Samson Kayo

Monday

RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under

BBC One, 11.20pm

RuPaul’s Drag Race airs from Australia and New Zealand for the first time to find the queen of the Land Down Under.

To those who know him, it is very on-brand that Nick Frost’s new sitcom is a paranormal romp, relentlessly firing out jokes while two ghost hunters uncover spooky goings-on in their house-to-house investigations.

A mild obsession with the extraordinary is in Frost’s creative DNA. His preoccupations, along with those of his best friend, Simon Pegg, were evident in his Spaced days: the cult Channel 4 series often made passing reference to zombies and conspiracy theories.

The comedy follows Maleek (Kayo) and Wendy (Harrocks), a pair of seemingly incompatible paramedics working in the high-pressure world of a south London emergency services.

Recently divorced and overly chummy, Wendy is determined to win over her younger colleague. The pair form an unlikely friendship, and together they attempt to garner the respect of their colleagues in the paramedic team.

When Famalam came to our screens in 2018, British television was ready and waiting for a high-profile comedic exploration of the contemporary black British experience. It tapped the same vein as Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum and the 1990s ensemble show The Real McCoy – and another hit sketch show was long overdue.

The series, co-written by Phil Bowker and Samson Kayo (Timewasters), will be extended to six episodes.

Sliced follows the hilarious, unlikely encounters of Joshua (Kayo) and Ricky (Theo Barklem Biggs), two mischievous pizza delivery drivers in south London.

Kayo commented: “We go again! I’m so excited to be back on Dave with series two. Last series was just a taster, now it’s go time!

“I’m looking forward to creating some more explosively funny and authentic stories with this amazingly talented team."

London Hughes

Having cut her teeth in the industry for ten years, it’s fair to say that London Hughes is no longer a newcomer. Yet with some exciting projects in the pipeline, the comedian is just getting started.

Over the past few years, UKTV channel Dave has notched up an impressive series of hits with home-grown comedies such as Taskmaster and Dave Gorman: Modern Life is Goodish.

Now it has high hopes for Sliced, a sitcom based on Samson Kayo’s crazy experiences as a South London pizza delivery driver, launched this month.

Dave’s new sitcom stars Kayo – he co-wrote it with Phil Bowker, who also produces – and White Gold’s Theo Barklem-Biggs as two hapless drivers, Joshua and Ricky, who deliver pizza to their larger-than-life customers on the estates of Peckham.

Kayo, Bowker and Barklem-Biggs were speaking at an RTS Futures event in early May, which screened the first episode of Sliced and then hosted a discussion with some of the show’s talent, from both in front of and behind the camera.

"We kept it very authentic to south east London"

Timewasters has charmed critics and attracted healthy audiences with its mix of jazz, time travel and good jokes. Notably, it also has an all-black leading cast but, according to its creator, Daniel Lawrence Taylor, it is, “first and foremost”, a comedy.

The comedy sitcom follows a London jazz quartet who reluctantly travel back in time to the 1920s, encountering a host of bizarre characters and situations.

Among the band is Nick (Daniel Lawrence Taylor), Jason (Kadiff Kirwan), Lauren (Adelayo Adedayo) and Horace (Samson Kayo).

The previous series ended with the group reuniting with the mysterious Homeless Pete (John Stoate) and the relentless Curtis (Kevin Garry) as they try to get back to the present.