British comedy has a long tradition of offices where nobody is quite good enough at the job. No Big Deal adds another. The firm is Janus, the business is venture capital, and the hunt for the next billion-pound business idea usually ends in disaster. The pilot episode is out free on YouTube and can be watched here.
The firm and its four problems
Brilliant and unpredictable in equal measure, Derek Tudor cannot keep his thoughts to himself. Lydia de Mabro leads the firm in practice, after its only successful investment earned her a board seat. Then there is John Stevens, a founder who is well-meaning and spectacularly underqualified, and who inherited the money that started the business. Perry Kent has the investment banking experience, and regards Janus as a stepping stone to a US Green Card.
The ideas they are asked to fund include fart-proof underwear, clinical toilets and questionable items of sex furniture, and every promising investment ends in comic disaster. According to its writer, none of it is entirely invented.
“I wrote No Big Deal during my time as an angel investor and investment manager. Every storyline began with a real incident that has been exaggerated and expanded for comic effect. I also wrote all of the original music used throughout the series, which was performed and recorded with the help of my good friend and outstanding musician Andy Pike.”
Andrew Dickinson, who created the show, spent his working life as an angel investor and investment manager before writing it.
An experiment in how a comedy gets made
No Big Deal is believed to be the world’s first sitcom written by a human and produced entirely using AI, by the UK studio ModeLabs.ai. The arrangement came about because the traditional route was closed off.
“I originally planned to make the pilot through traditional television production, but it quickly became clear that the process would be slow and prohibitively expensive. When I met the team at ModeLabs, I realised AI offered an entirely new way to bring the project to life.”
The work that followed was not automatic. Every shot and performance had to be specified, assessed and rebuilt, and the script went through more than 65 rewrites.
“Making the Pilot wasn’t simply a case of pressing a button. Every shot, camera movement, performance, line reading, location and visual detail had to be carefully planned, refined and recreated through an iterative creative process between the writing and production teams. Even while we were making it, the script was rewritten more than 65 times.”
Dan Hawthorne of ModeLabs.ai expects the method to attract more comment than the comedy, at least at first.
“Nobody questions whether the CGI in a Marvel film is ‘cheating’. People judge entertainment by how it makes them feel, not by the tools used to create it.
“No Big Deal is brilliantly written and genuinely funny. AI isn’t the punchline – it’s simply the production technology that made an ambitious independent comedy possible.”
Dickinson, for his part, is happy to be judged on the episode.
“I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve created together. I still laugh at these characters, and I hope audiences will too.”
No Big Deal episode one can be watched now, free of charge, on YouTube, here.
The series maintains a presence on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X and Reddit.
