Matt Lucas confirms Little Britain's return with big changes to avoid backlash

21 December 2023 , 06:56

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Matt Lucas and David Walliams will make big Little Britain changes (Image: Dave Hogan/Getty Images)

Matt Lucas has confirmed he and David Walliams have begun work on a new series of Little Britain - but things will look very different 20 years on.

The duo have started on the re-boot and there will be a diverse range of writers and actors. The programme will be risk-free after the pair came under fire in recent years for the controversial sketch show. Back in 2020, the show was hauled off streaming sites with the pair apologising for their use of blackface.

Characters like Desiree DeVere, 'Thai bride' Ting Tong, Only Gay in the Village Dafydd Thomas and trans duo Emily and Florence won't be back and the pair are working on ways to adapt the poorly-aged programme to avoid future backlash. Matt admits mistakes were made and the pair have said sorry for parts of the BBC series from two decades ago.

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Comedian Matt confirmed the return and said: “The show will be different in many ways, we are talking about how we can have diverse talent on screen and in the writers’ room and conceive it as something which is just not about me and David playing absolutely everyone.

“That is something we should have done but didn’t do back then," the funnyman went on in an interview with The Sun : "But we were making the show at the same time as many other people who were doing what we were doing and had that approach.”

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The BBC took down the offensive series from its iPlayer and episodes were also removed from the streaming platform Netflix. At the time, the broadcaster said that 'times have changed' when speaking about their decision. "There's a lot of historical programming available on BBC iPlayer, which we regularly review," a BBC spokesperson said. "Times have changed since Little Britain first aired so it is not currently available on BBC iPlayer."

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In 2017, Matt expressed his regret over some jokes and said he said it was "lazy" to “get a laugh just by playing black characters." He told The Big Issue: "If I could go back and do Little Britain again, I wouldn’t make those jokes about transvestites. I wouldn’t play black characters. Basically, I wouldn’t make that show now. It would upset people. We made a more cruel kind of comedy than I’d do now."

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, they wanted to apologise again over the blackface controversy. Identical statements read: "Matt & I have both spoken publicly in recent years of our regret that we played characters of other races. Once again we want to make it clear that it was wrong & we are very sorry."

"David and I have both spoken publicly in recent years of our regret that we played characters of other races. Once again we want to make it clear that it was wrong and we are very sorry." Streaming bosses' decision to wipe all traces of Little Britain from their services was met with a mixed response.

Sam Elliott-Gibbs