BBC2 announces new sitcom

Fisher will star opposed Billy Boyd, who played Pippin Took in the The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, in the new sitcom Empty.

The pair play Jacky and Tony, two employees of a Glasgow property maintenance company, who clear out empty flats and make simple repairs.

A BBC spokesman said the show was ‘both poignant and funny’ adding: ‘For both men, work is an escape. When they are together in an empty flat, they can go into their own little world – a place of wild flights of fancy and comic imaginings sparked by items they find or problems they encounter in each new location.’

Scripts have been written by Robert Florence and Ian Connell, who previously worked on Scottish sketch show Chewin' the Fat, and the show will be made by Glasgow-based production company The Comedy Unit.

The show was confirmed in the BBC’s winter/spring line-up unveiled today.

Also announced was Taking The Flak, an ‘acerbic, authentic and caustic’ comedy about British journalists covering a a small African war.

The series stars Martin Jarvis, Doon Mackichan and Bruce Mackinnon, while Mackenzie Crook makes a guest appearance.

The schedule also includes Lab Rats, the long-anticipated sitcom Chris Addison has developed with Amando Iannucci, and Never Better, which stars Green Wing’s Stephen Mangan as a recovering alcoholic whose new-found sobriety ‘brings crisis and destruction to those around him’.

Published: 20 Nov 2007