Daisy Haggard confirms the comedy-drama is over

Back To Life will not be returning for a third series, its star and co-writer Daisy Haggard has confirmed.

She said it was ‘really sad’ to be ending the comedy-drama about a woman trying to rebuild her life after leaving prison, but said: ‘I think the story is done.

‘I've got so many things I want to do, I've got two or three film ideas that I'm really excited about,’ she added.

The show which Haggard wrote with Laura Solon, began on BBC Three in 2019 and moved to BBC One in 2021 for its second series.

Her confirmation that the series would not return came to Ade Edmondson on his Out To Lunch podcast. 

And she also said that her daughter, when she was aged about five, had trouble distinguishing fact from fiction.

‘She found copies of Back to Life,’ Haggard said. ‘She was sitting on the loo just holding the script with this look of absolute fury, just shaking her head… she was like, "Mummy, WHAT is this?!" and I was like, "that's mine". 

‘She went, "Did YOU write this?!" and then she just was shaking her head like, she was so upset with me because she basically said you spent all this time teaching me to be a good person and then this is what you're putting out into the world.’

She said her daughter. ‘kept telling people that I'd been to prison, and I was like, "no, no, I haven’t", but, no, she was really confused. She was telling people that I'd been to prison for murder’.

‘Which is really great, it’s what you want,’ Haggard added sarcastically.

In another anecdote, she told Edmondson: ‘I know when someone doesn't have an absolute fucking clue who I am; it's when they say to me, "I loved you in Harry Potter". I got that a lot in LA.’

And that’s because her contribution to the film series was no more than voicing the lift.‘I literally went to a sound booth for five minutes and I said, "Department of Mysteries",’ she told the podcast.

‘So when someone says, "Oh my God, big Harry Potter fans!" I'm like, "Oh really? Oh, did you like me in it?" and I really enjoy that moment when I’m like "I was not in that".’

• Out To Lunch is available to listen to on all podcast platforms

Published: 24 Oct 2023