Viewers are used to tuning into the latest episode of its rebooted Gladiators – where the daughter of boxing legend Frank Bruno recently showed off her athletic prowess. Soap lovers may be expecting to see the next installment of Casualty.
However, shows such as these have been dropped from BBC One next weekend in order to make way for coverage of the football. It’s the FA Cup quarter-finals next Saturday (March 29) and Brighton and Hove Albion take on Nottingham Forrest.
The BBC’s dedicated FA Cup coverage will start from 5pm and normal programming won’t resume until 10pm. It means fans of the usual Saturday night telly will have to wait for the semi-finals of Gladiator, which will now air on Saturday April 5.
And Casualty lovers will have to wait another week for their fix of hospital drama as it has been moved to the following weekend. It’ll come after more disruption to the BBC’s schedule due to Comic Relief.
The Comic Relief programme will air from 7pm on Friday (March 21) and will take the place of BBC One’s usual offerings, such as The One Show. The Death in Paradise finale has also been pushed back to the following Friday, March 28.
Casualty has also been dropped from the schedule, in order to make room for the footy(Image: PA)
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The Red Nose Day special will see Inbetweeners stars James Buckley and Joe Thomas play formerly feuding Oasis brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher for the big sketch. The pair have completely transformed into the Gallagher brothers, sporting comically-large eyebrows, a trademark Parka jacket and suitably moody facial expressions.
A promo pic of the project shows James and Joe recreating Liam and Noel’s black and white reunion photoshoot. James is clearly playing Liam, given he’s pictured in Liam’s parka with his hands in his pocket, and Joe will play older brother Noel.
Gladiators normally airs every Saturday night(Image: BBC / © Hungry Bear Media Ltd)
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It’s titled Oasis: The Reunion: The Movie, and will follow Liam and Noel’s rise to stardom from working class Manchester lads to global superstars. James said he is a “huge Oasis fan” and that playing Liam was “a dream come true”.
“I had such a fun time with Joe, making this sketch for Comic Relief, and was honoured to be asked to be a part of it,” he added. Joe said it was “both thrilling a nerve wracking” to do the sketch, adding: “I grew up watching Comic Relief and the big sketch was always a highlight of the night.”
The Inbetweeners ran from 2008 until 2010 and starred James and Joe alongside Simon Bird (Will McKenzie) and Blake Harrison (Neil Sutherland). The series was turned into two films – one in 2011 and another in 2014.
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Joe revealed that talks of a revival have “happened in various forms” – during a chat on James Gill’s Always Be Comedy podcast. He said: “All of us feel it would be nice to do. We’re all still around, we’re all still in each other’s lives. We all still like each other.”
“And if it was something that came up, I think we would want to do it. I feel like we all still really like each other. We’ve all been able to go away and get various monkeys off our backs, in terms of things that we felt we needed to do other than The Inbetweeners to prove something to ourselves.”
