Broadcaster's comedy chief Jon Petrie on his quest for home-grown stories

BBC comedy chief John Petrie has insisted ‘it is still possible to make a sitcom on a BBC budget’ – despite production companies increasingly looking to global streaming platforms and international partners to fund their programmes.

Officially unveiling a forthcoming tranche of programming to journalists, including Chortle, Petrie said he wanted to make sure his department focussed on commissioning British stories rather than global ones.

‘I think we want to back those home-grown stories,’ the executive said. ‘It’s going to be hard to get some of these shows away on streamers who are just looking for something global. 

‘And no one really knows what's going to break out and be a global hit. And comedy is just  so hard to work out [what will be a hit] So it's really important that we just keep  backing new talent.’

But he did acknowledge producers ‘have to be realistic about certain things’ when working with the BBC budgets.

Petrie also said he was ‘really proud that it’s a very diverse slate’ he was revealing saying: ‘It caters to lots of different tastes, and that’s what the BBC is about. We've got to think of all the licence fee payers and what they might want.’

But he also reiterated his desire to see the corporation move away from comedy-dramas to more mainstream laugh-out-loud comedies 

‘We feel like we've probably got enough comedy dramas now,’ he said, repeating  sentiment he expressed at the BBC comedy festival in Glasgow last week. ‘We love the ones we've got, and we hope they have long and successful lives, but I think we just want to move back, just focus attention a little bit on just bringing back those sort of hard-hitting funny shows. 

‘We're not saying we want to go back to 1980s. There are incredible, incredible sitcoms that we're all still enjoying today from that period. But I think it's saying we want shows in the vein of like Ghosts or Motherland, where you've got an ensemble of great comedy characters. You've got high joke rate. A story of the week.

‘You can still have story arcs and all of that. But it's just maybe it's just not someone's personal journey….’

‘I think also, when you talk to all the American broadcasters, they're all saying the same thing: people want jokes. They want things to make them laugh. 

‘And the stuff that they're rewatching again and again are those shows, and for us, it's shows like Ghosts and Motherland and Not Going Out and Mrs Brown's Boys, and those are the shows that are still getting huge numbers.’

One reporter asked Petrie if he, personally, was a fan of the often-derided Mrs Brown's Boys, but moderator Michelle De Swarte shut down the question, saying it was a ‘trap’.

While all the new shows are single-camera comedies shot on location, Petrie said he wouldn’t rule out filming a new studio-based sitcom.

‘We just don't get pitched them very much,’ he said. ‘It's not like we're doing a massive drive for it, but we want always try and make it clear to producers that we're not closed to it.’

He also revealed he hadn’t yet seen the script for the Gavin & Stacey Christmas special, saying: ‘James [Corden] and Ruth [James[ won't let us look at it yet. 

‘They're really keeping it under wraps, and they really don't want people to see it outside of their very, very tight circle until they're 100 per cent sure  of it.’

Petrie was also asked about the Catherine Tate series Queen Of Oz, which was axed after one series and widely considered a flop.

‘I'm really glad we tried it,’ he said. ‘It just didn't quite do the job we needed it to do. 

‘But I think we need a bit of everything, really, because it's hard to get an audience to comedy l sometimes when it's a completely unknown name. So it just helps us to have some of those sort of "BBC One" names.

Despite Petrie’s call for fewer comedy-dramas, many of the slate he unveiled would fall into the category.  The shows – which have all been previously announced – are

Amandaland

A spin-off from Motherland, revolving around Lucy Punch's character Amanda, and also featuring Joanna Lumley as Amanda’s withering mother Felicity and Philippa Dunne as the put-upon Anne from the original.

Petrie said: ‘It's a different stage of school, so it's a different stage of parenting. There’s different stories that people with teenage kids are going to really relate to’. He said that after seeing the pilot ‘we were really chuffed because Motherland was obviously amazing and at the peak of its powers. But this is, really good.’

He also revealed that as his wife, Holly Walsh, is one of the writers – alongside Helen Serafinowicz and Barunka O’Shaughnessy – he was hands-off when it came to commissioning. 

Only Child

A BBC One sitcom starring Gary Tank Commander’s Greg McHugh as and budding author Richard, who travels back to his family home in North East Scotland to look after his aging and wilful dad Ken, played by Gregor Fisher (Rab C Nesbitt), as he slips into ever more eccentric and erratic behaviour.

‘We're really excited about this one as well,’ Petrie said. ‘I think it's got, a lot of heart… it’s just so relatable. It's a very good story.’

Ludwig

David Mitchell plays John  Taylor, a technophobe loner who lives in quiet solitude, designing puzzles for a living until his brother James – a successful DCI leading Cambridge’s busy major crimes team – goes missing, and John has to take over his  brother’s identity in a quest to discover his whereabouts.

The six hour-long episodes co-star Anna Maxwell Martin and features a host of acting royalty, yet to be formally announced. 

Petrie said: ‘It came with David Mitchell attached, and it is, honestly, the part he was born to play. It was just perfect casting.  And we met with David, and he was genuine. You could tell he was really, really wanted to do this.’

We Might Regret This

Disability activist Kyla Harris, who also co-wrote the script with Lee Getty, stars as central character Freya, a Canadian quadriplegic living in London who strikes up a relationship with a straight-laced lawyer played by The Outlaws actor Darren Boyd despite the often intrusive presence of her full-time personal assistant.

Calling Harris ‘an incredible talent’, Petrie added:  ‘I don't feel I've ever seen an aspirational portrayal of disability on screen at all, which is kind of shocking. And this just felt classy. It's, it's funny, but it's, I think, relatable to a lot of people. 

‘It's that thing of doing something you've not seen before. I think that's the beauty of the BBC that will take those sort of risks.’

Smoggie Queens

A comedy set in Middlesbrough’s drag queen community from comedian Phil Dunning who stars  alongside Mark Benton, Alexandra Mardell, Patsy Lowe and Elijah Young.

Petrie said Dunning had sent in a pilot script on spec. ‘He's been around for years. We knew he'd done sketch and stuff, but we weren't even aware that he wrote half hours,’ the executive said.

‘Again, it's that thing that you’ve not seen on TV before, not seen a story set in Middlesbrough. I googled the last thing was Dial M For Middlesborough [the 2019 one-off comedy-whodunit starring Johnny Vegas and Sian Gibson on Gold].’

Daddy Issues

Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood plays Stockport party girl Gemma, who gets pregnant via a random hook-up – and finds herself having only her dad Malcolm (David Morrissey) for support: a  kind-hearted but useless figure who lives in a bedsit for divorced men.

Petrie says this, too, was based on a spec script. ‘That was Danielle Ward, who writes on Brassic. And I think this was her first proper script on her own, and she sent it in again as a spec, spec. And we just really, really liked it. And we were like "it all hangs on who’s the dad and the daughter?" We said to them, "if you can get someone like Amee Lou Wood and David Morrissey…"   And they both said yes straight away, which is amazing.

He admitted Wood wouldn’t be paid anything like what she’s receiving for The White Lotus, but, said he hoped such in-demand actors would do something like this because they loved the script.

Spent

A loosely autobiographical comedy-drama starring Michelle De Swarte as a former international catwalk model forced back to living in Brixton, South London, when declared bankrupt in the US. More details here.

Published: 19 Jun 2024