He can make us laugh and tug at our heartstrings, so it’s no surprise that his latest project will see David Tennant do both.
Variety reports the Doctor Who star is set to play the dad of Rosie (The Royals‘s Miley Locke), a 9-year-old girl with severe learning disabilities in a new five-part comedy drama called There She Goes.
Alongside him will be Jessica Hynes, the W1A and Spaced star who also played Joan Redfern, (the Tenth Doctor fell in love with her when he was the human John Smith in “Family of Blood“/”Human Nature,”) and her granddaughter Verity Newman in “The End of Time.” Now, Jessica is booked to play Emily, David’s wife and Rosie’s mother.
The series is drawn from the real-life experience of writer Shaun Pye, whose daughter was born in 2006 with a rare chromosomal disorder.
Each episode will explore the family’s day-to-day life, from taking Rosie to the park to explaining that not every day is her birthday. Meanwhile, a second timeline will spool back to 2006 and show the effect of welcoming a severely disabled child into the family, including how it impacted Rosie’s big brother Ben (Edan Hayhurst, who played a 10-year-old Albert Einstein in last year’s Genius).
The comedy starts shooting in July, meaning it’s likely to air in the U.K. at the end of this year or early 2019. That might put it ahead of David’s other upcoming shows, Good Omens, which is due to see the light of day some time in 2019, and The Americons, which sees him reunite with his erstwhile TARDIS-mate Catherine Tate.
Merman, the production company co-founded and run by Catastrophe star and co-writer Sharon Horgan, is making There She Goes, which means two things: it’ll likely have a U.S. outing, and it’ll be a razor-sharp and bittersweet comedy.
Allons-y! Sounds like a perfect fit for David.
Are you excited to see David and Jessica reunite for this?