Henpocalypse! does not survive

No second run for BBC comedy

The BBC will not be making a second series of its comedy Henpocalypse!, the broadcaster has confirmed.

Originally airing last August, the show revolved around a group of working-class Birmingham women surviving a crab measles apocalypse of while on a hen-do in remote North Wales.

It was written by Caroline Moran and featured Danny Dyer playing a version of himself alongside Elizabeth Berrington, Lucie Shorthouse, Callie Cooke, Lauren O’Rourke and Kate O’Flynn.

A BBC spokesperson confirmed to Chortle: ‘We are very proud of Henpocalypse! but in order to make room for new comedy shows sometimes difficult decisions have to be made and we currently have no plans for another series.’

The first run – still available on iPlayer – divided critics. In a four-star review the Guardian praised ‘the sight of women given loud, reckless, daft parts to play, asked to do liberated and liberating things in the name of comedy, and running with them for the horizon’, while the Radio Times said: ‘It's not highbrow, but it's bloody good fun’

However, the New Statesman’s Rachel Cooke wrote: ‘I can’t remember the last time I endured a show as relentlessly laboured as this steaming dollop of faux-feminist puerility. Watching it is torture.’

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Published: 5 Aug 2024