To take on phone hacking

The Comic Strip Presents is to return for another one-off special – this time about tabloid phone hacking.

Maxine Peake will play a version of Rebekah Brooks in the 75-minute film, which has the working title The Comic Strip Presents…The Red Top!

Made for TV channel Gold, the film will be played out as a Seventies Watergate-style scandal.

  It also stars Nigel Planer as Rupert Murdoch and Russell Tovey as Andy Coulson along with   Johnny Vegas, Alexei Sayle, Harry Enfield, James Buckley and John Sessions. Stephen Mangan will reprise his role as Tony Blair, and creator Peter Richardson will also make an appearance.  

He said: ‘Like our previous Comic Strip satire, The Hunt For Tony Blair, which was set in the Sixties, The Red Top lampoons the phone hacking scandal and the world of politics and press proprietors, and is set in a colourful seventies Boogie Nights style parallel universe with a disco soundtrack.

‘I’m thrilled to have such a fantastic cast. It should be huge fun.’  

UKTV commissioning editor Simon Lupton added: There’s nothing quite like The Comic Strip anywhere else in the world of comedy and so it's incredibly exciting to be part of this next chapter.

‘The script is wonderfully hilarious and playful, and as always the cast list is an embarrassment of riches. The Comic Strip history is littered with iconic moments, characters and performances, and I'm confident Peter and his team will be creating some more with this latest instalment.’

‘The Red Top! will be the second outing of the Comic Strip on Gold, following the 30th anniversary special The Comic Strip Presents… Five Go To Rehab in 2012, three decades on from the group’s debut Five Go Mad In Dorset in 1982.

Published: 7 Sep 2015