'It’s crazy, because we got absolutely slammed'

ITV police comedy Piglets has been commissioned for a second series, star Ricky Champ has revealed.

The show got a mixed reaction when it launched in July – as well as criticism from the Police Federation, who complained that the title was 'disgusting' and ‘offensive'.

Speaking on the Reading Between The Lines podcast, Champ said: ‘Piglets has been commissioned for series two. It’s crazy, because we got absolutely slammed. The first series came out and it was met with absolute venom – across the board, from all these critics.

'We live in a very critical, very negative world at the moment, especially for comedy. Everyone has got their weapons drawn against new comedy.

'Anyway that happened and [the reaction] came back very negative and immediately I thought "Well that's that's that done". You know, you stick your head out the sand and if it don't work then you know on to the next thing. 

But he added 'seven million people watched it. These are good numbers and ITV  obviously noticed that.'

He said he got a call from show creator Victora Pile confirming the news, and that the new series would be shot next year.

Revolving around six recruits at a police training college, Piglets starred Sarah Parish and Mark Heap as Superintendents Julie Spry and Bob Weeke with the rookies played by Callie Cooke, Sam Pote, Sukh Kaur Ojla, Halema Hussain, Abdul Sessay and Jamie Bisping. Champ played trainer Daz, below.

When the show aired, Tiffany Lynch of the Police Federation of England and Wales said the title of the show was ‘inflammatory against a landscape of rising threats and violence against officers’ and was putting officers ‘at further risk for viewing numbers’.

Broadcast regulator Ofcom received 269 complaints, but the watchdogs ruled there was no breach of rules.  

Piglets divided critical opinion, attracting reviews ranging from one star  (The Evening Standard, which called the humour ‘depressingly predictable and also just plain depressing’), two stars from The Independent, The i and The Daily Telegraph, three stars from The Guardian and four stars from The Times and Chortle.

It was produced by Green Wing creator Pile and written by the same team behind the Channel 4 hospital comedy: Robert Harley, James Henry, Oriane Messina, Fay Rusling and the late Richard Preddy, along with Omar Khan from ITV’s Comedy Writers Initiative.

Champ said the team were ‘really lovely… but incredibly difficult to work with. We have six writers on Piglets and at any one time they can CHUCK new pages at you. I was quite under pressure for that but I loved it/ Everyone was on the same page about the style of it, the silly comedy.’

ITV declined to comment on Champ’s comments. 

Published: 7 Nov 2024