British Comedy Guide

Rosie Jones pilots BBC "reality sitcom", People's Princess

ExclusiveTuesday 12th December 2023, 3:37pm by Jay Richardson

The Royal Variety Performance 2023. Rosie Jones. Credit: ITV

Rosie Jones is piloting an unscripted "reality sitcom" with the BBC, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal.

Rosie Jones: People's Princess will follow the comic "as she attempts to navigate fame and her personal life".

The hybrid comedy reunites her with Rockerdale Studios, the production company that made her YouTube series for Channel 4, Mission: Accessible and Dine Hard With Rosie Jones.

Written by Jones with director Stu Richards, a non-broadcast, proof of concept taster of People's Princess was shot at the start of this year. And the sitcom is now moving forward to pilot stage according to the BBC's Commissioning Supply Report 2022/2023.

Richards, who runs Rockerdale with Michelle Singer, previously directed the 2017 series Bobby And Harriet Get Married for the VICE channel, which incorporated the real-life marriage of stand-ups Bobby Mair and Harriet Kemsley into a reality sitcom format.

Subsequently picked up and aired on Comedy Central the following year, Bobby And Harriet Get Married featured comics such as Katherine Ryan, Romesh Ranganathan, Tim Renkow, Jonny Pelham, Sunil Patel, Andrea Hubert, Mike Wilmot and others appearing as themselves.

Jones is already making the Channel 4 sitcom Disability Benefits, in which she stars as a disability benefits claimant who turns drug dealer when her benefits are slashed, co-writing the script with Peter Fellows.

Last month the prolific stand-up also hosted the final of the BBC New Comedy Awards in Glasgow and won her episode of Celebrity Mastermind on BBC One, with Victoria Wood's sitcom dinnerladies as her specialist subject.

Posting on social media, the "comedian, actor, national treasure, people's princess and now Mastermind winner" revealed that she had watched all 16 episodes of the turn-of-the-millennium BBC sitcom three times in preparation, sharing her revision notes.

Jones has just shot a set for the Royal Variety Performance (pictured top), appearing alongside Tom Allen, Ellie Taylor, Simon Brodkin, Viggo Venn, Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham and host Bradley Walsh, which airs on ITV this Sunday, and completed the filming of upcoming Comedy Central panel show Out Of Order, which she hosts, with Ryan and Judi Love as team captains.

In a packed year, she has also presented the Channel 4 documentary Am I A R*tard? about the abuse she receives for having cerebral palsy; hosted the second series of stand-up showcase Rosie Jones's Disability Comedy Extravaganza on UKTV Play; written and starred in the Sky sitcom pilot Past Caring with Jen Brister and Maureen Younger in which the trio play carers and has been working on the third novel in her Edie Eckhart children's book series.

Her debut UK stand-up tour, Triple Threat, has also been extended until April, with the night at Brighton's Theatre Royal on 10th February being filmed for release at a later date.

The BBC declined to comment further on Rosie Jones: People's Princess.

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