Comedians in Court as U.K. Trial Kicks Off Over Sitcom ‘Copied’ by Steve Coogan’s Production Company
London’s High Court could have been mistaken for the Comedy Store on Monday after a stellar line-up of entertainers took to the witness stand to testify in a case over a “copied” sitcom.
Comedian Harry Deansway, who filed the lawsuit under his legal name Joshua Rinkoff, has accused Steve Coogan’s production company Baby Cow of copying his 2013 YouTube series “Shambles,” which blended sitcom and stand-up.
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Coogan, who co-founded Baby Cow alongside producer Henry Normal in 1998 before selling the majority shareholding to BBC Studios, is not named in the suit and there is no suggestion he was involved in the alleged copycat series, titled “Live at the Moth Club.” Day to day operations at the prodco are managed by CEO Sarah Monteith while Coogan remains a shareholder and creative director.
Deansway alleges that it is Baby Cow’s comedy chief Rupert Majendie, with whom he’d both worked and socialized over a number of years on the U.K. comedy circuit, who was responsible for copying his series. Both Majendie, who also gave evidence in the trial on Monday, and Baby Cow strongly dispute the claim.
In legal filings and on the witness stand, Deansway pointed to similarities between his series, “Shambles” and “Live at the Moth Club,” which ran for one season on UKTV in 2022. Among them were, he claimed, characters such as a club owner whose niece works as a barmaid, an episode in which the comedians suspect the club is haunted and the blending of sitcom and stand-up, which Deansway said offered an opportunity to “showcase the newer comedians in a brand-new original way.”
Deansway testified that Majendie, a comedy booker and TV producer, would have been aware of “Shambles” since it was promoted on social media by a number of prominent comedians. He also said that he had pitched Majendie an “early version” of the show under a different title when the producer was working at the BBC (“He liked enough to put it forward to his boss at the BBC,” Deansway said in his witness statement) while another comedian, Adam Hess, who wrote the pilot episode of “Live at the Moth Club” had appeared in the second season of “Shambles.”
During cross-examination by Baby Cow’s barrister Jonathan Hill, Deansway said that the naturalistic filming style of “Shambles,” akin to a mockumentary or cinema verite, was also present in “Live at the Moth Club” and disputed the lawyer’s claim that the events in “Shambles” were improbable, written for comic effect. “It is fair to say ‘Shambles’ is not a realistic show, the events that take place are not realistic events,” Hill said, to which Deansway replied: “I wouldn’t agree with that. I think they are realistic [events] that might happen at a comedy club.”
When Hill pressed the comedian on this claim, pointing to a storyline in which the comedians are interrogated over a stolen pizza, Deansway said: “There’s some weird people in comedy so I think that’s realistic.”
During Majendie’s turn on the witness stand, he testified that any similarities between the two series were a coincidence and denied there was any possible crossover, saying he did not know about Deansway’s series when he began developing the show at Baby Cow. Asked by Deansway’s barrister Timothy Sampson whether both shows had the “same underlying idea” Majendie replied: “I wouldn’t agree with that, no.”
Baby Cow also called on comedians Ellie White (“The Windors”), Alexander Owen (“A Very Royal Scandal”) and Ben Ashenden (“Jurassic World Dominion”) to testify on its behalf, since all three had written for “Live at the Moth Club” after being hired by Majendie. All three denied having been aware of “Shambles” when they began working with Baby Cow and said that any similarities between the two shows were coincidental.
Despite the seriousness of the subject matter, which is being heard before High Court Recorder Amanda Michaels, there were some laughs in the courtroom, first when Ashenden, who was appearing via videolink from the set of a new project, told the court: “I’d like to apologise for the fact I’m dressed as a medieval baker – I’m about to film a scene.”
White also caused the courtroom to erupt in giggles when, responding to a question from Sampson about a contract with Baby Cow she had signed alongside her comedy partner Natasia Demetriou, she confirmed Demetriou’s company had, at the time, been called Horny4Cash Limited.
The trial continues.
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