Mayall and Planer in new Comic Strip

Channel 4 is reviving The Comic Strip Presents…

Rik Mayall and Nigel Planer will star in the new one-off, Sex Actually, 23 years  since the troupe’s first spoof, Five Go Mad In Dorset, first aired on the broadcaster's opening night.

Original writers Peter Richardson and Pete Richens’s script is set in  middle-class suburbia, and features death by waterbed and wife-swapping.

Mayall appears as a self-important artist and Planer plays a nosy neighbour.

Smack The Pony’s Doon Mackichan will play Mayall’s successful businesswoman wife, and the cast will also include Sheridan Smith, Rebecca Front and Phil Cornwell and Glenna Scacchi Morrison.

The Comic Strip – created by the early stars of the alternative cabaret scene including Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders  – was first aired exactly 23 year ago today.

A total of 37 films were made, the final one Four Men In A Plane, aired in January 2000. A nine-disc DVD box set of all the shows was successfully released earlier this year. Click here to buy.

Sex Actually will be screened as part of Channel 4's winter schedule, which was announced today.

Other comedy shows include

• The I.T. Crowd, written by Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan, and set in an office computer department.
• My Name is Earl, the acclaimed American comedy starring Jason Lee as a lottery winner who sets about righting his past wrongdoings.
• The return of 8 Out of 10 Cats with host Jimmy Carr and captains Sean Lock and Dave Spikey
• The return of Green Wing
• Tony Blair Rock Star, in which lookalike photographer Alison Jackson reconstructs Tony Blair’s days with Oxford University band Ugly Rumours.

Published: 2 Nov 2005