Jo Brand has been super busy, not just with her darkly funny (laugh or you’ll cry) Getting On spin off Going Forward but with her social work sitcom Damned which has been picked up by Channel 4, starring Alan Davis, Kevin Eldon, Aisling Bea and Morwenna Banks who also co-created the show.
Set in a children’s services department, Jo and Alan play Rose and Al who are tired of going against an endless tide of bureaucracy and pedantry, all the while negotiating the niggles and nonsensical aspects of life in a county council office – not to mention their personal lives!
Jo commented that: “As the daughter of a social worker, who worked for many years in child protection, I grew up seeing social workers go unrecognised for the good things they did and castigated for the bad. It’s like being a traffic warden without the perks.
“Damned is an attempt to portray the tragic-comic lives of social workers, always under pressure, always in possession of a grim sense of humour and always wrong in the eyes of the public.”
Ian Fitzgibbon, whose credits include Moone Boy and Raised By Wolves, will direct the show which was originally developed with rival broadcasters, with a reading at the BBC and a pilot which aired in 2014 with Sky Arts where Aisling Bea played a single mother and Kevin a fantasist who imagined he worked in the office.
In the pilot, Bea played a crazed single mother and Eldon a harmless fantasist who imagines he works in the office. Producer Claire Whalley said the sitcom would “bring humour to some of life’s most difficult and challenging subjects and to create a fresh, new comedy which comes out of the real world”.
Channel 4’s deputy head of comedy Nerys Evans said: “We are thrilled to be working with Jo, Morwenna and Will on this brilliant bittersweet series. The series highlights some of the challenges and dilemmas facing front line social workers in this time of austerity. The characters are warm, honest and human and often have their own set of challenges outside of the office as well.”
