First Look: Nicola Coughlan & Lydia West Star In Channel 4’s Big Mood

A new comedy for the new year

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An ‘audacious’ new comedy about female friendship will land on Channel 4 in early 2024, starring Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton, Derry Girls) and Lydia West (It’s A Sin, Inside Man). Here’s everything we can expect from Big Mood.

Big Mood: Channel 4’s New Comedy Starring Nicola Coughlan & Lydia West

Pictured (L-R): Eddie (Lydia West) Maggie (Nicola Coughlan)

Written by playwright Camilla Whitehill, we can’t wait for this brand new series, coming to Channel 4 in early 2024. With two powerhouses at the fore, Nicola Coughlan and Lydia West, we’re told the six-part series will chronicle ‘the messy pitfalls and idiosyncrasies of navigating adulthood through wicked humour, daft anecdotes, and unsettling truths’. You might know Coughlan best as Penelope Featherington in Bridgerton or Clare in Derry Girls, but she’ll shake of her teenage years in Big Mood to play Maggie, a young woman with bi-polar disorder approaching her thirties. Meanwhile, Lydia West has starred in the likes of Years and Years, It’s a Sin and Inside Man, and will take the role of Eddie, Maggie’s best friend, in this upcoming comedy.

‘Getting my own Channel 4 comedy still feels like some kind of long form prank, Punk’d style,’ says series creator and writer Whitehill. ‘But on the off chance it isn’t, I am beside myself to be making this show with such an incredible team of people, a cast that I’d be jealous of if it wasn’t my cast, and for a channel that’s produced some of my favourite shows of all time.’

‘When I first met Camilla Whitehill long, long ago, during the time of Indie Sleaze, I quickly realised she was one of the funniest and most talented people I’d ever met,’ Coughlan says. ‘It was always our dream for us to work on something together, and now Channel 4 are making that dream come true. I can’t wait to make this show with this amazing group of people.’

Pictured: Maggie (Nicola Coughlan)

‘I’m so happy to be working with Camilla and Nicola on this project,’ adds West. ‘The writing is genius, and the subject explores the mental health struggles that all of our generation face – coupled with how to navigate complicated, loving and nuanced friendships. Channel 4 is the perfect home for this heart-warming, hilarious, savvy comedy and I feel truly honoured to tell this story which touched my heart.’

What Is Big Mood About?

Described as a ‘rebellious portrayal of female friendships’ spliced with an insight into the perplexities of serious mental illness, Big Mood centres on best friends Maggie (Coughlan) and Eddie (West) who have lived in each other’s pockets for 10 years, with the duo approaching their thirties. But when Maggie’s bipolar disorder makes an unwelcome and untimely return – the girls have the rest of their lives looming, with careers hanging in the balance – Eddie questions whether this friendship is really in the best interests of the both of them.

Channel 4 says: ‘It’s a pivotal point in both their lives, bringing to the surface those all-important questions – could sleeping with your former History teacher be the key to happiness? Is a basement Rat Hotel a functional alternative to pest control? With their twenties behind them, Maggie and Eddie’s relationship faces the future – can it survive?’