Pompidou | |
---|---|
Genre | Comedy |
Directed by |
Charlie Hanson Matt Lucas |
Starring | Matt Lucas |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of series | 1 |
No. of episodes | 6 (list of episodes) |
Production | |
Executive producer(s) | Layla Smith |
Producer(s) |
Charlie Hanson Katie Mavroleon |
Location(s) | Langleybury, Hertfordshire |
Editor(s) | Jon Blow |
Running time | 25-30 minutes |
Production company(s) | John Stanley Productions |
Release | |
Original network | BBC Two |
Picture format | 16:9 (HDTV) |
Original release | 1 March | – 5 April 2015
Chronology | |
Related shows | Little Britain |
Pompidou is an experimental British television comedy series for BBC Two created and written by comedian Matt Lucas, Julian Dutton and Ashley Blaker. It began airing on 1 March 2015 on BBC Two.
Produced by Lucas' own company John Stanley Productions for the BBC, Pompidou is the first all-visual, i.e. having no meaningful dialogue, half-hour mainstream TV sitcom since Bradley in the late 1980s. (Although there have been several visual comedies broadcast in the interim, none of these were half-hour sitcoms: Mr. Bean usually consisted of two or three sketches, Oddbods was a one-off, The Baldy Man consisted of two sketches per episode, and Uncle Max and Zzzap! were both 15-minute children's shows.)
A pilot was written in 2012, and 6 episodes were commissioned by Controller of BBC One Danny Cohen and Controller of Comedy Commissioning Shane Allen in Spring 2013. The series was written and filmed across 2013 and 2014. The first episode aired on BBC Two on 1 March 2015
Inspired by Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati and Marty Feldman, Pompidou aimed to reinvent visual comedy for the twenty-first century, and create an international series for a global audience.
Jane Asher starred in episode 3, Anita Dobson played the role of Sally in episode 4 and Beattie Edmondson appeared in episodes 1 and 6. Australian actress Rebel Wilson, Matt Lucas' roommate when they both lived in the U.S., makes an uncredited cameo as a Vicki Pollard lookalike from Little Britain in episode 5. Julian Dutton, one of the show's co-creators and writers, appeared in episode 2 as the TV Delivery Man.