But new BBC show is about a man with the disease...

The BBC is making a comedy series about a young man with cancer.

Ill Behaviour will revolve around a patient, Charlie, who gets an early diagnosis of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. But although it can usually be successfully treated with chemotherapy, he shuns the scientific treatment in favour of unproven alternative methods.

So his friends hold him hostage and administer the chemo themselves  against his will, and with the aid of an alcoholic oncologist.

The show is being written by Peep Show co-creator Sam Bain and was first revealed by Chortle back in November, while it was being filmed in Bristol, But at the time details of the show were under wraps.

Now executive producers Iain Morris and Damon Beesley – who created Inbetweeners – have revealed the plot of the three-parter to Deadline.

The pair, who run programme-makers Fudge Park,  said: ’It’s not really a comedy about cancer at all. It’s more about ethical dilemmas and what lengths friends would go to to stop a friend making a bad choice’

Tom Riley (pictured), whose credits include Doctor Who, Inside No 9 and St Trinian’s will play Charlie while his real-life fiance Lizzy Caplan, the Mean Girls actress, plays the errant oncologist.

Waterloo Road’s Chris Geere and Jessica Regan from Call the Midwife play Charlie’s two friends, while Christina Chong from 24: Live Another Day and John Gordon Sinclair from Gregory’s Girl and World War Z also appear.

It is directed by The League of Gentleman and Little Britain's Steve Bendelack and produced by Gill Isles, whose credits include Peter Kay's Car Share and Hebburn, and will be released on iPlayer before being broadcast on BBC Two later this year. 

Published: 15 Feb 2017