Rob Brydon is back on BBC One with Bill’s Included, a new six-part comedy in which he plays a newly abandoned husband who takes in four university students as lodgers. The series starts on 20 November at 9.30pm, and in an interview with The Guardian, Brydon talks about the show, his long partnership with Steve Coogan, and why he has never chased Hollywood.
What happened
The Guardian met Brydon, now 61, in a basement green room at the BBC to talk about Bill’s Included. Bill’s wife has just left him for the gardener when the series opens. He never fires the gardener, because he likes him, but the rest of his life falls apart. Lonely but still keen to do his civic duty, Bill takes in four lodgers from the local university: Christian (Dylan Brady), Hettie (Ada Player), James (Harry Baxendale) and Zahra (Yasmin Al-Khudhairi).
According to The Guardian, the relationship starts as a clash of generations. The students are noisy and Bill is fussy. When they use phrases such as “checking their privilege” or “trauma bonding”, Bill answers with delighted naivety. Brydon says the tone soon turns affectionate. By episode three, Bill has stopped calling them “the students” and talks about doing “a thing for the kids.”
The Guardian’s interviewer says the opening scenes strongly recall Marion and Geoff, Brydon’s breakthrough sitcom, which he co-wrote with Hugo Blick. Brydon says he only noticed the likeness while watching the new show, pointing out that Marion and Geoff came out 26 years ago. Steve Coogan was one of the executives on that series and, by Brydon’s account, has pushed him for years to go back to character comedy. A first taster of the landlord-and-students idea, made a few years ago, did not work. “I was too creepy,” Brydon told the paper.
The interview also looks back over his career. The Guardian notes that he worked in improv, voiceovers and radio panel shows before Human Remains, his two-hander with Julia Davis, arrived in 2000, when he was 35. Bill’s Included is his first show since the Gavin & Stacey finale. He says that more or less every day someone tells him how much they love that series, in which he played Uncle Bryn.
He was firm about the limits of his ambition. Hosting Would I Lie to You?, now in its 19th series, once worried him because he thought it might stop people taking him seriously as an actor. He decided that he was “never going to be bloody Robert De Niro anyway”. He has five children, and he told The Guardian that family, friends and his garden matter more to him than his career, so he has never been in a position to go off and make big studio films.
Why it matters if you live in United Kingdom
For viewers in the UK, the practical detail is simple. Bill’s Included starts on BBC One on 20 November at 9.30pm. The Guardian describes it as a six-parter, so it is a short series built around one central performance, with the camera on Brydon almost all the time.
If you have recently moved to Britain, the show is an easy way into a strand of British comedy that relies on suburban manners, awkward politeness and wounded middle-aged pride, rather than big jokes. The Guardian compares watching it to being at a circus, except that the tension comes from social embarrassment, not tigers. For anyone still getting used to British humour, Brydon’s work is a useful starting point. Human Remains, Marion and Geoff, Gavin & Stacey and The Trip all lean on the same uncomfortable, self-deceiving characters.
The generation gap at the centre of the series will also feel familiar to many households. University towns across the country rely on lodgings, and the comedy of an older homeowner learning the vocabulary of his young tenants is likely to strike a chord with landlords, parents and students alike.
Would I Lie to You? also comes up in the interview. Brydon told The Guardian that many people say they watch it before bed because it puts them in a good mood. For newcomers looking for gentle, widely shared television, that panel show is a fixture of the British schedule.
What to watch next
The obvious date is 20 November, when the first episode airs. Brydon told The Guardian he would “for sure” make a second season if asked, so the audience’s response will matter.
Fans of his partnership with Coogan have something else to look forward to. The Guardian reports that Northern Lights, the fifth series of The Trip, is coming soon. The show was created by director Michael Winterbottom after he watched the two men joking around on the set of A Cock and Bull Story. Its first episode, set at The Inn at Whitewell, aired in 2010. Brydon admits that when Winterbottom pitched six half-hours with no real script and a series of restaurants, he said they would be lucky to get one good half-hour out of it. He also told The Guardian that one of the hardest parts of making The Trip is when Winterbottom asks him to mock Coogan’s career, because he admires it so much.
With a new sitcom, a returning travel series and a long-running panel show, Brydon is likely to be one of the most visible faces on British television this winter.
Source: The Guardian
Sources
- The Guardian: ‘I’m never going to be bloody Robert De Niro!’: Rob Brydon, the most chipper man on TV, accessed 6 November 2026
The UK, for internationals
One email a week: the week's news for internationals in the UK, new practical guides and what changed in the cities. No spam, unsubscribe any time.
Comments 1