Dogtown
The somewhat bizarre BBC Three sitcom Live! Girls! Present Dogtown tells the story of life for the residents of Horton-le-Hole, a fictional coastal town where things are not all they seem. A controlling optician meets a mild librarian to enact illicit fantasies as Oscar-winning movie stars and Olympic champions; a socially inept geography teacher dreams of becoming a Deputy Head; a pyromaniac dwarf psychic has set up a business in a bus stop; and, while romantic fiction books are systematically and mysteriously vandalised, one of the greatest love affairs the world has ever known begins to stir in the library.
Written by twin sisters Emma Kilcoyne and Beth Kilcoyne, and stars Emma and Sam Battersea, who perform in a number of guises.
Emma Kilcoyne plays Eenie Thompson, the 73-year-old arsonist dwarf; Bill Taddler, the misguided and over-bearing geography teacher; and Denise Taylor, the put-upon librarian with a secret. Sam Battersea plays Sheila Taddler, Bill's long-suffering wife, and Carol Gomez, the unusual optician with the domineering fantasy life.
Geoff, Gwen and Sue from the library Dogtown's regular supporting cast includes Geraldine McNulty as Sue McCardle, the ruthlessly ambitious Scale Two Librarian; and James Gaddas as Geoff Torville, her debonair, film noir-ish boss; as well as Rachel Pickup, Madelaine Newton and Dave Johns. The series also features cameo appearances from Kevin Whately and Imelda Staunton.
Live! Girls! Present Dogtown hails from the live sketch show, Live! Girls!, created by the Kilcoyne twins and Battersea. The trio have been honing their unique brand of character comedy on the Edinburgh Fringe and live comedy circuit since 2000, and Dogtown brings together the best of those characters - plus a few new ones besides - and unites them in a fictional coastal town.
Emma Kilcoyne explains: "Dogtown came about after Vanessa Haynes and Humphrey Barclay from Celador saw our Edinburgh show in 2003, Live! Girls!, and asked us to provide a treatment as to how the show could work on television. "We selected several characters - Bill and Sheila, Carol and Denise, and Eenie Thompson, and created a world that they could all feasibly inhabit. This became Dogtown."
The storyline in the library and the characters of Geoff and Sue were specially created for the series. Producer Vanessa Haynes explains: "The library storyline was created over the development period. The girls wanted to do something film noir-ish, and decided that if it was going to be film noir, we needed a crime story to complete it. It seemed suitably ridiculous to make the setting a library and the crime that romantic fiction was being systematically defaced."