Sky pilots David O'Doherty's Antarctic comedy

Inspired by Ernest Shackleton

David O'Doherty has landed a sitcom pilot for Sky.

Stuck is based on the comedian's one-man 2011 Edinburgh Fringe show, Rory Sheridan's Tales of the Antarctic, which was in turn inspired by polar explorer Ernest Shackleton.

The pilot is described as 'a big, daft audience sitcom set on board a ship which is stuck in the ice at the Antarctic. It's 1917, and a ship of fools has been wedged in the ice flow for nearly a year.'

O'Doherty, who writes and stars in the comedy as Sheridan, the ill-fated expedition's leader is 'by his own admission, a man who knows nothing about shipping, but luckily by his side he had his trusted friend, and man of great shipping knowledge, Knopfler'.

The non-broadcast pilot is being made by Hat Trick Productions and produced by Helen Williams, whose previous credits include The Kumars and Facejacker.

In it, Sheridan must overcome a mutiny from his men after the lid of a biscuit tin depicting a 'rather raunchy looking Edwardian lady' goes missing from the ship.

Stuck has been in development for several years, with O'Doherty telling the Belfast Telegraph in 2014 that 'I have this kind of three-act play that takes place with the TV people about once a year, where they say, "We were at your gig. We really, really like you. Can you please give us an idea? We'd love to make something with you."

'So, I submit a sitcom set in a frozen ship in 1917, and they get back and say, "No-one would watch this" … But I'd rather do that than do a TV show that I wasn't comfortable with.'

A hero of O'Doherty's, the Anglo-Irish Shackleton famously saved all of his men's lives when his ship the Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and was slowly crushed, with the crew camping on sea ice until it disintegrated, before launching lifeboats to reach Elephant Island and ultimately the inhabited island of South Georgia, a sea and land journey of 720 miles.

Shackleton's most famous exploit, it inspired a 2002 Channel 4 mini-series starring Kenneth Branagh as Shackleton

O'Doherty previously made the short film Why Shackleton Went To The Antarctic as one of the challenges on his television series The Modest Adventures of David O'Doherty, which aired on RTE Two in Ireland in 2007.

Here's the clip: