Aisling Bea stars in Sky step-parenting comedy
- Aisling Bea has joined Sky's upcoming step-parent comedy Smothered
- Starring alongside Jon Pointing and Danielle Vitalis, the comedy drama is written by Monica Heisey and is the comedy directing debut of George Belfield
- The six-part comedy is loosely inspired by the personal experience of BBC comedy commisioning editor Emma Lawson
Aisling Bea is to star in an upcoming step-parenting comedy for Sky.
The stand-up and This Way Up creator plays the mother of a six-year-old daughter in the show, which has had the working title Smothered, and stars Jon Pointing (Big Boys, Plebs) as the girl's father and Danielle Vitalis (Famalam, Sliced) as his new partner.
As British Comedy Guide revealed in October, the six-part comedy drama is written by Schitt's Creek scribe Monica Heisey and is loosely inspired by the personal experience of producer Emma Lawson (Cuckoo, Hospital People), although Lauriel Martin (Avoidance, Mum) is producing the show, which is set to air in the spring.
Directing his first 30-minute comedy, George Belfield (Kapital) is shooting the series predominantly in London for Roughcut (Stath Lets Flats, Big Boys).
Smothered's commission followed a successful non-transmission pilot shot in 2021, directed by Luke Snellin (Feel Good, The Job Lot).
Former stand-up Heisey (pictured) has written for television in the UK and her native Canada. As well as the Emmy-winning Schitt's Creek, the London-based scribe's credits include Everything I Know About Love and The Cleaner, co-writing Sindhu Vee's Channel 4 pilot Winning, and the long-running Canadian series Baroness von Sketch Show.
Also developing projects with Olga Koch, Laura Whitmore and Newark, Newark creator Nathan Foad, Heisey published I Can't Believe It's Not Better: A Woman's Guide to Coping with Life in 2016, a collection of stories, essays and advice, and has written for The Guardian, New York Times and New Yorker.
Her debut novel, Really Good, Actually, loosely based upon her experience of divorce in her twenties, is published on January 17th.
BBC commissioning editor Lawson was at production companies such as Objective and Fremantle, before spending a decade at Roughcut working on comedies such as People Just Do Nothing and Cuckoo. More recently, she produced Trying for Apple TV+, its first UK scripted comedy.
Tickets for a test screening of Bea's forthcoming film, And Mrs, are also available for a showing in London on Thursday.
In the bittersweet comedy, the stand-up plays a woman whose fiancé dies shortly before their wedding day, yet she decides to go ahead and marry him anyway.
Co-starring Colin Hanks and Booksmart's Billie Lourd, the film also features Susan Wokoma, Paul Kaye, Peter Egan, Nish Kumar and Sunil Patel among others.