Nick Mohammed and Julia Davis comedy in the works at Channel 4
- Nick Mohammed and Julia Davis are developing a new comedy for Channel 4
- The show is based upon their characters from the 2014 pilot Morning Has Broken, "about a prominent woman in the media having a nervous breakdown on daytime television"
- Mohammed told The List magazine that they had abandoned the breakfast show setting
Nick Mohammed and Julia Davis are developing a new comedy for Channel 4.
Details of the project remain largely under wraps but would revive the relationship between the pair's characters from their 2014 pilot, Morning Has Broken.
The show was a glimpse at the bickering egos working on a television breakfast programme, in which Nighty Night star Davis played presenter Gail Sinclair and Mohammed its regular celebrity doctor, Mike. Commissioned for a series, the intention was to trace Sinclair's marriage disintegration and the show's ratings slide.
However, it was subsequently abandoned; a "mutual decision" between the channel and production company Brown Eyed Boy (How Not To Live Your Life), understood to be due to the personal circumstances of the creative talent involved.
Mohammed explained to The List that the revived characters would no longer be in a breakfast show setting.
"God, I love working with Julia" he told the magazine. "We're still working out what it might be and I probably shouldn't say too much. But just taking the relationship between Julia and my character in [the pilot] and seeing what we can create with it."
Described as a comedy about "a prominent woman in the media having a nervous breakdown on daytime television", Morning Has Broken was written by Mohammed and Davis, who also produced the pilot with Gary Reich (Vicious). It was directed by Davis and Dan Clark (How Not To Live Your Life) and featured Jamie Demetriou, Asim Chaudhry, Seb Cardinal, Catherine Shepherd, Tom Bell and Dominic Coleman among others.
The series was also set to be the first on-screen collaboration between Mohammed and Friends star David Schwimmer, who was lined up to play an American producer parachuted into the breakfast show to arrest the ratings drop. He and Mohammed subsequently collaborated on the Sky spy comedy Intelligence, which returns for an hour-long special next month.
"Getting to work with David has also been a dream come true, he's just so creative," Mohammed told The List.
The character comedian was speaking to the magazine to promote the live show of his alter-ego, Mr Swallow, with The Very Best & Worst Of Mr Swallow tour running until 21st May, alongside the return of Ted Lasso, in which he plays scheming manager Nate Shelley. The third season of the football comedy launched on Apple TV+ on Wednesday.
Channel 4 declined to comment on this story.