BBC3’s Bodies to conclude with 90-minute special

Published Tuesday 25 July 2006 at 17:00 by Micky Alexander

BBC Three series Bodies will finish with a 90-minute final episode from writer Jed Mercurio and director John Strickland, the Corporation has announced.

Max Beesley, Patrick Baladi, Tamzin Malleson, Keith Allen and Neve McIntosh will star in the programme, described as “tense, gripping and scarily unsettling” by BBC Three controller Julian Bellamy, as part of the channel’s autumn schedule.

Details of Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood from Russell T Davies were also confirmed. John Barrowman will reprise his role as Captain Jack Harkness alongside Eve Myles, Burn Gorman and Naoko Mori. The series is written by Davies and Chris Chibnall, with PJ Hammond, Toby Whithouse and Helen Raynor. “Torchwood is just the kind of cutting edge, ambitious drama of real scale that we’re seeking,” said Bellamy.

New sitcom I’m With Stupid, the pilot episode of which aired earlier this year, will return for a full series. The show stars Mark Benton and Paul Henshall and deals with the friendship of a wheelchair user and a homeless man.

Meanwhile, Jocelyn Lee Esien of 3 Non-Blondes returns with sketch show Little Miss Jocelyn, while Pulling is a sitcom from the team behind Monkey Dust and Dogtown from Emma and Beth Kilcoyne concerns the bizarre goings-on of fictional seaside town Horton-Le-Hole.

A series of pre-watershed comedy pilots will also feature. Entitled Behind Closed Doors, it will include Bash, starring Susan Earl as a woman confronting maturity while attempting to deal with various friends and family, Lab Rats, starring, and co-written by, The Thick Of It’s Chris Addison and produced by Armando Iannucci and Simon Nicholls, and And Martin…, written by Mark Watson.