Grant & Marshall pilot Radio 4 sketch show

Tuesday 5th February 2019, 6:33pm

The Nether Regions. Copyright: ABsoLuTeLy Productions

Writers Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall have announced their latest comedy project.

Grant - best known as co-creator of Red Dwarf - and Marshall - who wrote 1990s sitcom 2point4 Children - have created a new Radio 4 sketch show called The Nether Regions.

A pilot episode will be recorded later this month by Absolutely Productions, under producer Gordon Kennedy.

News of the new format follows the success of The Quanderhorn Xperimentations, a 1952-set sitcom by the duo that launched last summer on Radio 4, from the same production company.

Quanderhorn followed the "experiments of an eccentric scientist", played by James Fleet.

The Nether Regions is described as "a place where the laws of physics and even time itself take a day off, put their feet up and watch daytime television in their underpants. This is our world, today, though not quite the today we know. And not entirely the world we live in. But nearly."

In an advert for tickets to the recording of the pilot, the producers joke: "Your guides through this madness: Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall, together with young performers, new to radio but familiar to the Job Centre."

The blurb expands: "Come with us to a land of Bastards, Boobs and Bottoms, where nobody wears any underwear, even though it's permanently winter. No, not Newcastle: it's Throne of Forks.

"Join old men talking sh*t - the call-in hosts of Impotent Rage FM - London's premier station for exasperated seniors.

"Meet the permanently angry chef, who vents his foul-mouthed invective on diners with the temerity to question his serving Chicken on an Electric Fence with a side of Gasping Fish. Recoil in disgust as you witness the appalling conditions in backstreet emoji farms.

"Let Rob and Andrew and their callow young carers take you on a whistle stop tour of uncannity and strangeositude.

"Performed before a live studio audience and a dead wasp."

The pilot will be recorded on 22nd February at Stratford Circus in Stratford, east London.

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