Channel 4 to air controversial comedy about disability

By Anne Cassidy, campaignlive.co.uk, Monday, 02 November 2009 10:33AM

LONDON - Channel 4 is launching a provocative new comedy drama series about disabled people marooned on a desert island.

Channel 4 turns disability into a comedy with new series

The reality-show parody, called Cast Offs, is from the writers of Skins, Shameless and The Thick Of It, and the script contains sex and politically incorrect jokes.

The series, which starts this month, revolves around six characters: a woman with cherubism, a blind man, a deaf woman, a paraplegic man, a woman with dwarfism and a thalidomide-affected man.

It is about the making of a Survivor-style programme with disabled people and each character is played by an actor with the same disability.

Cast Offs is supposed to be both funny and provoking and, according one of its producers Joel Wilson, aims to do for disability what the 90s drama Queer As Folk did for gay people.

This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk