Bittersweet series from Curb director

Nick Frost is to star in a new romantic period comedy series as a man driven to attempt suicide by his failed marriage and career.

Sky Atlantic has commissioned six episodes of Mr Sloane - an hour-long opener and five subsequent half-hours – which will begin shooting in London next month to air in 2014.

Curb Your Enthusiasm director Bob Weide will write and direct all the episodes, with Catherine Tate’s co-writer Aschlin Ditta and Whites’ Oli Lansley contributing to two of the scripts. Chortle understands that stand-up Sara Pascoe is also on the writing team.

Frost plays a buttoned-down ‘man in crisis’, Jeremy Sloane, who has just lost his job when the bittersweet series begins in Watford in 1969.

But with new employment on the horizon and the phone number of a prospective new love interest following a chance encounter in his local hardware store, his luck seems to be changing.

Frost described the comedy as ‘original and offbeat.

‘I loved Bob’s idea for Mr Sloane and fell in love with the character straight away so I’m chuffed to be part of the project and can’t wait to start filming.’

The Emmy-winning producer and director of the first five seasons of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, Weide has made several documentaries about US comedians, including Woody Allen, the Marx Brothers, Mort Sahl and WC Fields, earning a 1999 Oscar nomination for Lenny Bruce: Swear To Tell The Truth.

He said: ‘Nick is not only a very funny guy, but a very talented actor. I had no specific agenda to create a show for him, but out of the blue, an idea came to me that was entirely character-driven, and I immediately saw Nick as that character. I pitched it to him, and he said, “Let’s do it.”’

The comedy is Weide’s first UK production, a collaboration between his Whyaduck Productions, named after a Marx Brothers joke, and Big Talk, which made Spaced and the films Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Paul, all starring Frost and Simon Pegg. Weide previously directed Pegg in the 2008 film How To Lose Friends & Alienate People.

Sky’s head of comedy, Lucy Lumsden, said: ‘With the combined talents of US director and writer Bob Weide and our very own Nick Frost, we are in for a real treat and look forward to sharing the results with our customers.’

Frost only wrapped shooting another romantic comedy for Big Talk yesterday, the salsa-dancing film Cuban Fury, in which he stars alongside Chris O’Dowd.

He will next be seen with Pegg in The World’s End, which had its release date moved forward to August 23 yesterday. The script – which director Edgar Wright wrote with Pegg – has five middle-aged men trying to recreate an epic pub crawl 20 years after they first attempted it, with The World’s End the legendary final bar in the challenge.

It is part of the so-called Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Each filmfeatures a main character buying such an ice cream.

Pegg’s title character in Shaun of the Dead alludes to a Mr Sloane but it’s not thought to be connected to the Sky comedy. Nor is the character an allusion to the Joe Orton play Entertaining Mr Sloane, a source said.

- by Jay Richardson

Published: 22 Mar 2013