Mel and Sue are going in for the kill
They made their names with a daytime chat show before trading banter over buns and biscuits with Mary Berry on The Great British Bake Off.
Now Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins are taking a different tack, as a pair of unlikely assassins in a new Sky sitcom.
Hitmen casts Sue as Fran and Mel as Jamie, who’ve been best friends for aeons and have stumbled into a shambolic career bumping off a succession of baddies.
Sue said: “With the writers we came up with the backstory that Fran and Jamie were cleaners. We were cleaning in a very big, smart office block. A heavy had come on to me in a none too savoury fashion, and after a tussle, Mel saved the day and killed him. But the heavy was connected to a gangland boss who gave us a choice: either he just killed us or, as he quite liked her style, we could work for him.”
Each episode focuses on a particular hit. The duo also have to deal with a more successful pair of hitmen, Liz and Charles (Tonya Cornelisse and Asim Chaudhry) who never miss an opportunity to humiliate the fellow employees of the menacing ‘Mr K’.
While perhaps not the most obvious stars to play assassins, the performers who met at Cambridge University had no trouble getting inside the heads of nervy Fran and ditsy Jamie.
Sue said: “As Mel and I have been friends for 30 years, it feels like an easy transition into these characters who have known each other since they were kids.”
Mel added: “We’ve been able to tinker and add things in so there will be a real flavour of a proper friendship because that’s really what this is about.”
This week’s opening episode sees the pals babysitting a corrupt lawyer (Jason Watkins) who is tied up with a bag over his head and held in their van, until they’re told it’s time to kill him.