Matt Lucas reveals new sketch show details
- Matt Lucas has confirmed details of the new sketch show he and David Walliams are writing
- He promised "diverse talent on screen and in the writers' room", rather than "just about me and David playing absolutely everyone"
- He also noted: "We haven't sold the show yet, we haven't pitched it, it might be that nobody wants to make it"
Matt Lucas has revealed initial details of a new sketch show he and David Walliams are developing.
The Little Britain duo are planning to make a new series, twelve years after their last - Come Fly With Me - began.
Contrary to the vehicles that made them stars, the new comedy will be lead-written by the duo, but crucially feature both writing and acting talent to channel and portray a diverse range of voices across gender, ethnicity and other boundaries.
He confirmed: "We've already decided what the show is, we've decided what the concept of the show is."
Establishing a comedy partnership in the mid-90s, the pair first found success when Little Britain became a Radio 4 hit in 2000, before becoming much-imitated national comic icons, and finding worldwide acclaim, in its television adaptation from 2003. However, in recent years it has faced a backlash from some commentators over its comic characters, targets and make-up.
Lucas says: "We know how Little Britain is perceived. I totally accept that there are all different opinions on this. I accept that some people feel very differently to other people and I respect everyone's opinion from wherever they come from on this subject.
"I see things differently now to how we did [then] and things have changed and I respect that. I feel my job is to listen now about how people feel about that stuff. It's not about talking, for me it's about listening.
"The show that me and David are trying to develop will be different in many ways, it will be similar in some ways but at the very beginning of the creation of the show we have talked about how we can [have] diverse talent on screen and in the writers' room and conceive it as something that isn't just about me and David playing absolutely everyone.
"This will be built into the show from the beginning, which is something we should have done but didn't do back then. But we were making those shows at the same time as many other people who were doing what we doing and had that approach.
"I'm not going to say that we should be making shows now the way we made them then, because I don't think we should, things are different. I can't say that LGTBQ people should have a voice, that Jewish people should have a voice, but not think that it's important that other people don't have a voice."
Talking to sports podcast Deeney Talks, he explained: "Traditionally it has just been the two of us, 10-5, just writing. I think now that I have Fantasy Football League and other things, while David writes four books a year, we're going to open this up and involve some other people in a way that we haven't done before, possibly have a writers room like they do in America. I think it'll be good because it will get other voices in there and they will come up with stuff that we haven't come up with.
"I think that probably the first episode of the show - and we haven't sold the show yet, we haven't pitched it, it might be that nobody wants to make it - we will write the first episode, just the two of us like old times, just the two of us making each other laugh and after that we will try and involve other people like we didn't do with our previous shows."
Lucas also explained that that they have been creating entirely new characters for the project, with no recurrences from their previous comedies.
He said: "We did Little Britain and then after that we did a show called Come Fly With Me and we had a character that David did that says 'computer says no'. It was brilliant, it was really pure.
"When we decided to do a show in an airport we talked about having that character in Come Fly With Me, so you would go to the desk to try and check in for your flight and she's always the one there going, 'No.' But David said, 'No, we really should just do all new characters.' And, of course, he was 100 percent right.
"Our new idea for our new show, at the beginning I said, 'Why don't we put characters from Come Fly With Me in it?' And David said, 'No, let's just do new characters.' And, of course, he's absolutely right."