Fans of Karl Pilkington will be used to laughing at his oddball observations on The Ricky Gervais Show podcasts, or at his fish-out-of-water antics on An Idiot Abroad.
But the straight-talking Mancunian is keen to warn viewers that his first scripted sitcom – Sick of It – is something a bit different.
The Sky One series sees Pilkington play two characters, both based on aspects of his own personality – Karl, a down-on-his-luck taxi driver, and Inner Self, the grouchy voice inside Karl’s mind.
“It really isn’t [a comedy] – it isn’t that funny… it’s more sad, if anything,” he said last night (September 19) at a BAFTA screening.
“The word ‘comedy’… you think of Only Fools and Horses. And there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just that it’s not this, and that’s all I’m worried about.”
Pilkington’s inspirations for Sick of It, which he also co-wrote with Richard Yee, were less sitcoms and more Ken Loach movies, including Kez and I, Daniel Blake. “It’s not just jokes – that’s what I’m worried about,” he said.
“It’s not just knockabout, there’s some proper issues in it.”
Pilkington explained that he and Yee “spent three months, working out the feel, and everything that we wanted [Sick of It] to be”, even binning their first attempt at a scripted series that was “something totally different”.
He was never tempted, though, to call on his old cohorts Gervais and Stephen Merchant for advice. “They haven’t seen it,” he revealed. “Someone coming in – Steve, Ricky sticking their head in, [saying] ‘That’s shit!’ – there’s no point. It’d be pointless. They don’t understand what we’re trying to do, so that’s why we kept them out.”
Though he’s anxious about how the series will go down with viewers, Pilkington says Sick of It has a “load of legs” for future series, if it’s a success.
“It could run and run,” he said. “We’ve got ideas. Sky are keen…
“But I just want to see how this goes. Because if everybody hates it, what’s the point? If nobody likes it, I’d prefer to just go, ‘We tried, we failed, let’s just knock it on the head’.”
Sick of It starts Thursday, September 27 at 10pm exclusively on Sky One and NOW TV.
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