Zara Gladman pilots BBC sketch show Good For Her
- Zara Gladman - best known as Aileen, the West End Glasgow mum - is piloting a sketch show on BBC Scotland, ahead of performing her Edinburgh Fringe debut
- Also featuring Kim Blythe, Sophie Rose McCabe and Stuart Cromarty, Good For Her mixes recurring character sketches, musical comedy and Aileen conducting an interview with a famous musician
- Writing, starring in and directing the pilot, Gladman said "it was all brand new and a big learning curve but one I really enjoyed"
Zara Gladman is piloting a BBC sketch show, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal.
The character comic, best known for her hit online creation Aileen, a snobby mum from the affluent West End of Glasgow, writes, stars in and directs Good For Her, which airs on BBC Scotland and iPlayer this summer, ahead of Gladman making her Edinburgh Fringe debut later this year.
Also featuring Kim Blythe, Sophie Rose McCabe and Stuart Cromarty, the pilot mixes recurring character sketches, musical comedy and Aileen conducting a semi-improvised interview with a famous musician.
Gladman also plays some of her other established characters in the show, including her breathy-voiced newsreader, singer-songwriter Calum McTavish and a woman who's secretly a rat.
"I was kind of surprised that BBC Scotland let me do the rat one to be honest," Gladman told BCG. "Though we're still negotiating what stays in and what ends up cut."
Shot in studio and on location in Glasgow in February, Good For Her is the first time that Gladman has directed anything other than her straight-to-camera online videos.
"So it was all brand new and a big learning curve but one I really enjoyed" she said.
Good For Her is produced by Rab Christie (The Chief, The Scotts) for The Comedy Unit (Limmy's Show!, Scot Squad), which previously employed Gladman to write for its sketch shows Stevens & McCarthy on BBC One Scotland and Noising Up on BBC Radio Scotland after seeing her online videos.
Around the time Good For Her was filming, news broke that David Mitchell and Robert Webb were reviving sketch on Channel 4 with a return to their television roots.
And Gladman believes that "that's a great thing, because for a long time sketch has been out of fashion. There's this idea that it doesn't make economic sense for television because of the multiple locations, characters and costumes.
"Yet in my experience it can be done quite cheaply. And I do think there's a space for it. I was also conscious of this idea that everyone simply watches sketches online. So when I conceived this, I was thinking of things that I couldn't just film myself on my phone.
"It was amazing having an art department making really professional looking props, a wonderful director of photography and all of these people with skill sets that the show otherwise wouldn't have."
The Glasgow-based comic is making her Fringe debut at the Hive 2, Monkey Barrel venue from 29th July to 10th August with Zara Gladman is ... Aileen: Cameron's Gap Year Fundraiser.
"My son Cameron is an exceptional talent" says Aileen. "He recently attained 5 As in his exams, and grade 8 in bassoon. That's the highest you can get! He has a huge amount to offer the world. This Fringe, help give this expensively educated, promising young man the start he deserves."
Meanwhile as herself, Gladman will be keeping a running total of the costs of staging her show at the festival on her Instagram page.