Bill Nighy Playing Socially-Challenged Literary Titan In Richard Curtis’ Debut Audio Sitcom

EXCLUSIVE: Richard Curtis is returning to the sitcom game, this time through audio.

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

Launching 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.

Curtis is an Oscar-nominated British screen legend whose movie credits include Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral.

His 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’s That Christmas in 2024 and now producing Not Alone for Universal.

Curtis said: “I’m loving working in this tight 15” minute format for the BBC – writing for performers I know and love – and writing something that’s about the creative world I have such direct experience of, as it crashes into family dynamics.”

Script editor Emma Freud added: “Of all his writing, this is the closest Richard has written to his life, his world, his home and his experiences. It’s been a joy to see the scripts flowing out of him – I’ve never seen him write so fast or enjoy the process as much. He isn’t the brute at the centre of this comedy – but that brute is, I think, how he would secretly like to behave if he could. Which he can’t.”

Goldhawk Productions‘ 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.