A new six-part comedy series comes
to Sky One this week starring Joe
Gilgun and a host of other well-
known faces including Michelle
Keegan, Damien Molony and
Dominic West. Set in Lancashire
and kicking off with a double bill,
Brassic focuses on the tight-knit
friendship between a group of
working-class mates and the
harebrained schemes they employ
to get along in life – and the often
hilarious consequences when
things don’t go to plan.
‘A lot of it is based on genuine
truth and 90 per cent of the
characters are based on real peopleor are amalgamations of real
people,’ says Gilgun, who grew up
in the town of Chorley, Lancashire.LOVABLE ECCENTRICS
‘There isn’t an awful lot to do in
Chorley, so it tends to breed these
bizarre people. There’s a guy in
Chorley we call Corned Beef Keith.
He’s always got his bum half
hanging out of his trousers. And
there’s another guy who, for no
explicable reason, always wears
a wig on backwards.’
Gilgun had always wanted to
write a TV series with similarly
eccentric and larger-than-life
characters, and he reveals it was a
conversation with Hollywood star
Dominic West, best known for The
Wire and The Affair, that gave him
the impetus to create the show –with the help of
BAFTA-winning
writer Danny
Brocklehurst, who
has previously
worked on
Shameless and
Clocking Off.
‘Dominic and
I became great
mates working
together on the
film Pride,’ reveals
Gilgun. ‘There was
one night when,
as usual, I was chatting away about
my friends and things we’d gone
through, and Dom said to me,
“Look, you’re going to have to do
something with all this. You need
to write it down.” I told him if I did
and if it ever got on telly, he’d haveto be in it. He said, “Of course.”
Well, now I’ve found out that he’s
a man of his word!’
Gilgun stars as Vinnie, who
has bipolar disorder and lives in
a shack in the middle of the woods,
while Michelle Keegan plays youngNEW COMEDY DRAMA
Brassic
Thu, Sky One HD, 10pm & 11pm
Vinnie
Joe Gilgun
The charismatic leader
of his group of mates,
V i n n i e i s w i l d b u t k i n d
as he constantly battles
his bipolar disorder.Erin
Michelle Keegan
The young mum has
grown up with Vinnie
and Dylan and is
desperate to give her
s o n , Ty l e r, a b e t t e r l i fe.JJ
Parth Thakerar
The black sheep of
his traditional Asian
family, JJ runs a garage
and has a lucrative
sideline in stolen cars.Ash
Aaron Heffernan
F r o m a fa m i l y o f I r i s h
travellers whose fists can
usually get them out of
trouble, Ash is gay but
hasn’t told his relatives.The first episode
features a plot to
steal a Shetland ponyJoe Gilgun and Michelle
Keegan star in a madcap new
comedy drama about a group of
close-knit friends in Lancashire
Our
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