Tom Davis making vigilante comedy & wants King Gary revival
- Writer-director James De Frond has revealed that he and Tom Davis are developing a comedy about a Falling Down-style vigilante, set in Croydon
- De Frond also told the The Reel FEEdback podcast that the pair haven't ruled out reviving King Gary after the BBC cancelled the sitcom
- He disclosed that the BBC rejected an idea for a Murder In Successville spin-off in which DI Sleet became a private investigator contending with South American drug cartels
In the wake of last month's race riots, Tom Davis is developing a Falling Down-style vigilante comedy, his closest collaborator has revealed.
Likening their 60-minute comedy drama to the 1993 thriller starring Michael Douglas as an increasingly disturbed and violent renegade in Los Angeles, but set in Croydon, writer-director James De Frond confirmed that the pair, who've previously worked together on King Gary, The Curse and Murder In Successville, are making the project through their production company Mighty Pebble.
"We've got an exciting thing we're waiting on a green light, our spin on the vigilante genre" De Frond told The Reel FEEdback podcast host Kevin Dawson.
"You remember Falling Down with Michael Douglas? Well, imagine that in Croydon. Very apt at the moment. Taps into the state of the nation. It's funny but our spin on vigilante movies."
One of several film and television projects that Mighty Pebble currently have in the works, as the duo shift from 30-minute sitcoms to longer form content, after producing the Tom Parry-penned 2022 rom-com festive movie Your Christmas Or Mine? and its 2023 sequel for Amazon Prime, starring Asa Butterfield and Cora Kirk, De Frond added that he and Davis haven't completely abandoned shorter form fare. They are also writing a pilot episode of "something unashamedly funny", which "is me and Tom collaborating with another big comedy talent".
Elsewhere in the wide-ranging interview, the director suggested that, despite news of King Gary's cancellation by the BBC earlier this year, he and Davis are hoping to revive the family sitcom and that the corporation originally asked for a third series before mothballing the comedy.
"We could have done a third series" he said. "I think they wanted to commission Series 2 and 3 and we couldn't commit to it because we had committed to The Curse Series 1 for Channel 4. There was a slight schedule clash...
"I think the BBC were like, 'here's a commission, do Series 2 and 3 but we want them back to back'. We'd committed to The Curse so we couldn't do that."
By the time they'd filmed the first series of the Channel 4 crime caper with the People Just Do Nothing team of Allan Mustafa, Steve Stamp and Hugo Chegwin, as well as Emer Kenny, and a second series of King Gary, starring Davis as the eponymous lead, with Laura Checkley, Simon Day and Romesh Ranganathan, the BBC's head of comedy, Shane Allen, had left the corporation.
"There was a change of guard at the BBC, which happens all the time" De Frond reflected. "New people come in and have a new brief and we continued with The Curse."
Still, "I wouldn't say that's the end of King Gary" he added. "I think it could come back at some stage. I think people would love to see it. Me and Tom would never say never with King Gary because I think people love it so much.
"And for us as well, we'd never made anything as watched by millions and millions and millions. We make cult comedy so it is the biggest show we've made to date."
De Frond also told how King Gary had originated in a meeting about a spin-off that he and Davis had wanted to make for the latter's Murder In Successville character, in which DI Sleet would have become a private investigator engaging with South American drug cartels.
"The BBC wanted to do something else with us" De Frond explained. He and Davis had hoped to make Sleet "a PI, in Columbia, looking for a missing person. We wanted to parody [US crime drama] Narcos. We were sort of full-in Naked Gun, action spoof, cinematic world."
Allen rejected the idea. And they subsequently channelled those action parody elements into their 2018 ITV2 spy spoof series Action Team. But he was after a "BBC One, working class, family sitcom and we think you two are the guys to do it" De Frond recalled him saying.
"And we were like, 'uh, not sure about that' ... It's the one that everyone's terrified to do because it's so hard to get it right. But we're both very proud of our working class roots. If I'm honest, there ain't a lot of us in the industry ... so we felt a slight responsibility."
Combining two of Davis' existing, Cockney geezer characters, one of whom De Frond characterised as "the guy who took kids Sunday league football far too seriously", Gary was born.
"We had the character and we knew the world ... we thought if we can get it right, this'll be hugely relatable to a lot of people and we started to form it. And the joy is with that show that we had in mind pretty much all the actors that we wanted to cast in it"
Speaking on stand-up Jarlath Regan's Irishman Abroad podcast two years ago, Davis revealed other projects that he and De Frond were working on included a "Fargo-ish" comedy drama based on the "Ghost Boat of Belmullet" and an adaptation of the macabre 2015 Israeli comedy series Killing Grandma.
The comic, who also starred alongside Timothee Chalamet and Olivia Colman in last year's blockbuster film Wonka, released his debut stand-up special, Underdog, on Sky Comedy last month.