David Farnor | On 29, Jan 2019

Toby Jones returns to BBC Two this year for new comedy-drama Don’t Forget the Driver, and the first image of the series gives us a taste of what’s down he road.

Written and created by the BAFTA nominated actor and Obie award winning playwright Tim Crouch (An Oak Tree, Beginners, Adler & Gibb), Don’t Forget the Driver stars Jones (Detectorists) in a dark comedy set in sunny, seaside Bognor Regis. It explores what it means to live, work and parent at a point when the entire UK population is having to come to terms with the changing colour of their passports.

Commissioned by Patrick Holland, Controller of BBC Two, and Shane Allen, Controller of BBC Comedy, the six-part series tells the story of a coach driver and single dad. Toby Jones plays Peter Green, who is at full stretch in a life of ordinary routine; clip on ties, limp packed lunches, vehicle checks, round-trip coach journeys ferrying church groups to donkey sanctuaries and Japanese tourists to Canterbury Cathedral. He’s just about coping with his disaffected daughter Kayla, played by Erin Kellyman, (bored to a state of almost total inertia in a place that has nothing for her) and Joy (Marcia Warren), his mum, whose life is rapidly descending into confusion and fear. The discovery of a dead body on the docile Bognor shoreline and an unsettling meeting with a new arrival in town throws Green’s life into chaos – a lost soul in need of assistance, who he could help. But will he? Can he?

Don’t Forget The Driver follows a group of people struggling with their place in the world, their own sense of identity, and reveals how, in one single moment, even in the most ordinary of lives, an accidental encounter can change the course of everything.

The series stars Toby Jones, seen above with Danny Kirrane, Marcia Warren, Erin Kellyman, Jo Eaton-Kent, Luwam Teklizgi, Wills Whittington, Claire Rushbrook, Dino Kelly and Bharti Patel. The comedy is Executive Produced by Jane Featherstone (The Split, Broadchurch, Humans) and Naomi de Pear (Flowers, The Bisexual, River) for Sister Pictures, and BBC Comedy Commissioning Editor Kate Daughton. It also sees Holly Pullinger (previous Line-Producer credits include Save Me, Flowers and The Bisexual), step into her first producer role to produce the series for Sister Pictures.

Co-creators Toby Jones and Tim Crouch say: “Don’t Forget The Driver is a love-song to Bognor. It’s filmed with care, attention and a warm, gentle wit. The series is about a moment when a seemingly small life interacts with the wider world. Bognor sits on the edge of England – facing out towards Europe. The modern world has arrived and yet Bognor still has the unmistakeable air of a seaside town holding onto its traditional values. It’s like two rivers joining – a sometimes mis-remembered past and an unknown future. Bognor has become a good place to explore many of the themes of national identity that are gripping our country. When we were filming, we were very lucky with the weather as well – Bognor really put on a show for us and we hope viewers love it as much as we do.”

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