Ellie Taylor lands two new Channel 4 shows
- Comedian Ellie Taylor will host two new entertainment shows launching on Channel 4 later this year
- You Won't Believe This is a game show about lying, which incorporates real police interrogation techniques
- Let's Make A Love Scene is a dating format built around recreating romantic movie sequences
Ellie Taylor is to present two new Channel 4 shows, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal.
She will front a primetime game show about lying, and a movies-inspired dating show.
The news comes as the comic is also piloting a US television comedy, Belated, for the FX channel, with Harold & Kumar star Kal Penn. Mirroring Penn's own relationship with his sexuality, his character, Sachin, has recently come out as gay in middle-age, with stand-up Taylor playing his ex-wife.
With the working title You Won't Believe This, the game show format sees members of the public who fancy themselves as amateur sleuths hearing unbelievable stories from a succession of "suspects", in hope of winning a cash prize. However, only one of the suspects is telling the truth.
Seasoned police detectives will help the contestants put each suspect through an interrogation in the four hour-long episodes, which are expected to air later this year. Using tactics they're used to deploying on criminals, they'll be digging into the stories, grilling them from the pressure cooker environment of an interrogation cell. It's up to the suspects to do a convincing job of selling the fact that they did indeed live as a goat, try to pick their way out of a giant freezer with a bone or drink turtle blood when shipwrecked.
If the contestants manage to spot the truth, they win the cash. However, if they fail and pick a fake, the liar walks away with their prize money.
You Won't Believe This is made by Talkback (QI, Alan Carr's Epic Gameshow) and the commission follows a successful pilot shot in November.
Taylor and the production company are also collaborating on Let's Make A Love Scene for Channel 4, in which singletons looking for love will star in their own rom-com, supported and coached through scenes by an intimacy consultant and acting coach.
In the two episodes, which trade magazine Broadcast first suggested Taylor was lined up to present in October, one guy or girl will perform three sexy scenes with three complete strangers. Inspired by blockbusters such as Ghost, The Notebook and Fifty Shades Of Grey, when the steamy scenes wrap, the singleton must choose one co-star to go on a date with to find out whether the on-screen chemistry could turn into real love.
"I jumped at the chance of getting involved in both these shows and I'm super excited to be working with Channel 4 and Talkback to bring them to life - what better way to put my matchmaking and my detective skills to the test!" said Taylor "Here's hoping to some winning amateur detectives as well as red-hot chemistry between our singletons."
The double series order comes as the comic also prepares to shoot a series of shows for Sky Cinema next week, alongside Russell Kane, Guz Khan and Alex Brooker about the "ultimate" rom-com, action and gangster movies.
The two Channel 4 formats were commissioned by the channel's head of entertainment Phil Harris. For You Won't Believe This, Genna Gibson, commissioning editor for entertainment and events also made the series order, with Matt Gilbe (Riot Girls) producing and the executive producers Jonno Richards and Kate Edmunds.
Let's Make A Love Scene was commissioned by Harris and Steven Handley, commissioning editor for entertainment and events. The producer is Sheila Risk (Joel & Nish Vs The World) and the executive producer is Laura Gibson, with development by Charlie Bennett.
Taylor's profile has been significantly raised by her performances as spoof news anchor Susan on The Mash Report, and subsequently Late Night Mash after the satirical show moved from BBC Two to Dave last year.
More recently, she stepped in to present the current series of Channel 4's The Great Pottery Throw Down as regular host, Derry Girls star Siobhán McSweeney, recovered from breaking her leg in a cycling accident.
Taylor has also recently been filming the third series of hit AppleTV+ football sitcom Ted Lasso, in which she plays Sassy, best friend of AFC Richmond owner Rebecca Welton. And she has discussed filming her own first sex scene on camera for an undisclosed project, telling fellow stand-up and Lasso writer-star Brett Goldstein on his Films To Be Buried With podcast that it had been a "very strange" experience.
"Because it's 2022, we had an intimacy coordinator" she explained. "Which was very nice ... a conduit between the people doing the scenes and also the director, making sure everyone knows what's expected. And also understanding what the actors are happy with, what they aren't happy with. How they want the scene to go, where they're happy being touched and all that sort of jazz.
"She came along on the shoot night with a bag of tricks ... Because we were groin to groin, she offered me, it's like a padded pair of knickers. You know when girls wear chicken fillets in their bra? She was offering me knickers with that stitched in, so it would [adopts American accent] 'protect my pudenda!'
"In the end I just opted for this little pillow that she called a 'thrust pillow' that you put between you and the other person, so it acts like a barrier so you aren't quite so intimate. It was absolutely fine. The other actor was absolutely lovely and it wasn't half as cringe as I thought it'd be, thank the Lord."
Taylor published her first book, the motherhood memoir, My Child And Other Mistakes, last year.
Here's a clip of her telling her own tall tale on Would I Lie To You?.