An independent British comedy has reached the screen through an artificial intelligence studio rather than a television production company, and its pilot episode is now free to watch on YouTube here.
No Big Deal, released in London on 14 September, was written and created by Andrew Dickinson and produced by the UK AI studio ModeLabs.ai. So far as those involved are aware, no other sitcom has been written by a human and then produced from start to finish using AI.
Traditional route ruled out
Dickinson said the project had originally been planned as a conventional television production, and that the economics did not work. “I originally planned to make the pilot through traditional television production, but it quickly became clear that the process would be slow and prohibitively expensive. When I met the team at ModeLabs, I realised AI offered an entirely new way to bring the project to life.
The method that replaced it was not a matter of typing in a brief and waiting for a finished programme, he said. “Making the Pilot wasn’t simply a case of pressing a button. Every shot, camera movement, performance, line reading, location and visual detail had to be carefully planned, refined and recreated through an iterative creative process between the writing and production teams. Even while we were making it, the script was rewritten more than 65 times.
Writing came first
Dickinson, a former angel investor and investment manager, wrote the scripts from incidents in his own career, and also wrote all of the original music heard in the series, which was performed and recorded with the musician Andy Pike.
The series follows the staff of Janus, an investment firm chasing the next billion-pound business idea, usually with disastrous results. Derek Tudor is a brilliant but unpredictable investor who cannot keep his thoughts to himself, while Lydia de Mabro runs the firm in all but name after its only successful investment earned her a board seat.
Then there is John Stevens, who means well but is spectacularly underqualified for the business he inherited the money to start, and Perry Kent, whose experience as an investment banker is really being spent on a route to a US Green Card. Across the desk come proposals for fart-proof underwear, clinical toilets and questionable items of sex furniture, and whatever looks promising collapses into comic disaster.
Studio defends the method
Dan Hawthorne, of ModeLabs.ai, said the debate over AI in entertainment misses the point of what audiences actually respond to. “Nobody questions whether the CGI in a Marvel film is ‘cheating’. People judge entertainment by how it makes them feel, not by the tools used to create it. Of this production, he said: “No Big Deal is brilliantly written and genuinely funny. AI isn’t the punchline – it’s simply the production technology that made an ambitious independent comedy possible.
Hawthorne added: “We’re incredibly proud of what our team has achieved. Combining emerging AI technology with talented writers and filmmakers has opened up exciting new creative possibilities, and we’re grateful to Andrew for trusting us with his vision.”
Dickinson said: “I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve created together. I still laugh at these characters, and I hope audiences will too.”
Episode one of No Big Deal can be watched now, free of charge on YouTube, here.
Viewers can keep up with the series through YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X and Reddit.
