Brennan Reece pilots BBC 3 comedy Step 9 about alcoholism recovery
- Stand-up Brennan Reece and actor Dawn Sievewright have written and co-star in Step 9, a BBC Three comedy drama pilot about alcoholism recovery in Glasgow
- Based upon Sievewright's experience of getting sober, the pilot is made by Olivia Colman's South of the River Pictures and also features Lois Chimimba
- "I went into this thinking that I want to show the world how fucking glorious and sexy Glasgow is because it never gets shown in that way," Sievewright has said
Brennan Reece is piloting an anarchic BBC Three comedy drama about "real, flawed people" in alcoholism recovery in Glasgow, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal.
Step 9 is written by the Mancunian comedian with Glaswegian actor Dawn Sievewright, who made her name in the National Theatre of Scotland productions Glasgow Girls and Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour, and whose television credits include the BBC drama Shetland and the Disney+ Star Wars series Andor.
Sievewright plays the lead in the semi-autobiographical, 30-minute comedy, based upon her experiences of getting sober four years ago, which also features Reece in a prominent role and The Outlaws' Lois Chimimba.
The Step 9 pilot was filmed across 10 days in Glasgow and is being produced by Olivia Colman's production company, South of the River Pictures (Landscapers) and Sister (This Is Going To Hurt, The Baby).
Two years ago Reece and Sievewright's script finished runner-up in the Covid-delayed Screenshot 2020 competition, created to help theatrical performers move into television.
Run by South of the River and Sister, the contest was judged by Colman, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Lolly Adefope and Rosie Jones, as well as the BBC's then-commissioning editor Tanya Qureshi, Channel 4's then-head of comedy Fiona McDermott and Sky commissioning editor Tilusha Ghelani.
Despite their script not winning, Qureshi was sufficiently impressed to order the pilot and the script for a second episode, with the BBC providing more money to shoot for two extra days after one of the cast caught covid.
"AA is shown quite a lot on TV," Reece told fellow stand-ups Mark Olver and Riki Msindo on their Oh Captain My Captain podcast. "And it's not how it is. It's usually people in a village hall, sat in a circle, crying.
"[But] it's actually really funny, people very rarely sit in circles and people aren't sat around feeling sorry for themselves. They're actually feeling quite good about life because they're not drinking."
Reece described making the pilot as "one of the best, most rewarding things I've ever [done] ... to see something you've worked really hard on, for a year, from idea to it being filmed ... if you put the work in, you stick to the top lines of what it's meant to be and you get good people working on it, it will turn into something."
Speaking to the Persistent and Nasty podcast last year, Sievewright explained that she and Reece sought to write about "real people ... really flawed people and people who don't love in the right way and how funny that is and how sad that is.
"People have an idea of what Glasgow is, or Scotland ... fucking great things like Trainspotting, Orphans, stoic, gritty, drugs, all that stuff, abuse, violence, poverty, fucking poverty everywhere.
"But Glasgow's like the sexiest place ever and I went into this thinking that I want to show the world how fucking glorious and sexy Glasgow is because it never gets shown in that way."
Chimimba previously appeared in the 2020 BBC Scotland pilot Group, about a regular group meeting of addicts.
In 2008, BBC Two aired the dark sitcom Never Better about a recovering alcoholic starring Stephen Mangan, while Radio 4 broadcast three series of Love In Recovery between 2015 and 2019, a comedy drama about recovering alcoholics starring Johnny Vegas, Sue Johnston, Rebecca Front, Paul Kaye, John Hannah, Eddie Marsan and Julia Deakin.
More recently, in 2022 Britbox released Dublin-set comedy drama The Dry about a severely alcoholic young woman returning home from years living in London, and Sky Comedy aired Rosie Molloy Gives Up Everything, a sitcom starring Sheridan Smith as a high-functioning addict attempting to turn her life around following a number of life shocks.