BBC orders comedies from Big Talk, VAL TV, BBC Studios, Two Brothers, Roughcut

Things You Should Have Done was created by Lucia Keskin (second from right), who also stars

The BBC has ordered a flurry of new comedy series featuring both established talent and rising stars, in addition to renewing Bad Education, Avoidance, Mandy, Peacock and Ellie & Natasia.

The new orders include Ludwig (6×60′), described as a genre-bending detective series about a full-time luddite, played by David Mitchell, as he assumes the identity of his missing twin brother in a bid to track him down and bring him home.

Written by Mark Brotherhood, the series is a Big Talk Studios Production in association with That Mitchell & Webb Company for BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

A VAL TV production for BBC Two and BBC iPlayer, Spent (6×30′) is written by and stars Michelle de Swarte as a former catwalk model who is broke and homeless.

Mammoth (3×30′) follows a PE teacher, played by Mike Bubbins, who is presumed to have been killed in an avalanche on a school trip in 1979. When his body is discovered decades later in the present day, he is miraculously brought back from the dead and has to try and rebuild his life as a PE teacher in modern-day Cardiff.

The series is a BBC Studios Comedy production for BBC Wales and BBC iPlayer. It was created by Bubbins and co-written with Paul Doolan.

Dinosaur (6×30′) stars Ashley Storrie as an autistic woman in her 30s grappling with the decision of her sister, who is also her best friend and housemate, to rush into an engagement after only six weeks.

It is a Two Brothers Pictures (Fleabag, The Tourist) production for BBC Three, BBC Scotland and BBC iPlayer in partnership with Hulu and All3Media International.

The show was created by Matilda Curtis and Storrie, based on an original idea by Curtis, who is working alongside neurodiverse writers including Storrie.

Things You Should Have Done (6×30′), meanwhile, is a Roughcut Television production for BBC Three and BBC iPlayer described as an offbeat, dysfunctional family-sitcom from Lucia Keskin.

The new shows were commissioned by Jon Petrie, director of BBC Comedy, who revealed the slew of orders at the BBC’s Comedy Festival in Cardiff, alongside renewals for Bad Education, Avoidance, Mandy, Peacock and Ellie & Natasia.

Petrie said: “The BBC remains the biggest single investor in original comedy content in the UK. We’re so proud of the depth and range of our offerings, which champion British creativity, and I’m delighted to announce five brand new shows and five much-loved returning series.”

The BBC has also ordered 11 comedy short films, which have launched on BBC iPlayer today and will also air on BBC Three.

The BBC Comedy Short Film strand was created as a place for both new and established talent to develop and showcase exciting concepts that centre on originality and experimentation.

They include 7 Minutes, directed by Ricky Gervais and starring Joe Wilkinson and Seroca Davis as two people contemplating ending it all on the same desolate train track; Calamity James, based on the Beano comic strip of the same name; Jobless, a sitcom about a British Nigerian middle-class family in Milton Keynes; and part mockumentary, part sketch show This is Gay.