Airdate: Beautiful People

This will be worth looking out for on ABC2: a six part comedy series from writer Jonathan Harvey (Gimme Gimme Gimme, Beautiful Thing), and executive produced by Jon Plowman (Absolutely Fabulous, The Office, Little Britain).

Beautiful People is inspired by the memoirs of windowdresser, Simon Doonan, who tells his assistant / boyfriend Sacha various tales from his childhood in 1997, when he and his friend Kylie would dream of moving to London and meeting ‘the beautiful people’.

Reflecting on his life, dapper Simon (Samuel Barnett from The History Boys) is transported back to a colourful childhood in the Nineties, of small town boredom versus big city dreams.

This comedy series explores what it’s like for all of us to be ‘fabulous via starry ambition, youthful optimism and one very loving, yet very dysfunctional family.’

13‐year‐old Simon (Luke Ward‐Wilkinson) lives with his parents in Reading. Mum, Debbie (Olivia Colman: Peep
Show, The Office) is a whirlwind of matriarchal warmth and passionate pride for husband Andy (Aidan McArdle: The Duchess) – a culture‐savvy plumber/homemade winemaker.

Simon’s sister Ashlene (Sophie Ash) is a wannabe ghetto queen; blind lodger Aunty Hayley (Meera Syal: Kumars at No. 52) has a guide‐dog who is far from size zero; his lobotomised grandma has just lost God and replaced him with a foul mouth. Thank goodness for best friend Kyle a.k.a. ‘Kylie’ (Layton Williams: Billy Elliott).

It starts 9:25pm Thursday June 18 on ABC2.