“Bridgerton’s” Nicola Coughlan and “It’s a Sin’s” Lydia West are set to co-star in a new comedy for Channel 4 titled “Big Mood” (working title).
The show, which was previously titled “Super Close,” will be produced by Fremantle’s Dancing Ledge Productions. It was written and created by Camilla Whitehill (“Porters”). “Brooklyn Nine Nine” director Rebecca Asher is also on board to helm the six part series, which is set to start shooting this spring. Fremantle will handle global sales.
According to the logline, the show “is a vivacious and rebellious portrayal of female friendship when infiltrated by the complexities of a serious mental illness.”
It follows the friendship of Maggie (Coughlan) and Eddie (West) who spent their twenties living in each other’s pockets.
But as they look forward to the next decade – with all its pressures, career-related and otherwise – Maggie’s bipolar disorder makes an unwelcome return. Suddenly Eddie finds herself questioning their friendship and whether it will survive the future.
Fittingly for a show centered around female friendship, it was born out of Coughlan’s longstanding friendship with Whitehill.
“We met like a million years ago at drama school in Oxford,” Coughlan tells Variety. “She was training to be an actor. And then when we left drama school, we were both in various states of not working and everything being a bit crap. And she was like, ‘I’m not gonna be an actor, I want to write.’ I went to see her first short play night and she was just – she’s always been insanely funny. But then, when I saw it, I was like, Oh, she’s gonna be a famous writer. But our 20s were like the struggle bus. And then the fact now the show is happening… I’ve always wanted to work with her. And then for Lydia to be part of it is the biggest dream.”
West, who met Coughlan briefly at last year’s TV BAFTA awards, says she was sent the script via her agent and as soon as she read it she was on board.
“I think it was towards the end of lockdown a couple of years ago,” West says. “I just read it and I was genuinely laughing out loud. It just sounded like some of the conversations I have with some of my mates. And the topic, mental health and female friendship, it just felt so – “
” – very real,” Coughlan chimes in.
In a statement Whitehill told Variety: “Getting my own Channel 4 comedy still feels like some kind of long form prank, ‘Punk’d’ style. But on the off-chance it isn’t, I am beside myself to be making this show with such an incredible team of people, a cast that I’d be jealous of if it wasn’t my cast, and for a channel that’s produced some of my favourite shows of all time.”
Lotte Beasley Mestriner (“The Young Offenders”) will exec produce while Georgie Fallon (“The Following Events are Based on a Pack of Lies”) produces. Laurence Bowen (“The Salisbury Poisonings”) and Chris Carey (“Wedding Season”) exec produce for Dancing Ledge.
Channel 4 commissioning editor Laura Riseam commissioned the series.
From Variety US