Diane Morgan's Mandy returning for a third series on BBC Two
- Diane Morgan is currently writing a third series of Mandy and other, undisclosed projects
- The comedian revealed to The Sunday Times that Philomena Cunk's boredom in interviews often emanates directly from her
- Morgan also told the paper about the sexism she experience on the comedy circuit while she was in the double act Two Episodes Of Mash
Diane Morgan's short-form comedy Mandy is returning for a third series.
The Sunday Times reports that the BBC Two sitcom about a hapless jobseeker has been recommissioned and that Morgan, who writes, directs and stars in the show as the title character, is currently working on scripts, alongside other projects that she can't reveal.
"I would like to write something a bit longer, maybe half an hour?" said the comic, currently starring as Philomena Cunk in Cunk On Earth on BBC Two.
"I was offered a 15-minute pilot," Morgan recalled of the taster episode, which aired in 2019 as a Comedy Short. "I thought I'd quite like to do a little character. I didn't think it would go anywhere, so I just did the maddest, stupidest thing and then they told me I'd got a series and I was, like, 'My God, I am going to have to do a whole series!'"
Co-starring her After Life co-star Michelle Greenidge and comedians Michael Spicer, Alistair Green and Mark Silcox, Mandy has also featured guest appearances from the likes of Sean Lock, Alexei Sayle, Johnny Vegas, Nigel Planer, Jackie Clune, Nick Mohammed, Tom Basden, Yuriko Kotani and Nigel Ng.
"I wanted it to be surreal, because everything seemed to just look a bit like Catastrophe" Morgan explained. "Everyone was doing things about relationships and nice houses and beautiful clothes, and I thought we'd had a terrible time, so I wanted to make something really stupid."
Six 15-minute episodes of Mandy aired in 2020, plus a Christmas special, with another six episodes broadcast this January.
The comedy has averaged about 1.5 million viewers, and the critical response has been overwhelmingly positive, with the i newspaper praising "Morgan's gleefully silly performances and knife-sharp writing" and the Daily Mail commenting that the comic has done a splendid job of repairing and restoring a format it likened to an "extended sketch".
Elsewhere in the Sunday Times interview, Morgan, who also stars in BBC sitcom Motherland, described outrageously ignorant interviewer Cunk as "the most pure form of me. Without any social skills or education, that is sort of who I would be.
"Quite a lot of it, I know nothing, so my boredom is real. And I know that if I am bored, people at home will also be bored. It's great just being able to yawn in the middle of an interview and think, that's fine, I can do that, I can do anything."
Morgan also reiterated the sexism she experienced on the comedy circuit when she was in the double act Two Episodes Of Mash with Joe Wilkinson.
"You would be entering the venue, going in with the other male comics, they would stop you and say, 'Are you with one of them?' And I would say, 'No, I'm one of the comics,' so they'd be, like, 'Say something funny then.'"
Club owners would invariably pay Wilkinson as well. "We would be standing there together, and they would always give him the money," she recalled.
A BBC spokesperson declined to comment to British Comedy Guide on Mandy's recommission.