Gavin & Stacey’s Rob Brydon to lead brand new BBC comedy

Gavin & Stacey star Rob Brydon will lead a brand-new BBC comedy series after the much-loved sitcom drew to a close on Christmas Day last year, it has been announced.

The 60-year-old actor, who played Stacey’s father figure Uncle Bryn in the programme, will front the forthcoming show Bill’s Include as a middle-aged divorcee who staves off financial ruin by renting his spare rooms to students following his separation from his partner.

Brydon’s character, Bill, is described as “warm-hearted and eager but neurotic and slightly overbearing” and while he enjoys being around the youthful energy of his new lodgers, he’s “baffled by their indifference to his laminated house rules and colour-coded cutlery.”

Over six episodes, viewers will see Bill balance wanting to be part of the student’s housemate camaraderie and clinging to his role as the responsible adult of the house.

“As Bill and his mismatched lodgers navigate heartbreak, reinvention and emotional upheaval, surprising parallels emerge between university life and midlife crisis,” the announcement read. “Can they overcome their differences, embrace their found family and help each other muddle along?”

Bill’s Included is written by Ben Ashenden and Alexander Owen, better known as the double act “The Pin”, whose 2018 Edinburgh Fringe show, The Pin: Backstage, received rave reviews and later became the West End production The Comeback in 2020.

Ashenden and Owen bonded over Brydon’s black comedy series Human Remains, as well as his BBC mockumentary Marion and Geoff when they first met at the University of Cambridge and described Bill’s Included as “a dream come true and a weirdly specific full circle moment.”

Meanwhile, Brydon said of the project: “I can’t wait to get started with this, to speak the wonderful words written by Alex and Ben who’ve done such a great job on the script.”

The show’s announcement came as part of a wider statement delivered by Jon Petrie, the BBC Director of Comedy at the BBC Comedy Festival in Belfast on Wednesday (21 May), in which he detailed 10 star-studded new and returning shows commissioned by the broadcaster.

He revealed Diane Morgan (Cunk on Earth) will star in a forthcoming sitcom about a social humanoid robot designed to keep elderly people company. Meanwhile, Lenny Rush (Am I Being Unreasonable?) will be part of the supernatural family sitcom Reluctant Vampire.

Elsewhere, Monty Python member Sir Michael Palin, Pearce Quigley (Pie in the Sky), and Sophie Willan (Alma’s Not Normal) will star in The Office actor Mackenzie Crook’s new comedy Small Prophets. Meanwhile, Guz Khan (Man Like Mobeen) will lead Stuffed – a forthcoming series about an office worker who gets an unexpected Christmas bonus and heads to Lapland only to find he has to pay the money back.

Only Child, starring Gregor Fisher and Greg McHugh, the Irish coming-of-age sitcom The Young Offenders and the BBC three animated series Golden Cobra will all return for another series.

“Our priority is to keep our shows affordable and distinctive,” Petrie said. “Because comedy doesn’t need explosions and continuous shots, it needs punchlines, authentic voices and that gleeful point of view that no algorithm can touch.”