C4 orders comedy pilots

The UK’s Channel 4 (C4) has unveiled three new comedy pilots for 2014, one from Hat Trick and two from Avalon.

Filming of Hat Trick project Flack gets underway this month. Written by Oliver Lansley (Whites, FM, Best Possible Taste: The Kenny Everett Story), the show stars Sheridan Smith as a modern woman working in public relations.

Catastrophe, meanwhile, will be written by and star US Twitter comedian Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan (Pulling). It’s a single-camera comedy about an Irish woman and an American struggling to fall in love in London.

Avalon will begin shooting the show in the first quarter of the new year, the same time as it gets underway on Sit.com, a new single-camera comedy pilot written by comedian David Baddiel.

Described as a traditional family sitcom but with a twist, the show is said to reveal the way we live now – on the internet, mobiles and tablet. Baddiel will also direct.

C4 head of comedy Phil Clarke commissioned the three pilots to add to a number of returning comedies including The Midnight Beast, Friday Night Dinner, Derek, Cardinal Burns, The Mimic, Man Down and more.