Other People Synopsis
The comedy chosen to launch Channel 4’s 2007 Comedy Showcase season.
Greg Wilson (Martin Freeman) is an ex-child star. At fourteen, he was a child magician. Precocious, smug, very punchable.
The pinnacle of his career was the 1986 Royal Variety Performance, when he charmed the audience with his patter about his Mum sewing name-tags into the backs of all his tricks.
One week later, his career is finished. During a phone-in on the Saturday morning kids TV show, Crikey It’s Saturday!, someone rings in and calls Greg “a fucking wanker” on live TV.
It’s the ultimate humiliation. The caller has articulated what everyone is secretly thinking. It’s a blow from which Greg will never recover.
Twenty years later, Greg works in a leather sofa shop. The early promise of his life unfulfilled. He’s bored, unhappy, still hurting on the inside, forever wary of other people. In every human encounter lies potential humiliation.
Even his boss, who looks about 13, treats Greg with utter contempt.
But then Greg is recognised by a customer and asked for his autograph. It’s the beginning of a journey that will pass through a police station and end with Greg in court, facing a year-long prison sentence…
Hell is other people.
Press
“Thanks to the colourful writing and inspired performances, it's genuinely funny...Freeman's bewilderment is a joy to watch, as is a hilarious turn from Nicholas Burns as his solicitor” - Radio Times
“Toby Whithouse's story of lost fame, entitled 'Other People' is superb...an all-star cast provides a very modern take on the sitcom set-up” - Daily Telegraph
“Freeman and his hangdog expression are perfect...there's reason to suspect there's plenty more good stuff on the cards were this picked up for a full series” - The Guardian Guide
“Written by Toby Whithouse, whose CV includes Doctor Who, Torchwood and No Angels, this chucklesome, misanthropic comedy has Martin Freeman as Greg and features the excellent Siobhan Finneran and Phil Davis” - The Guardian
“The first of Channel 4's one-off comedy specials was funny...Toby Whithouse's script was nicely turned. I particularly liked the idiotic duty solicitor who acts for Greg. 'I may appear inept', he reassured his worried client, 'but I'm inept like a fox'” - The Independent
“I don't know who gets to choose Pilot of the Month at Channel 4, but Other People gets my vote” - The Observer