Bill Bailey working on new TV sketch show
Bill Bailey has revealed he is working on a new TV sketch show.
The format, which is currently at the pilot stage, involves parodies of films, TV shows and adverts.
Speaking in a video interview, the stand-up star confirmed: "It's a lot of film spoofs; a lot of TV spoofs."
The genesis of the format has come from the fact the comedian has struggled to fit some of his ideas into his live shows. Talking about writing his stand-up shows, Bailey said: "I'm always thinking 'what filming am I going to put into this?', 'what TV/film spoof am I going to put into this?'... and I started thinking, 'hold on, hold on... I might as well just do a TV show, all these ideas are far more conducive to that'."
The title of the show has not yet been revealed, nor is it known at present which channel the show is being developed for.
Giving a flavour of the sort of contents in the show, Bailey gave the example that he would be spoofing Scandinavian crime dramas. He also delivers a take on Japanese adverts in the pilot, which he considers "absolutely insane." Elaborating, he said: "It involves me doing all sorts of crazy stuff, flying around and dressed as a Beefeater."
This wouldn't be Bailey's first foray into sketches. Is It Bill Bailey?, which aired on BBC Two in 1998, mixed stand-up and sketch comedy. More recently he appeared in a musical sketch in Kevin Eldon's BBC Two series It's Kevin.
Further details on the new TV pilot are expected to be revealed as the project progresses.
Talking about his live performances this summer, Bailey confirmed he would be appearing at the Reading and Leeds festival, a big outdoor concert in Kew Gardens and will be joining the line-up for BBC One's 'musical spectacular' at Edinburgh Castle to mark the Commonwealth Games.
Bailey has recently been touring his stand-up show Qualmpeddler around Europe. Next month he will perform various work-in-progress shows at the Leicester Square Theatre in London as he works towards a new UK tour. Speaking in the video interview, the star said the new show would contain lots of stories. "They're personal anecdotes of travel... and the whole show is about the difference between how you expect things to be and how they actually turn out."
Below is the video interview. Bailey was speaking to Kevin Durham on the red carpet for the film How To Train Your Dragon 2: