Barmy Dale was conceived and created last May during the first coronavirus lockdown by two writers who have known each other for more than twenty years.
Martin Skellern and Stuart Wheeldon came together over Zoom and started to discuss the idea of creating a short comedy series based on the lives of fictional residents of a fictional town in Northern England.
One of the issues that kept coming up was how they could help the large amount of people who were stuck inside isolating with nothing to do. From these conversations, the concept of Barmy Dale came about, with characters Keith and Dan and their long-suffering wives starting to form on paper. They were all reaching or had reached retirement and their lives would be followed during and after lockdown.
After a pilot series was well received, series one consisting of five episodes was broadcast over five months on BBC Radio Derby and it was also released as a podcast series.
It soon became apparent that Barmy Dale was attracting a larger audience with people from around the country downloading the podcast and an audience quickly developed in the United States.
An award nomination for Best Comedy Podcast followed (Discoverpods) and an article by Feedspot mentioned Barmy Dale as one of the 15 sitcom podcasts to follow in 2020 and 2021.
The content and the humour in the series takes its influence from classic sitcoms of the 70’s and 80’s, which seemed to appeal to the mainly over 50s audience.
The comedy sitcom was so entrenched in the style and form of the likes of Hi De Hi and Allo Allo, actors of these series and from that generation of television were approached to be part of Barmy Dale.
The final episode of Series one featured Jeffery Holland (Hi De Hi), Vicki Michelle (Allo Allo), Mike Fenton Stevens (The Legacy of Reginald Perrin) and Karl Howman (Brush Strokes).
The new Series, now in pre-production, will see them return. They will be joined by Susan George (Straw Dogs) as the Mayor of Barmy Dale and guest actors including Nicholas Lumley (Peregrine Winstanley) and Louise Michelle (the real-life daughter of Vicki Michelle) who will play Tracy the daughter of Vicki Michelle’s character Angie Edwards. Juliet Howland and Camilla Simson return to their roles of Gracie and Sharon.
Series two of Barmy Dale will be broadcast on various community radio stations across the UK from April and following this, released as a podcast series.
