Semi-Detached is the brand new comedy coming to BBC Two – here’s all you need to know.
A one-off episode previously aired in 2019 as part of BBC Two’s series of New on Two comedy pilots.
Now Semi-Detached is set for a full series of six episodes with a start date confirmed for Thursday, August 1 at 10:05PM.
Episodes will air weekly on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer.
Each 30-minute episode plays out in real time and is exactly like 24, except instead of following a government agent as he saves the planet, the series follows a perennial loser called Stuart as his life goes down the pan in a suburban cul-de-sac.
Semi-Detached cast
Stuart – Lee Mack (Not Going Out, Would I Lie To You?)
April – Ellie White (Stath Lets Flats, The Other One)
Charlie – Neil Fitzmaurice (Peep Show, Mount Pleasant)
Willie – Clive Russell (Happiness, Game Of Thrones)
Kate – Samantha Spiro (Sex Education, Grandma’s House)
Madonna – Sarah Hoare (Chewing Gum, Black Mirror)
Ted – Patrick Baladi (The Office, Stella)
A synopsis teases: “All Stuart wants is a quiet life as a wedding DJ but his family seems to have other ideas. On top of barely coping with a (much younger) partner April and a new born baby, Stuart also has to look out for his jailbird brother Charlie and his promiscuous, drug-taking Dad Willie.
“Then there’s the ex-wife Kate, who lives across the cul-de-sac with their teenage daughter Madonna and Kate’s husband Ted who thinks he’s better than Stuart because he sells fish to sushi restaurants.”
Explaining the show, Lee Mack said: “What makes this show unusual is that 99 percent of the time the camera is following my character around. It’s all real time. If I walk down the stairs the camera follows me.
“In a normal sitcom, if I leave the bedroom they’d just have the next shot of me being over the road, but on Semi-Detached the camera follows me down the stairs, out the door… everything is real time.
“Every step is filmed to give a feeling of thirty minutes in a man’s life. And that’s the essence of what the show is, thirty minutes in a man’s life that’s falling apart.”
