Bill Nighy and Nicola Walker among star-studded cast for new BBC sitcom – with a twist

Bill Nighy and Nicola Walker are just some of the star-studded cast lined up for a new BBC sitcom. Greatest Living Writers is a ten-part sitcom series with a twist - that being it is entirely audio-based.

Written by Love Actually's Richard Curtis, the series focuses on John Westlake (Nighy), a titan in the literary world whose genius has earned him reverence, indulgence but no social skills.

The synopsis continues: "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."

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Joining Nighy and Walker (whose role is yet to be confirmed) are several other British talents, including Nick Mohammed (Ted Lasso), Meera Syal (Goodness Gracious Me), Jim Broadbent (Paddington) and Madelyn Smedley (Unicorns). More celebrity cameos are also said to still be announced.

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."

Meanwhile, script editor Emma Freud commented that Greatest Living Writer will be Curtis' first sitcom since Blackadder, adding: "Of all his writing, this is the closest he’s 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."

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The series will also air on Boxing Day over on BBC Radio 4 and will be available as a boxset on Radio Sounds, with Julia McKenzie, Comedy and Entertainment Commissioner saying it was a "thrill" to commission the show.

"One of the best bits of my job is getting a sneak preview of the fantastic scripts and those, plus the extraordinary cast and production team, make me certain this will be eagerly binged the minute the box set lands this December," she said.

John Scott Dryden, Director of Goldhawk, a content label specialising in audio storytelling, also said they couldn't "wait for listeners to hear John Westlake and his magnificently complicated family come to life".

Greatest Living Writer will be available to listen on BBC Radio 4 on Boxing Day (26 December) and as a boxset on Radio Sounds.

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