High Hoops gets a second series

CBBC comedy reunites former Peep Show stars Robert Webb and Isy Suttie

A second series of its CBBC comedy High Hoops – which reunites former Peep Show stars Robert Webb and Isy Suttie.

The news comes as series one off the show about ‘charmingly reckless’ high school basketball player Aoife, played by Darci Hull, lands on iPlayer today.

Patricia Hidalgo, director the BBC’s children’s and education programming, said: ‘We’re so confident that audiences will love High Hoops that we’ve already commissioned a second series.

‘It has a stellar cast. Darci Hull as Aoife is one to watch, she will go far!’

Webb plays headteacher Mr Holt and Suttie plays Aoife’s mum Bríd, while Nigel Boyle from Line of Duty plays the school basketball coach Jim.

Webb said: ‘Mr Holt tends to be aggressive, competitive, angry. He's one of those teachers who is still using sarcasm as his main form of communication, probably as his teachers did to him in the 1980s. All of the excellent teacher training that happened between then and now seems to have just passed him by. He still speaks to the kids, particularly Aoife, really quite disrespectfully, which is lots of fun for me.

‘I just get to run around being angry, and I got to grow a moustache, which I've always wanted to.’

Suttie said: ‘My character Bríd is a single parent, she’s got two kids who are going through different things emotionally. Bríd really likes meditation and mindfulness, but she's also quite competitive, so she's often boasting about being the best one at mindfulness, which is a bit how I am in real life!

‘When I read the scripts, I thought it was really funny, and I read it without knowing it was aimed at kids, and thought, this is a really great family sitcom. So for me, the comedy came first.’

Aoife breaks the fourth wall by speaking directly to the audience and the show’s creator Sinéad Fagan said: ‘As a teenager, you’re always having to present a face when you’re actually thinking something else. Aoife likes to big herself up a bit but then bring herself down.’

The show is made by West Yorkshire-based CanCan Productions and filmed in Halifax.

High Hoops series one is on iPlayer now.