyner, Sarah Alexander (Marley’s Ghosts), Robert Lindsay and Maureen Lipman (Bull) with the shows performing strongly, pulling in audiences upwards of 300k individuals per episode.

The Rebel launches on Gold later this year and joins the line up of original scripted comedies set to launch on the channel, including Comic Strip Presents...The Red Top starring Russell Tovey and Maxine Peake, and Do Not Disturb starring Catherine Tate and Sian Gibson.   

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