Radio 4 sitcom pilot for Giants' Scandi music duo Fjörd
- Double act Giants (Will Hislop and Barney Fishwick) are piloting a Radio 4 sitcom as their Norwegian euro dance characters
- Fjörd - Lars Larsson and Ulrik Untersson - are taking up residency as the BBC station's "Heads of Electronic Music"
- The pilot also features comedian Arnab Chanda as the duo's producer
Musical sketch duo Giants have landed a Radio 4 sitcom pilot, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal.
Will Hislop and Barney Fishwick write and star in the 30-minute taster BBC Radio Fjörd, airing on 12th April, which sees their Norwegian Euro dance pop act, Fjörd, taking up residency as "Heads of Electronic Music" on the station.
Following a much-publicised split, Lars Larsson (Fishwick) and Ulrik Untersson (Hislop) have reunited on the airwaves. Accompanied by producer Arnab (Arnab Chanda), each week they plan to curate a playlist of fresh, exciting songs from across Europe based around a central theme: they wrote them.
However, with Fjörd, it's never easy. They'll make up, fall out again, meet guests, fall out with them, fall in love, fall out of love and vape.
"Like many people, we're incredibly happy that Fjörd have reunited," Fishwick told British Comedy Guide. "This radio show is a huge opportunity for the BBC, but also a huge moment for music in general.
"Fjörd will be playing it all: their golden oldies, silver newies and maybe ... some bronze didn't-charties. Let's just hope they've insured the roof."
BBC Radio Fjörd is, in fact, produced by Pete Strauss (The Stand Up Sketch Show, Comedy Against Living Miserably) for BBC Studios.
Fixtures at the Edinburgh Fringe in recent years, initially as part of Giants' sketch shows, then in 2019 in a show wholly dedicated to their fractious personal and professional relationship, Fjörd have previously performed on Radio 4's The Now Show, as well as Channel 4's short-form showcase Sparks and Comedy Central's Comedians In Quarantine.
Giants were Writers' Guild Award-nominated for their 2018 online short A Hard Brexit. Individually, Hislop was the 2017 Musical Comedian of the Year and Fishwick is nominated for best long-form scripted comedy programme in next month's BBC Audio Drama Awards for the Radio 4 pilot God Squad, a sitcom about four Christians at university co-written with Jack Chisnall.
Fishwick can currently be seen as Michael, the son of Bill Nighy's character Williams, in the acclaimed film Living, written by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro and based on Akira Kurosawa's 1952 classic film Ikiru.
He also stars alongside Maxine Peake in the short film Lapushka!, a pastiche of Children's Film Foundation films of the 1970s and 1980s, in which they play crime-fighting children. The cast also includes comedians Rob Carter, Tim Renkow, Sunil Patel and Bobby Mair and a sequel is set to shoot in Bedworth, Warwickshire, this summer. Whoopiar! will be set in 1987 and sees the Butternut Squash Gang embroiled in more crime-solving that adults completely overlook, with new gang member Wubbs uncovering wrong-doing at the local video rental shop.
Meanwhile, Hislop, whose television credits include Dreaming Whilst Black, appears in the upcoming BBC Three sitcom PRU alongside Tom Moutchi, Kerry Godliman and Kosar Ali, about a group of teens navigating the pitfalls of adolescence in a pupil referral unit, a school for excluded kids.