Robert Webb & Isy Suttie reunite for CBBC basketball sitcom High Hoops – British Comedy Guide

Robert Webb and Isy Suttie are reuniting for a CBBC sitcom about a hopeless school basketball team, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal.

Suttie plays Brid, the mother of a charmingly reckless secondary school player in High Hoops, airing later this year, which follows the teenage girl’s chaotic pursuit of success, fame, love and the perfect hook shot. Webb is Mr Holt, the Midvale School headmaster.

Written and created by Sinead Fagan (The Johnny & Inel Show), a lifelong basketball player and coach, and filmed in Halifax, West Yorkshire, the ten 30-minute episodes focus on the failing Midvale Vipers and the arrival of the tall, gaffe-prone but unstoppable Aoife O’Neill.

The show sees Webb, who played Jeremy in Peep Show and Suttie, who was Dobby in the sitcom, appearing on screen together for the first time together since a 2016 comedians episode of Pointless, a year after their much-loved, long-running Channel 4 comedy with David Mitchell finished.

Starring Darci Hull (Matilda) as Aoife, High Hoops is described as “a show about determination, finding your tribe, and being true to yourself” and is “a sharp, witty, and aspirational comedy set in an urban comprehensive. Aoife’s team are the gang you want to be part of. And each episode sees them face a new challenge and edge closer to their hoop dreams”.

Following Aoife and her family as they move to a new area and a new school, she sees this as an opportunity to change her life. But the teenager soon discovers that the only place she really fits in is the school basketball team. And they’re terrible. Can she turn them around?

The series was commissioned after a 2022 casting call for girls over 5’7″ who could play basketball or netball and had “fantastic comic ability”.

It is part of a wider announcement of CBBC commissioning this morning which also includes Primrose Railway Children, a dramatic adaptation of Jacqueline Wilson‘s novel, inspired by E. Nesbit’s classic The Railway Children, and the recommission of Enid Blyton adaptation Malory Towers for a sixth and seventh series, made by David Walliams‘s King Bert Productions. The latter sees model and actor Ellie Goldstein join the cast, who made history as the first model with Down’s Syndrome to feature in British Vogue.

High Hoops‘ lead director is Ian Curtis (Horrible Histories, Sorry, I’ve Got No Head). The producer is Dominique Molloy, whose screen credits include Man Like Mobeen, for West Yorkshire-based Can Can Productions, the fledgling company set up by former Have I Got News For You producer Rebecca Papworth, who also spent time as a commissioning executive for BBC Nations and Regions.

The show was commissioned by Patricia Hidalgo, Sarah Muller and Melissa Hardinge, with Anita Burgess the commissioning executive for CBBC.