With King Gary's Tom Davis

The creators of People Just Do Nothing and King Gary have joined forces for a new 1980s crime-comedy caper for Channel 4.

The Curse – which starts shooting next week – will star Tom Davis, Steve Stamp, Allan Mustafa and Hugo Chegwin as a group of small-time crooks.

They all wrote it with Davis’s long-term collaborator James De Frond, who directs the series for programme-makers Mad Shiny Button.

It was loosely inspired by The Brink's-Mat robbery of 1983, where six men raided a depot near Heathrow thinking they’d walk away with £50,000 in cash, only to stumble across seven thousand bars of gold,  worth £26million.

Mustafa, Stamp, Chegwin and Davis are the hapless small-time criminals called Albert Fantoni, Sidney Wilson, Phil ‘The Captain’ Pocket and Big Mick Neville respectively. They are normal working-class men who just dabble in low-level crime to make ends meet during the recession-hit decade.  

But the naïve gang bite off more than they can chew and then have to come up with a plot to rid themselves of the loot before they get nicked or end up dead…

Emer Kenny plays Natasha, wife of Albert, who narrates the tale. The series also stars Peter Ferninando as Crazy Clive Cornell, a gangster that the gang become involved with, Ambreen Razia  as Detective Thread, Geoff Bell as Detective Saunders and Michael Smiley   as Ronnie Gatlin.

Fiona McDermott, Channel 4’s head of comedy, said: ’It's been such a treat to see these mega comedy talents collide with The Curse. As gripping as it is daft, we're thrilled to have such an ambitiously funny show from these brilliant creatives coming to Channel 4.’

Stamp added: ‘I’ve always wanted a mullet, so really this is just an excuse to do that. But also an absolute privilege to work with such a talented group of people and to be making something with this level of scale and ambition. Really excited to start shooting.'

Published: 26 Aug 2021