{"id":849711,"date":"2026-09-16T11:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T11:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/849711\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T11:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T11:28:10","slug":"richard-curtis-making-bbc-audio-sitcom-with-bill-nighy-jim-broadbent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/849711\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Curtis Making BBC Audio Sitcom With Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: Richard Curtis<\/a> is returning to the sitcom game, this time through audio.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Vicar of Dibley, Blackadder and Mr Bean writer-director is making Greatest Living Writer<\/a> for BBC<\/a> Radio 4 starring Bill Nighy<\/a>, Nicola Walker, Nick Mohammed, Jim Broadbent, Meera Syal and Traitors star Madelyn Smedley. It is Curtis\u2019 first sitcom in nearly 20 years and his first for audio. <\/p>\n

\n\tLaunching on Boxing Day on Radio 4 and as a BBC Sounds box-set two weeks prior, the series centers on John Westlake (Nighy), a literary titan whose towering genius has earned him global reverence, lifelong indulgence, and absolutely no useful social skills. As those around him absorb the blast radius of his genius, the series plays with creativity, legacy, literary celebrity, family, and the uncomfortable truth that being good at writing does not necessarily make you good at being a pleasant person. The character draws comparisons with the iconic Billy Mack, who Nighy played with aplomb in Love Actually. <\/p>\n

\n\tCurtis is an Oscar-nominated British screen legend whose movie credits include Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral. <\/p>\n

\n\tHis last TV sitcom was The Vicar of Dibley, which concluded on the BBC in 2007. He has recently turned to animation: writing and producing Netflix\u2019s That Christmas in 2024 and now producing Not Alone for Universal.<\/p>\n

\n\tCurtis said: \u201cI\u2019m loving working in this tight 15\u201d minute format for the BBC \u2013 writing for performers I know and love \u2013 and writing something that\u2019s about the creative world I have such direct experience of, as it crashes into family dynamics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tScript editor Emma Freud<\/a> added: \u201cOf all his writing, this is the closest Richard has written to his life, his world, his home and his experiences. It\u2019s been a joy to see the scripts flowing out of him \u2013 I\u2019ve never seen him write so fast or enjoy the process as much. He isn\u2019t the brute at the centre of this comedy \u2013 but that brute is, I think, how he would secretly like to behave if he could. Which he can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGoldhawk Productions<\/a>\u2018 Greatest Living Writer is produced by Emma Hearn, John Scott Dryden and Alex Hollands and script edited by Freud. It comes on a BBC audio slate that includes pilots from Nish Kumar and Jake Bhardwaj, along with stand-up and quiz shows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Richard Curtis is returning to the sitcom game, this time through audio. The Vicar of Dibley, Blackadder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[8827,133780,359249,88,359250,359251,359252,92],"class_list":["post-849711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-bbc","tag-bill-nighy","tag-emma-freud","tag-entertainment","tag-goldhawk-productions","tag-greatest-living-writer","tag-richard-curtis","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}