Commissioned by Channel 4 and produced by What Larks Productions, Damned was previously piloted for Sky two years ago with filming of the latest production to start next month.

The show comes soon after Brand's recent return as nurse Kim Wilde in BBC's Going Forward and is her first major Channel 4 project for ten years.

The six-part series follows the lives of Rose and Al - played by Brand and fellow comedian Alan Davies - two social workers navigating their way through the confusing and contradictory bureaucracy of a county council office.  

"As the daughter of a social worker, I grew up seeing social workers go unrecognised for the good things they did and castigated for the bad. It's like being a traffic warden without the perks" said Brand.

"Damned is an attempt to portray the tragic-comic lives of social workers, always under pressure, always in possession of a grim sense of humour and always wrong in the eyes of the public." 

The show's co-writers, The Thick of It's Morwenna Banks and Will Smith, also star, with other appearances from Eastenders' Himesh Patel, Kevin Eldon (Nighty Night​), Georgie Glen (Waterloo Road),Marjorie Yates (Shameless), and British Comedy Award winner Aisling Bea.

Deputy Head of Comedy, Nerys Evans, said: “We are thrilled to be working with Jo, Morwenna and Will on this brilliant bittersweet series. The series highlights some of the challenges and dilemmas facing front line social workers in this time of austerity."