New pilot for Channel 4

Matt Berry is shooting a Victorian crime comedy for Channel 4, Chortle can reveal.

Filming began today on the as-yet-untitled pilot, which pastiches gritty Seventies detective dramas by transposing the action to the East End of London in the 1880s, notorious for the murders of Jack the Ripper.

Berry plays the lead detective in the 30-minute taster, alongside Crazyhead's Susan Wokoma and  Freddie Fox from Paradise End.

The script is by Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil, whose previous credits include Veep, Tracey Ullman's Show, Black Books and Little Britain, with Berry supplying additional material.

The director is Catastrophe's Ben Taylor for Objective Fiction, makers of Peep Show and Fresh Meat.

Chortle understands that the pilot is a passion project for Berry, who has described Seventies police drama The Sweeney as 'the greatest cop show ever'.

However, the commission casts doubt on the future of his existing Channel 4 sitcom, Toast of London. In April, Berry said he wasn't sure if the comedy would return, remarking: 'I don't know, it depends. Because it takes such a long time; it's a year to write and then it's the pre-production and then you've got to film it.

'It’s your whole year taken up with one series – six episodes – if you’re doing all those things, [if] you’re writing it and you’re in it,’ he told the Radio Times.

Berry recently filmed Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer's forthcoming Big Night Out revival for the BBC, as well as the independent comedy movie An Evening With Beverley Luff Linn, in which he co-stars with The US Office's Craig Robinson, Parks and Recreation's Aubrey Plaza and Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords.

He is also about to start work on Simpsons creator Matt Groening's new adult animation for Netflix, Disenchantment, in which he joins a voice cast that also includes Noel Fielding, Rich Fulcher and Lucy Montgomery, as well as voicing Moominpapa in the cinematic adaptation of the Moomins children's books.

And his new his music album, Night Terrors: Nocturnal Excursions in Music is to be released on Acid Jazz Records on  November 17.

- by Jay Richardson

Published: 9 Oct 2017