Behind the camera of E4 sitcom

Harry Enfield has started work directing a new sitcom which has already been dubbed the female answer to The Inbetweeners.

Sex And The Chippy revolves around three women who meet in a Liverpool chip shop to gossip about their night out in the city.

The E4 show will be the first comedy Enfield has directed, although he has helmed two episodes of teen drama Skins. He stepped in after previous director Ben Palmer dropped out to work on The Inbetweeners movie.

Filming began on location in Liverpool’s San Carlo restaurant yesterday.

Neil Jones, who wrote the series with fellow former Brookside scribe Heather Robson, told the Liverpool Echo. ‘We pitched it as the older sisters of The Inbetweeners if they were from Liverpool.

‘We thought: if it is hard for the skinny and rich Sex And The City women to find a man in Manhattan, then what is it like for size 16 women out on the pull in Liverpool.

‘The women have boring jobs and go out every weekend to escape their routines and look for a bit of romance. But every week it turns out to be disastrous and the episode starts at the end of the night with their chips.’

Channel 4’s head of comedy Shane Allen has called the show ‘glossy, raucous, upbeat and excruciating’, and said the script was ‘bursting with great banter and some truly jaw-dropping set pieces’.

The show is being made by Liverpool-based Lime Pictures, the company behind The Only Way Is Essex – and features a largely unknown cast.

Published: 9 Feb 2011