Commissioner says pilots will act as calling card for new talent

all out laughs

(L-R) Princess Khumalo, George Robinson, Sarah Balfour and Vahid Gold

Comedy commissioner Sarah Asante has set out UKTV’s commitment to new talent as it prepares to strip a slate of comedy pilots across the week.

Branded All New Laughs, the four winners of Dave’s inaugural comedy WriterSlam competition will air in a 10pm slot from today (23 August).

Asante, who took ownership of the initiative when she joined from the BBC last year, said it is the first time a broadcaster has backed talent so prominently.

“It’s not just development and a handshake, it’s a real script-to-screen initiative and shows real commitment from Dave to putting its money where its mouth is,” she said.

“It’s a calling card for new writers. Their ideas stop being a concept and become a living, breathing thing that they can point to.”

Asante is optimistic that at least one of the pilots will become a fully-fledged series but will not be measuring their success in terms of overnight ratings performance.

“It’s more of a 28 day plus story, it’s about who has engaged, what the comments are, what the audiences’ share,” she said. “There may be a front-runner that’s most beloved, or all of them could become successful, they need time to grow and breathe.”

After 1600 applications, the four pilots consist of The Other Half by Kate Reid and Zak Ghazi-Torbati, Anna Costello’s Dead Canny, Holier Than Thou by Misha Adesanya and Perfect by Laurence Clark.

The latter, Perfect, produced by Happy Tramp North, was also the first to employ an access coordinator – Julie Fernandez - with ScreenSkills and Bridge06 overseeing the training of a dozen more.

Filmed and set in Liverpool, Perfect revolves around the lives of three disabled people in a work preparation scheme and stars Sex Education’s George Robinson amongst its cast.

The Other Half is executive produced by Romesh Ranganathan’s Ranga Bee Productions and stars Vahid Gold (Newark, Newark) as central character Navid, supported by This Country’s Paul Chahidi.

Dead Canny is produced by TriForce, which has overseen the initiative with UKTV. It’s written by County Durham-born Anna Costello, with TriForce’s Fraser Ayres starring alongside newcomer Sarah Balfour, as well as exec producing.

Finally Holier Than Thou is set in an African evangelical church in Manchester and is written by Mancunian Misha Adesanya, it navigates sex, faith and relationships against the backdrop of conservative religion. It’s produced by Big Deal and exec produced by Thomas Stogdon.

“The pilots are very much being looked at as regular comedy pilots, rather than writers’ initiatives that could have been hidden away on a YouTube channel,” said Asante. “We want to give them the best opportunity to be seen and enjoyed.”