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EXCLUSIVE: The BBC has renewed comedy series We Might Regret This for two more seasons, providing new impetus for its producers’ hunt for a U.S. buyer.
A recommission has looked likely for some time following strong reviews in the UK and two more six-part runs have now been officially confirmed to Deadline.
From creators Kyla Harris and Lee Getty, We Might Regret This follows Freya (Kyla Harris), a woman in love who leaves her native Canada for London to be with her boyfriend, Abe (Darren Boyd), a to-year-old straight-laced lawyer with whom she shares a loving relationship and an electric sexual connection.
Freya is a 30-something artist who is a tetraplegic, which means she is paralyzed below the neck and all four limbs are affected due to a spinal cord injury. She requires the assistance of a 24-hour PA, an intimate role she offers to her chaotic and impulsive best friend Jo (Elena Saurel).
Aasiya Shah, Sally Phillips and Edward Bluemel also star in the series from Roughcut Television, which produces for BBC Two and BBC iPlayer in association with Village Roadshow Television. Ash Atalla, Alex Smith and Rebecca Murrell are executive producers for Roughcut. Village Roadshow Television’s Alix Jaffe and Louis Santor also executive produce.
The basis of the series was inspired by Harris and Getty, the latter of which has served as the former’s carer at various points in their two-decade-long friendship. While real moments are injected into Freya and Jo’s storylines, the story is fictional.
“Season 1 was just the tip of the comedy iceberg and we’re beyond grateful to the BBC for their continued support and commitment to exploring disability, messy relationships and unparalleled intimacy on screen,” said Getty and Harris in a statement.
Their experiences will be familiar to other wheelchair users, including We Might Regret This producer and Roughcut chief Atalla, who is best known for producing the British mockumentary series The Office, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, and Channel 4’s The I.T. Crowd.
Atalla said We Might Regret This is, “a show both full of heart and close to our hearts,” adding he was “so happy we get to make more of this series – both complex and silly, surely the best place to be.”
Jon Petrie, BBC Director of Comedy added: “We’re proud to commission more episodes of We Might Regret This. Kyla, Lee and the team have tapped into something truly unique — crafting comedy from deeply personal moments with such sharpness and heart. There’s still so much laughter to uncover in Freya’s world, and we can’t wait to see how they push the boundaries of comedy and character even further.”
Atalla spoke to Deadline alongside Alix Jaffe, a senior executive at Village Roadshow Television, which is based in LA, recently about their plans for the show. Their partnership on the British series was made with the hope that a U.S. co-production partner would supercharge the hunt for an American broadcaster or streamer for a nationwide release. However, since Deadline first revealed those plans in June last year, when We Might Regret This was officially greenlit in the U.K., they are yet to secure a home the series stateside.
The situation emerged against a backdrop of a TV and film sector that has launched few programs centered on disabled characters. However, conversations around disability representation on TV are increasing and Roughcut has been at the forefront of progress in the UK, notably being the co-producer of both We Might Regret This and another disability-themed comedy, Tim Renkow’s BBC Three series Jerk.
“I met Kyla at a cocktail bar in London and she was keen to discuss an idea she had,” said Atalla. “She pitched me this very specific idea involving a carer that she needs and relies on heavily in her life and who is unwelcome by her partner and the complications that arose in their life due to that. She put it so succinctly to me and I felt so much of my own life in this one. She shared this anecdote about her wedding night that encapsulated the complicated nature of having that need to have someone to depend on.”
While the series does have a tetraplegic at the center of its story, her disability is not what the show is about. We Might Regret This avoids using tropes and stereotypes in storylines that relate to her disability and other unrelated topics, as well.
“One of the things I’m most proud of is that we stay away from tropes like, ‘the wicked woman separating a marriage’ or ‘evil stepmother.’ In episode 3, we explore the financial complications between Abe and Sally as they split their assets. Divorcing couples argue over money,” shared Atalla. “This plot is specifically about Abe and Freya’s needing money because they want to adapt the house for her. So it takes what’s a fairly standard situation—and I’ve been through it myself—and we put it into the context of our show. We show a messy, real-life discussion about what that looks like [for this couple] and I’m really proud of it.”
The lack of disability representation has broadly been dismal across both film and television, with very little progress made by networks and streamers to improve the statistics throughout the years.
On TV, a Nielson report in September 2022, found that out of 923,229 total television program titles available, only 4.1% of programs feature disability themes. With an estimated 26% of adults in the U.S. living with a disability out of a population of 334 million, the community is largely unseen or inaccurately represented. The report also found that characters with visible disabilities were represented at only 1%.
More than 95 % of all characters with disabilities seen on television are played by non-disabled actors, noted UCLA in 2021.
According to a study released by the USC Annenberg’s Inclusion Initiative in August— which studied the inequality in 1,700 popular films for gender, race/ethnicity, LBTQ+, and disability— found that 2.2% of characters were depicted with a disability across the Top 100 films in 2023. The percentage remained similar in 2022 and 2015, showing little growth in the representation department across nearly a decade. Within the 2.2% of characters that did exist, just over one-third were inconsequential to the plot.
Additionally, men were represented more than women at 71.7% with the majority (54.6%) being white and straight; zero of the 2.2% disabled characters were LGBTQ+. No stats were available revealing how many disabled characters were played by disabled people.
The situation is hardly better in the UK, where the Creative Diversity Network’s recent seventh Diamond report revealed off-screen disability representation had 8%, up 1.5% on the previous year but still miles behind the national average. A target of 9% is years behind schedule.
“lt was always part of the plan to produce and create six episodes for the BBC,” said Jaffe. “Fortunately, the BBC has greenlit [two new seasons] and we want to find the right home for it [in the U.S.] with the right partner. We want to give it the home it deserves because it’s a wonderful show and we’re really proud of it. It stands on its own as it’s relatable, it’s funny, it’s about friendships, relationships, intimacy, all things that anyone can relate to. The show has been compared to Fleabag which found its way here and found a huge audience and we think [We Might Regret This] would, as well.”
Atalla and Roughcut are represented by CAA.
