Posted on 25/05/2016 by

'Damned', which was piloted last year on Sky, will feature two social workers 'swimming against a tide of bureaucracy and pedantry'

A sitcom penned by Jo Brand about life in a children’s social services department has been picked up by Channel 4 for a six-part series.

A one-off pilot of ‘Damned’, which sees Brand star alongside Alan Davies as social workers, was screened on Sky two years ago. Channel 4 has now committed to six episodes of the comedy.

The programme will focus on social workers “swimming against a tide of bureaucracy and pedantry, and contending with the absurdities and nationalities of life in a county council office”, Channel 4 said.

Brand, whose mother was a social worker, has previous form in taking a comic look at public services with her Bafta-award winning comedy Getting On set in an NHS hospital.

Speaking about ‘Damned’, Brand said being a social worker was “like being a traffic warden without the perks”.

“As the daughter of a social worker who worked for many years in child protection, I grew up seeing social workers go unrecognised for the good things they did and castigated for the bad,” she said, in comments reported by The Guardian.

“Damned is an attempt to portray the tragi-comic lives of social workers – always under pressure, always in possession of a grim sense of humour and always wrong in the eyes of the public.”

The series will start filming next month.

Source: The Guardian