BBC pilots Kirkmoore, pioneering comedy featuring an all-disabled cast
- The creators of The Inbetweeners are piloting Kirkmoore for the BBC, set in a college for disabled students and featuring an all-disabled cast
- Kirkmoore director Justin Edgar has proposed a disability variation on the Bechdel Test for screen productions
- Fudge Park is also developing a comedy with Edinburgh Comedy Award-winner Lara Ricote about sisters who are hard of hearing
The BBC is to pilot a comedy with an all-disabled cast, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal.
Kirkmoore is set in the fictional Kirkmoore College, an establishment for disabled students, and is being made by Fudge Park Productions, the company set up by the creators of The Inbetweeners.
A taster was directed by Fudge Park co-founder Damon Beesley last year and the corporation has since ordered a full pilot, directed by Justin Edgar (Special People, We Are The Freaks) and produced by Holly de Angelis.
The identity of the cast and the comedy's writer have yet to be confirmed.
Edgar, who is hard of hearing, runs 104 Films, a production and training company specialising in film, whose co-producing credits include Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story, about the creator of Frank Sidebottom, and the Ian Dury biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.
A writer, director and producer, he has made several comedies about young people rebelling, including the 2008 feature Special People, which stars Dominic Coleman (The Mind Of Herbert Clunkerdunk, Trollied) struggling to teach filmmaking to a class of wheelchair-users, and the short film of the same name that preceded it.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's The Film Programme in 2019, Edgar proposed the "104 test", a disability version of the Bechdel Test, which proposes that to qualify, a production must have a disabled actor playing a disabled character or a disabled writer or director; the disabled character does not have to overcome adversity and the disabled character is not able-bodied either at the beginning or end of the story.
Fudge Park is also developing a comedy with the 2022 Edinburgh Comedy Award best newcomer winner Lara Ricote about two Latina sisters growing up hard of hearing, based on the experience of the Mexican-American comedian and her elder sister, but it is not believed to be related to Kirkmoore.
The company's latest production, the sitcom Count Abdulla, about a British-Pakistani doctor-turned-vampire, starring Arian Nik and Jaime Winstone, comes to ITVX on 15th June.
The BBC and Fudge Park declined to comment on Kirkmoore.