ITV has commissioned Kate and Kolo, a new six-part studio sitcom for 2020.  

 

Respected stage and screen actor Brenda Blethyn, the star of ITV crime drama Vera (pictured), will take on the title role of Kate in this new comedy with British television, theatre and film actor Jimmy Akingbola taking on the role of Kolo.

  

Kate and Kolo centres around a working-class woman who runs an old-fashioned café in a neglected seaside town and who develops a strong, if sometimes volatile, friendship with an asylum-seeking African doctor. 

 

Kate and Kolo is a Hat Trick production.  Written by the team behind BBC hit Outnumbered, Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton, who will also supervise a trainee writer under the Comedy 50:50 scheme.

 

Jimmy Mulville, Managing Director at Hat Trick Productions said: “ITV is the perfect home for Kate and Kolo, written by two of the country’s top writers and with two great actors like Brenda and Jimmy, it’s a wonderfully funny and sometimes touching comedy about real people coping with life at the sharp end."

 

Kate & Kolo has been commissioned for ITV by Saskia Schuster, ITV's Comedy Controller, who says: "Kate and Kolo will be a new sitcom for ITV filmed in front of a live studio audience to air 2020 on the channel. Brenda and Jimmy head up a fantastic cast and we have 6 brilliantly written scripts."