ITV Renews Award-Winning Time Travel Comedy ‘Timewasters’ For Season 2
ITV has picked up award-winning time-travel comedy ‘Timewasters‘ for a 2nd Season which begins shooting next week the UK channel has announced.
In series one, our gang ended up in 1920’s London high-society after getting into a urine-sodden South London lift – that just happened to be a time machine! This time around our time-travelling jazz band are transported to 1950’s London where the future has arrived: the birth of the teenager, slick-haired Teddy Boys, the vibrant Windrush crowd, box-fresh televisions and – crucially – the dawn of Rock n’ Roll.
In a 1950’s world of budding pop sensations, our band start a jazz club, Nick desperate to rival those in the swinging heart of Soho by booking jazz legends of the day. Jason discovers that his one true love from the 1920’s, Victoria, is alive and well and now has a thirty-two-year-old son – Jason Junior! Is it finally time for Jason to grow up and become a Dad? Lauren is on a roll with more get-rich-quick schemes but finds herself developing feelings for stiff upper lipped soldier Jason Junior. And can Nick save the future of Jazz when Horace inadvertently introduces garage music to a young Ronnie Scott who decides MC Horace is now the one to follow?
But in an atmosphere of post-war Cold War paranoia our gang wonder if their time-travelling antics will be spotted – someone seems to be on their tail. With their typical mix of brazen opportunism and massive incompetence, they’re going to have to work much harder this time round to keep their adventures on the down-low. It’s not until our gang accidentally start the Notting Hill Riots that they realise it might be time to get home – but can they?
The band are back for another spin through time in series two: Daniel Lawrence Taylor (‘Cockroaches’, ‘Uncle’) plays Nick, Kadiff Kirwan (‘Chewing Gum’, ‘Crims’) plays Jason, Adelayo Adedayo (‘Skins’, ‘Some Girls’) as Lauren and Samson Kayo (‘Famalam’, ‘The Javone Prince Show’) as Horace.
A host of new stellar talent joins the cast for the second series including BAFTA/Olivier award nominated actress Anna Chancellor (‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’, ‘The Hour’), Javone Prince (‘PhoneShop’, ‘The Javone Prince Show’), Ellie White (‘The Windsors’) and BAFTA award-winning actor Daniel Rigby (‘Eric & Ernie’).
In 2018, ‘Timewasters’ was nominated for Best Comedy Series at the BAFTAs and won show creator and star, Daniel Lawrence Taylor, the RTS award for Breakthrough Talent as well as a nomination in the same category at the Edinburgh TV Awards (winner to be announced this summer).
‘Timewasters‘ Season 2 will air on ITV2 in 2019.
1 comment
Reading the character names and their actors side by side, I find myself wondering why all the characters have such White / European names. I mean, they are supposed to be born in the same era as the actors, when a lot of Afro-Americans and Afro-Brits stopped trying to blend in with the European-based majority and started using baby names based on their own cultural roots, and the more recent immigrants to Britain keeping their African family names.
It’s not just this show, though. This almost always happens with Black characters who are not actually supposed to be African (and even then – “Capheus” sounds weirdly Latin/Greek and rather “artsy” for a poor Kenyan because it’s a misspelled version of the name of an Ethiopian king mentioned in Greek mythology – in that case, a common Bible-based name like Luke or Matthew actually would have made more sense given that the country is 80% Anglican Christian), and it’s especially common in US shows. (Where it’s somewhat more appopriate due to most Afro-Americans having been robbed of their culture many generations ago, leading to family names like “Freeman” or generic blend-in names like “Johnson”.) It just stood out here, given that the show (presumably) has Afro-British or at least more culturally aware writers, otherwise there wouldn’t be an all-Black cast, and the British TV-producing community should be long used to Black Brits having names like Chiwetel.
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