Don’t miss, new pilot sitcom ‘The Other One’

Thankfully BBC Two is all set to provide us with a few courtesy of this new sitcom. If its premise sounds familiar, you probably caught the pilot episode, then forgot all about it – it’s almost three years since it first aired.

Ellie White stars as Catherine Walcott, a middle-class young woman living an incredibly ordinary life in suburbia with her parents.

Or at least she thought that’s what she was doing until her dad Colin died suddenly of a heart attack.

It was then that Catherine and her mother Tess discovered that Colin had been living a secret double life 13 miles away in a neighbouring town with his other ‘wife’ Marilyn and their daughter, also called Catherine.

The girls were born just a week apart and it seems their father didn’t want to complicate matters by giving them different names.

Both girls longed to have a sister, but they probably didn’t imagine they would be their polar opposite. While middle-class Cathy is engaged to be married, has a decent job and a sensible pension, the other Catherine (aka Cat, and played by Lauren Socha), is rather more chaotic, has few prospects and lives almost entirely on crisps.

The pilot episode was well-received by critics and viewers alike, so the big surprise is not that the BBC commissioned a full series, but that it took so long to come to fruition.

Perhaps it was a case of not being able to assemble the talent all at the same time until now. Siobhan Finneran, who plays Marilyn, has certainly been in demand of late – she even has another sitcom coming up after another promising pilot she appeared in, Alma’s Not Normal, was also snapped up by the Beeb.

White, Finneran, Socha and their co-stars Rebecca Front and Amit Shah are also hugely in demand.

Meanwhile, co-writer Holly Walsh has also been involved in penning scripts for Motherland, but has since found the time to work on The Other One with co-creator Pippa Brown.

On hearing that their show had been commissioned, the duo said: “What an absolute honour and privilege to be able to work with these four fantastically funny, incredibly talent women (ditto one man) for a full series.

“We love them so much and can’t wait to start thinking of brilliant things for them to get up to.

Please can all children of dead polygamous men get in touch and tell us their stories as a matter of urgency…”

Maybe they did, because the scripts are sharp, witty and oddly believable.

“The Other One is a fantastically funny and charming show with a great story at the heart of it,” says executive producer Ben Cavey.

“It’s absolutely right that Holly and Pippa, as two of the UK’s leading comedic lights, should be joining BBC Two’s impressive line-up of comedy brilliance.”

This week, there’s another chance to see the pilot before the new episodes begin next Friday.

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