BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE Starts on BBC2

BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE a new 6 part sitcom based on the novel by Simon Doonan, starts this evening at 9.30pm on BBC2 starring Meera Syal, Olivia Coleman, Howard Charles and Juliet Cowan.

‘It’s 1997. Thirteen-year-old Simon and his best friend Kyle
can’t open a fridge door without belting out a show tune. And his
family is even more eccentric. Mum Debbie (Olivia Colman) is a
whirlwind of matriarchal warmth in killer heels. Dad Andy is a lovable
Irish softy and avid wine maker and older sister Ashlene is a wannabe
ghetto queen. Then there’s family lodger blind Aunty Hayley (Meera
Syal) and lobotomised grandma Narg (gran backwards) who lost God and
found a foul mouth. Based on the childhood memoirs of window-dresser extraordinaire, style
arbiter and writer Simon Doonan, the sitcom follows his childhood
reminiscences of escaping the grey gloom of suburban Reading to live
amongst the Beautiful People – before coming to the realisation that
true beauty, as ever, is closer than we think. Alongside Meera Syal and
Olivia Colman the cast includes Aidan McArdle (Not Only But Always),
Layton Williams (Billy Elliot in the West End) and Samuel Barnett (The
History Boys). Thirteen-year-old Luke Ward-Wilkinson (Wild At Heart)
plays young Simon. The series is written by Jonathan Harvey whose
previous credits include Gimme Gimme Gimme (BBC Two) and Beautiful
Thing.’