Bleak Expectations, Radio 4's spoof Dickensian melodrama, is to be the latest Radio 4 comedy to transfer to television.
Scriptwriter Mark Evans has been commissioned to write a TV version of his radio show for BBC2, to be called Old Shop of Stuff. It will be overseen by head of BBC in-house comedy Mark Freeland and radio producer Gareth Edwards, who will also produce the TV version.
A series is the most likely option but it may air as a one-off on the channel depending on how the script is developed, according to the BBC. The TV version has been scheduled for a 2012 broadcast to mark the bicentenary of Charles Dickens' birth and will appear alongside other programming about the writer.
"For many years we have been looking to do the Victorian romp and there it is sitting on our doorstep," Freeland told MediaGuardian.co.uk.
According to the BBC, it is too early in the development process to say whether the TV version will retain the cast of the radio comedy. In the radio version Richard Johnson plays Philip "Pip" Bin, inventor of the bin, and his two sisters, Poppy and Pippa, whose idyllic life is disrupted by the death of their father and the madness of their mother.
They are then locked away by their unpleasant guardian, Mr Gently Benevolent. The series centres on attempts by Pip and his sisters to free themselves from Benevolent with the help of Harry Biscuit, whose father invented the biscuit.
The TV commission will see the show, which has aired for four series on Radio 4, join a rich tradition of comedies that made successful transfers to BBC TV. These include Goodness Gracious Me, The League of Gentlemen, Miranda Hart's Joke Shop and Little Britain.
"When I talk to people in America the one thing that makes them shut up is when you tell them that at the BBC we have a radio department – there is nothing like it in America," Freeland said.
He also said reports that BBC1 controller Danny Cohen was looking for more "blue collar" sitcoms had been misunderstood and the furore that greeted his remarks did not bother him.
"I am not under pressure to come up with a blue collar sitcom," he said, suggesting that sitcoms The Royle Family and Come Fly With Me had these qualities.
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