Sarah Parish and Mark Heap to star in Piglets
- Piglets, a six-part sitcom from the Green Wing writers set in a police training college, is coming to ITV1 and ITVX this summer
- Sarah Parish and Mark Heap take the lead roles as the two superintendents in charge of the new police recruits
- Other cast members include Rebecca Humphries, Ukweli Roach, Ricky Champ, Callie Cooke, Sam Pote, Sukh Kaur Ojla, Halema Hussain, Abdul Sessay and Jamie Bisping
ITV has confirmed the cast of Piglets, the police-based comedy from the team behind Green Wing. The lead roles will be taken by Sarah Parish and Mark Heap.
The six-part series is due to launch as a box set on ITVX this summer, and also air weekly on ITV1.
ITV explains: "The government's stated policy of recruiting 20,000 new police officers in double quick time has not come at the cost of lowering standards. Or has it? Piglets follows a newly recruited group of six very different would-be cops and the handful of key staff whose thankless task it is to knock them into some kind of shape.
"Heading up the cast are Sarah Parish and Mark Heap as no-nonsense Superintendent Julie Spry and some-nonsense Superintendent Bob Weekes, whose job it is to oversee the training of the next batch of new recruits.
"Those new recruits are Steph (played by Callie Cooke), Leggo (Sam Pote), Geeta (Sukh Kaur Ojla), Afia (Halema Hussain), Dev (Abdul Sessay) and Paul (Jamie Bisping).
"Working alongside Superintendents Julie Spry and Bob Weekes are Head of Admin, Melanie (Rebecca Humphries) and police trainers Mike & Daz (Ukweli Roach and Ricky Champ)."
Piglets - which is directed by Sam Leifer and Victoria Pile - has been written by much of the team responsible for Green Wing: Robert Harley, James Henry, Oriane Messina, Victoria Pile, Richard Preddy and Fay Rusling. They were joined by ITV's Comedy Writers Initiative candidate Omar Khan and new writers Abiola Ogunbiyi, Nusrath Tapadar, Farhan Solo and Alex Bertulis-Fernandes.
The exact broadcast details for Piglets will be announced soon.
ITVX is planning a number of new comedy offerings on its platform this summer. It will also be showing Series 2 of Alan Carr's Changing Ends, live streaming Edinburgh Fringe shows and offering up Canada-based parallel universes comedy series Slip.
Nana Hughes, ITV's Head of Comedy, says: "We wanted to build on the success of last year's comedy season knowing there is strength in numbers. We have packaged for your pleasure the return of Alan Carr's hilarious autobiographical comedy, Changing Ends, alongside a brand new comedy, Piglets, set in a police academy from the team behind Green Wing, acquisitions from around the world and a first for ITVX, we're stripping live comedy from the Edinburgh comedy fringe."
Craig Morris, Managing Editor of ITVX, adds: "Comedy has proved to be one of the most popular genres on ITVX, with streaming hours increasing by 80% year-on-year. We already have over 2,500 hours of funny on ITVX - and these programmes will be a welcome addition."