The Vicar of Dibley star Dawn French admits she considered making up a ‘terminal disease’ to avoid doing another sitcom – but then loved it
19:00, 29 Dec 2025Updated 19:00, 29 Dec 2025
When Simon Mayhew-Archer decided to pen his first TV script with Dawn French in mind as the star, he never believed that she’d actually sign up.
But he was helped rather significantly by the fact that his dad, Paul, is one of the writers on her huge hit comedy The Vicar of Dibley. And when he decided to ask her directly if she would have a read of the script for Can You Keep a Secret?, Dawn found it was a hard request to refuse.
“I definitely didn’t want to do a sitcom, that was for absolute sure,” she laughs. “I just thought, oh, God, I’ll have to read this and make embarrassing notes about why I can’t ooh, terminal disease, anything, anything, to not do it. And then I read it and it was good. So I had to do it then.
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Debbie is in shock when a doctor pronounces William dead in their front room(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Big Talk Studios/Alistair Heap)
“I just loved the family and I loved the problem and I loved how much heart it has in it and how flawed the characters are. And I just prayed that from Simon’s first script it wouldn’t change too much before we were able to make it.”
Remembering how Paul had first suggested that she played bossy Debbie Fenton, Dawn, 68, says: “He phoned me directly and said, ‘I know I shouldn’t do this, I’m supposed to go by your agent and everything, but you know, I’ve got Parkinson’s. I’m old now. I don’t give a sh**. And it’s my son.”
Even with that strong family connection, Simon says he “never in a million years” thought she’d agreed to star in his show – the first one he’s ever written.
Craig Roberts plays the couple’s flabbergasted son, while MandipG Gill is his WPC wife(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Big Talk Studios/Nicky Johnston)
“I wrote it with Dawn in mind, you put her on the treatment in the hope that it gets the channels,” he explains. “And then, when she says no, you go to someone else. But by a total miracle, she was interested. So everything then flowed from there.”
In the BBC1 series, national treasure Dawn plays an overbearing mother, wife, granny, lawn bowler and tinpot dictator, who finds that she’s accidentally (sort of) claiming the life insurance for her dead husband, who was told he couldn’t claim because he has Parkison’s. Except hermit-like William, played by Friday Night Dinner favourite Mark Heap, is very much not dead.
Simon, who was a producer on Daisy May Cooper’s hit show This Country, said he took inspiration directly from his own nearest and dearest. “I knew that if I just wrote a sort of diatribe about how annoying my parents are, that wouldn’t be very interesting to anybody else,” he laughs.
Craig Roberts, as the Fentons’ son Harry, is loosely based on Simon himself(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Big Talk Studios/Alistair Heap)
“So I was trying to find a way to make it into a show that had kind of an interesting story at the heart of it. They’re not loosely based, they’re actually based on my parents. My dad is in his own world and just floats around eating chocolate. And my mum makes relentlessly bad decisions which she then presents as the best idea you’ve ever heard.”
Dawn agrees that Debbie is a bit more complicated that some of her other characters. “This is a woman on a mission,” she muses. “Debbie feels very slighted by what’s happened. The injustice of not having a payout from your health insurance when you have Parkinson’s, which I didn’t know about until this.
“You get shafted, and that’s not okay. I mean, it’s still fraud. Morally dubious, obviously. But the opportunity presents itself, it’s a sliding doors kind of moment and she takes advantage of it.”
Creator Simon says that while many people have asked him whether he was inspired by the ‘canoe man’ story, it was almost the opposite. “Everybody always talks about the canoe couple, and actually I don’t know that much about their case. But what I do know is that their sons were mortally offended and disowned their parents. And I found that funny because my reaction would be, ‘why have you done that?’
William, who has Parkinson’s, has to spend much of his time hidden away – until the insurance money comes through(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Big Talk Studios/Alistair Heap)
“You can’t just disown them, you’re stuck with them! What was interesting to me was how do you move forward and still kind of love them even though they’re mad.”
Mark, 68, says he was extremely happy when the approach for him to play William came in. “Joaquin Phoenix wasn’t available,” he quips. “And they wafted a script at me and I went and I read it and I thought it was rather terrific.
“I thought the first episode dealt very well with explaining the situation entertainingly and was shot beautifully. I wanted to know what happened next. And the characters were great. And, I get to eat lots of chocolate biscuits.”
Debbie is surprised by the way things have turned out but feels justified in taking the money because the system feels so unfair(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Big Talk Studios/Alistair Heap)
Simon feels that the actor did a marvellous job of recreating his own father. “What is wonderful about Mark is that he managed to capture the combination of being both caring and loving on one level, but also so detached. And that is a really special thing to be able to achieve, to be both there and also utterly absent.”
There is a funny scene where Debbie has to pretend that another person in the morgue is her late husband. “I kissed a corpse and I liked it!” Dawn laughs. “But kissing an actor you’ve never even met before was odd. I’ve had the therapy now, I’m over it.”
Craig Roberts, who plays their son Harry, says: “There’s no such thing as dysfunctional family, there’s just family, I think. And so it felt incredibly relatable.”
The series will air next month(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Big Talk Studios/Alistair Heap)
And Doctor Who star Mandip Gill, who plays his wife Neha, agrees: “They’re so relatable. And I knew Dawn was also attached so I was like, ‘oh my God, I better get this.’
One she did land the role, Mandip found that she and Dawn really hit it off. “It was amazing. It was really, really good. And we had some really nice chats. We got to know each other really quickly. I’ve not done comedy – I didn’t know how it worked. But to have done it with these guys, I’m so privileged.”
– Can You Keep a Secret? BBC1, January 7, 9.30pm
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