ITV has set up a Summer comedy season on streaming service ITVX which will include ‘Changing Ends‘ Season 2, new police comedy ‘Piglets‘, parallel universe comedy ‘Slip‘, and a series of live events from the Edinburgh Fringe.
Changing Ends, Season 2
After its success last year, becoming the biggest comedy ever on ITVX with 6.5 million streams, Alan Carr’s semi-autobiographical comedy is back for season two.
‘Changing Ends’ is based on Alan’s own life in Northampton in the 1980s growing up as the son of a fourth-division football manager. The second season picks up shortly after the first, as young Alan contends with impending puberty and feeling sidelined by his family. With Graham Carr distracted by Northampton Town FC who are battling for promotion can he be there for his son when he most needs him?
Reprising their roles as the Carr family for a new run of episodes are Oliver Savell (young Alan), Shaun Dooley (Graham Carr), Nancy Sullivan (Christine Carr) and Taylor Fay (Gary Carr). Also returning are the Carr’s neighbours, the Hudsons, played by Gabby Best (Angela Hudson), Harry Peacock (Nigel Hudson) and Rourke Mooney (Charlie Hudson).
The series is produced by Baby Cow Productions (Gavin & Stacey, Alan Partridge), written by Alan Carr, co-written by Gabby Best and was co-created by the late Simon Carlyle. The director is Dave Lambert and the producer is Mollie Freedman Berthoud. The Executive producers are Baby Cow’s Sarah Monteith and Rupert Majendie, Alan Carr and Danny Julian.
‘Changing Ends‘ Season 2 will simultaneously drop as a full series box set on ITVX and air weekly on ITV1 primetime.
Piglets, Season 1
‘Piglets’ is a brand new comedy, set in a fictional police training college, from Monicker Pictures and the award-winning team behind ‘Smack The Pony‘ and ‘Green Wing’.
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’ is written by Robert Harley, James Henry, Oriane Messina, Victoria Pile, Richard Preddy and Fay Rusling – the team responsible for ‘Green Wing’ and ‘Campus’ (Channel 4) – and ITV’s Comedy Writers Initiative candidate Omar Khan, also a recent winner of an International Emmy (the Sir Peter Ustinov Award for writers under 30). The creative team also worked closely with a writers room ‘annexe’ consisting of four new writers Abiola Ogunbiyi, Nusrath Tapadar, Farhan Solo and Alex Bertulis-Fernandes who were also a product of ITV’s Comedy Writers Initiative, which aims to promote new writers currently underrepresented in comedy.
The series is directed by Sam Leifer and Victoria Pile, produced by Victoria Pile, with executive producers Robert Harley, Caroline Leddy, and Sam Leifer. Piglets is produced in association with, and distributed internationally by ITV Studios.
‘Piglets‘ Season 1 will simultaneously drop as a full series box set on ITVX and air weekly on ITV1 primetime.
Slip
‘Slip‘, a seven-episode comedy series from actor/writer/director Zoe Lister-Jones (‘Life In Pieces’). Mae (Lister-Jones) is restless in a life and marriage that works. There is love between her and her husband, but little romance. When Mae “slips” and has a one-night stand with Eric, a handsome man she meets at a bar, she wakes up the next morning in a panic, only to realize she’s entered a parallel universe in which she and Eric are married. This is the start of her surreal journey as she slips into other realities and relationships, trying to find a way back to her husband, and ultimately, herself.
Zoe Lister-Jones is writer and director on ‘Slip’, along with starring in the leading role. Alongside Lister-Jones (‘Life In Pieces’, ‘New Girl’), the series stars Tymika Tafari (‘Chateau Laurier’, ‘Work It Out Wombats!’), Whitmer Thomas (‘Stone Quackers’, ‘GLOW’), Amar Chadha-Patel (‘Willow’, ‘The Wheel of Time’), and Emily Hampshire (‘Schitt’s Creek’, ‘The Rig’).
‘Slip’ is produced by TeaTime Pictures, which was founded by Dakota Johnson and Ro Donnelly, and Boat Rocker. Johnson and Donnelly serve as executive producers for TeaTime, while Ivan Schneeberg and David Fortier executive produce for Boat Rocker. Katie O’Connell also serves as executive producer.
ITVX Presents: Edinburgh Fringe Live
The magic, chaos and hilarity of the Edinburgh Fringe will be streamed directly to viewers on ITVX this Summer via four 60-minute specials. This will be the real Edinburgh experience in a venue at the heart of the Fringe with new line-ups each night featuring some of the most exciting comics and breakthrough stars of 2024.
Audiences will be immersed into the anarchic and irreverent atmosphere as if they were in the rooms themselves – all streamed live on ITVX, and available to catch-up for 30 days afterwards. Produced by NextUp Comedy.
“We wanted to build on the success of last year’s comedy season knowing there is strength in numbers,” commented Nana Hughes, ITV’s Head of Comedy. “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.”
ITV has not given exact premiere dates for any of these shows, but they will air throughout Summer 2024. If you want to keep track of these or any other shows you can add them via our Never Miss system, and you’ll be notified when they get a UK premiere date.
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