With John Finnemore and Kerry Godliman

Sky1 has ordered a family sitcom about a boy who becomes an internet millionaire, Chortle can reveal.

Carters Get Rich revolves around Harry Carter and his working-class Midlands relatives, who get rich when he creates a hugely successful website.

Full cast details have yet to be released but it includes Kerry Godliman, John Finnemore and Rhianna Merralls, who had a small role in Julia Davis’s Camping.

Godliman is believed to be playing Harry’s mother, Liz, while Finnemore plays Oliver, Harry’s awkward right-hand man, very proper and polite but unused to dealing with working-class people.

Toby Williams, Ellie White and Last Of The Summer Wine’s Robert Fyfe also appear in the pre-watershed comedy, which was filmed at Pinewood Studios and around Surrey. Six half-hour episodes are due to air later this year.

Developed under the working title Little Start Up, the show was created by Ian Jarvis and husband-and-wife Stuart Lane and Claire Downes, who were also behind ITV2’s job centre comedy The Job Lot.

Carters Get Rich is directed by Chris Cottam, whose credits include Dane Baptiste’s forthcoming sitcom Sunny D, Set List, Kevin Bridge’s What’s The Story and several documentaries with Rich Hall.  The producer is Trollied’s Alex Smith for the indie Roughcut.

It will not be the only startup comedy aired by the broadcaster, as Sky Atlantic airs the Emmy-winning, US series Silicon Valley.

Neither Sky nor Roughcut would comment on Carters Get Rich.

- by Jay Richardson

Published: 10 Jun 2016