Code 404 to star Daniel Mays and Stephen Graham

Richard Gadd's Robocop-style police comedy Code 404 has been given a series by Sky One, Chortle can reveal.

The comic will co-star alongside the leads –  Line of Duty's Daniel Mays and Stephen Graham – when the spoof about a bionically enhanced policeman begins filming in March.

The commission of six half-hour episodes follows a non-broadcast pilot shot in London last summer, which also featured Motherland’s Anna Maxwell Martin and The Office's Patrick Baladi.

Gadd's significant role is just his second lead in a TV narrative comedy, following his time-travelling villain in E4's 2015 sci-fi caper Tripped.

However, he won acclaim for his dramatic role in BBC's 2017 docu-drama Against The Law. That film also starred Mays as gay rights pioneer Peter Wildeblood with Gadd as his lover Eddie McNally.

The Scot, who won the 2016 Edinburgh Comedy Award for his show Monkey See, Monkey Do, is currently developing a new live show, Baby Reindeer, about female obsession, and has also written for Netflix's coming-of-age comedy Sex Education, starring Gillian Anderson.

In addition to Line of Duty, Mays has previously portrayed policemen in the dramas The Interrogation of Tony Martin, Ashes to Ashes, The Limehouse Golem and Guerilla. 

Code 404 – a co-production between Kudos and Water & Power Productions –  consolidates Mays relationship with Sky One, for whom he stars in the channel's upcoming comic thriller Temple, one of a growing number of comedy roles he is undertaking. 

He appears in the forthcoming second series of Dave's hospital sitcom Porters and the BBC's adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens, as well as having roles in the films Swimming with Men and Fishermen's Friends. He and Graham co-starred in the 2004 pot-dealing sitcom Top Buzzer, written by Johnny Vaughan and Ed Allen. Airing for a single series on MTV and later, Channel Five, it featured Sean Lock, Mackenzie Crook, Iain Lee and the rapper Kanye West in guest roles.

Code 404 is a ‘file not found’ error on the internet, which has been adopted as street slang for ‘clueless' in parts of London.

– by Jay Richardson

Published: 11 Jan 2019