Steve Coogan to star in Channel 4 #MeToo comedy drama
- Steve Coogan is to star in new Channel 4 comedy drama series Chivalry
- The show focuses on a producer who has to reshoot his 'sexist film' in the wake of the #MeToo movement
- Co-writer Sarah Solemani stars as the director who is tasked with helping him 'detoxify' his movie
Steve Coogan and Sarah Solemani are to star in a new Channel 4 comedy drama.
Chivalry, which is set around the #MeToo movement, focuses on a film producer who has to reshoot his 'sexist film' in order to save his career, and the relationship he forges with his new, female director.
The show "skewers and satirises the complex state of contemporary sexual politics, while asking if romance can survive in the post #MeToo era" and focuses on the unlikely attraction between Coogan's character, Cameron, and a liberal director called Bobby played by Sarah Solemani.
Coogan and Solemani have written the six-part series together.
Channel 4 explain: "An unlikely couple are put together by a cynical studio exec to salvage a failing movie. Bobby is a woke writer/director and mother of one, with a precarious relationship and a dodgy visa. She has industry heat after her successful, low-budget indie debut and is promised studio funding for her feminist Biblical biopic if she can rescue this sexually controversial thriller first.
"Cameron is a successful film producer and 'ladies' man' who has just been dumped by yet another twenty-something girlfriend (via WhatsApp). He knows he must detoxify his sexist movie or face ruin, and thus, an unlikely partnership is forged.
"As Bobby and Cameron work through their gender tensions, a creeping attraction and the nagging feeling that they are just pawns in the studio's agenda for a Saudi buyout, reshooting a toxic sex scene becomes the tip of the iceberg. How fluid are our politics and how political are our fluids? And can romance blossom - not in spite of #MeToo, but because of it?"
Sarah Solemani and Steve Coogan recently worked together on Greed, the new film about a retail billionaire, which will be in cinemas in February.
Coogan says: "I am delighted to be working with the very funny, clever Sarah Solemani in the landscape of what in less enlightened times was called 'the battle of the sexes'. Chivalry is more of a painfully honest, funny fencing match. We will attack, riposte, lunge, parry and counter-parry and perhaps, when the bout is over, take off our masks revealing our true selves."
Sarah Solemani comments: "Chivalry was born through a series of fiery debates with my comedy hero and renowned feminist, Steve Coogan. I am thrilled to be working with him, [producer] Christine Langan and Channel 4 commissioner, Caroline Hollick, on bringing this timely story to the screen."
Caroline Hollick from Channel 4 adds: "I'm so pleased to be able to bring the combined creative brilliance of Sarah Solemani and Steve Coogan to Channel 4. In this era of #MeToo and complex gender politics, Chivalry feels the perfect way to explore this pertinent issue with a sense of fun, a razor-sharp wit and with romance at its heart."
The show is being made by Coogan's company, Baby Cow Productions. Executive producer Christine Langan comments: "With irresistible chemistry, Sarah and Steve have delivered a truly refreshing take on contemporary sexual politics with a liberating, modern spin on romance. Baby Cow is thrilled to be working with Channel 4, whose bold appetite for good humoured debate made it the natural home for Chivalry."