Six-part spoof of the Bloomsbury Group

Radio 4 has commissioned a sitcom spoofing the literary Bloomsbury Group.

Gloomsbury will star Alison Steadman, Miriam Margolyes, Nigel Planer, Morwenna Banks and John Sessions as member of an arty and adulterous set in the early 20th century.

The six-part series has been written by author and brodacaster Sue Limb and will be recorded next month for broadcast in early 2013.

Margolyes plays Vera Sackcloth-Vest a ‘writer, gardener and transvestite’, while Steadman and Banks play the objects of her lesbian lusts, privileged women unable to undertake the most basic domestic tasks. Sessions, meanwhile plays saucy novelist DH Lollipop, a refugee from the Nottingham coalfields.

Producer Jamie Rix claimed some links to the Bloomsbury Group.

He said: “I happen to be married to the executor of Katherine Mansfield’s literary estate because my wife is the granddaughter of John Middleton Murry, but never did I ever expect to meet the Bloomsbury Group in the flesh. And of course I never will, but this is the next best thing.’

Published: 25 May 2012