Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Fourth series of West show This Country on the cards
DAISY May Cooper says there will be another series of her Cotswolds-based TV series This Country after the launch of her latest programme Am I Being Unreasonable?
Kerry and Lee “Kurtan” Mucklowe will “definitely” be making a return to the small screen once she has finished grieving for friend Michael Slegg.
Fans of the Bafta-winning BBC Three mockumentary about the day-to-day lives of two cousins living in a small Gloucestershire village had thought it had come to an end after the third series of the show written by and starring Daisy May and her brother Charlie.
The final episode of the third series was aired on March 23, 2020 and showed the cousins saying an emotional goodbye to the vicar, a central character in the show which was based on the siblings’ experience of growing up in Cirencester, as he prepared to take on another parish in Bristol.
Series three of the show, which is filmed in Northleach, went into production a month after the death of their close friend Michael Slegg from heart failure in July 2019 at the age of 33. He played Michael “Slugs” and the pair said it would be the end of This Country, which also starred dad Paul Cooper and first aired in 2017.
At a press event Daisy May Cooper said: “This is the last series. I think we [Charlie and I] are ready for something new.”
Charlie agreed and said: “It was tough having to do it without him because he’s such a huge part of the show both on-screen and behind-thescenes.”
But Daisy May, who has gone on to be a success on TV and team captain on Never Mind The Buzzcocks, seems to have had a change of heart.
When asked if they would be making any more episodes of This Country she told Radio Times: “We definitely will, but I’m not ready yet. I found the last series so hard when I lost Michael. I’m still trying to process that.”
The family have often told they were at the lowest ebb when they wrote the show as Daisy May struggled to get work after RADA. They used their experience of growing up without any money in the idyllic part of the world for the award-winning series, which went on to become a massive hit.
Michael was a well-known, popular character around Cirencester and had worked as a groundskeeper in the town’s park and the video rental chain Blockbuster before Daisy and Charlie made him a star. The regular churchgoer was known for his happy nature and sense of humour, suffering ill health from childhood.
In her new series Daisy May plays 40-something mum-of-one Nic who is bored by marriage and grieving a loss she’s unable to share with anyone else until she meets a new mum in town played by her real-life friend and cowriter Selin Hizli.
Am I Being Unreasonable? started on BBC One at 9.50pm last night.