That's barking! Sally Phillips pens dog-based comedy

...with Ronni Ancona

Sally Phillips is writing two comedy movies: a rom-com with Down’s syndrome at its heart, and a family film about dog actors.

She’s penning Palm Dog with Ronni Ancona, based around the real-life prize for best canine thespians that is given out at the Cannes Film Festival, she revealed in an interview with Chortle today.

The pair will shoot the film with some of the production team behind the forthcoming 'anti-Downton Abbey' movie Surviving Christmas, which they're also both in. Co-starring Gemma Whelan, Joely Richardson, Patrica Hodge and James Fox, the ‘anti-festive movie’ is written and directed by Fatal Attraction’s James Dearden.

Phillips is also working on another film, provisionally titled My Big Fat Down Syndrome Wedding in Sweden, because of the size of the budgets she can secure in the progressive nation.

‘If you're going to do a film that has somebody with Down's syndrome in the lead, it's got to be very, very low budget here' she explains. 'But not there.’

Phillips’s eldest son Ollie has the condition, and the movie is slated to star Tommy Jessop, the first actor with Down’s syndrome to star in a prime-time BBC drama (Closing Down The Mountain).

She is co-writing the script with Swedish-Kurdish comedian Nisti Stêrk, with help from Nick Hornby.

However, another film she was developing with her Veep co-star Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Amy Poehler appears to have stalled. The comedy is set in a sloth sanctuary, and Phillips revealed that there was also ‘a practical issue with the sloths’.

'You can't film with them outside of Costa Rica and it's quite illegal to transport them,’ said Phillips, who hosted a 2014 Discovery Channel documentary about the animals.

In her wide-ranging interview, she also spoke of the challenges of improvising her new BBC Wales show The Tourist Trap, of her failed attempts to kick-start a Smack The Pony revival, and of how she believes that broadcasters’ reluctance to make new sketch shows is misguided, saying: ‘The appetite for sketch among the public hasn't diminished’.