C4 launches IT sitcom

Father Ted creator Graham Linehan has joined with The Office’s producer Ash Atalla to create a new sitcom for Channel 4.

The I.T. Crowd, which forms part of the station’s new summer line-up, follows two geeks who work in an IT department.

It is the first major show from the award-winning Atalla since he left the BBC to join independent producers Talkback Thames as editor of comedy.

The I.T. Crowd will be both written and directed by Linehan, pictured, who also helped create Dylan Moran’s Black Books and surreal sketch show Big Train.

Also in Channel 4’s new line-up, announced today, is a sketch show about the lives of urban thirtysomethings, provisionally titled The Zeppotron Sketch Show.

And comic Mark Dolan, star of the Richard Taylor Interviews, will present an entertainment show called Balls of Steel.

The ideas is that a team of comedians will have to go to ‘extreme lengths’ to entertain a studio audience; though what those lengths are has not yet been divulhed.

The show is being made by mind-reader Derren Brown and Objective Productions, the company behind the acclaimed Peep Show. It is also making a new Friday night magic show called Dirty Tricks.

The channel's head of comedy, Caroline Leddy said the new line-up was ‘a fabulous crop - dead good, dead funny and dead exciting’.

Published: 21 Apr 2005