Meera Syal to star in BBC Two's Beautiful People

Starring Meera Syal in her first comedy role since The Kumars At No 42, and Olivia Colman from That Mitchell And Webb Look and the BAFTA award-winning Peep Show, Beautiful People is a new sitcom for BBC Two and will air later this year.

It's 1997. Thirteen-year-old Simon and his best friend Kyle can't open a fridge door without belting out a show tune. And his family is even more eccentric.

Mum Debbie (played by Olivia Colman) is a whirlwind of matriarchal warmth in killer heels. Dad Andy is a lovable Irish softy and avid wine maker and older sister Ashlene is a wannabe ghetto queen.

Then there's family lodger blind Aunty Hayley (Meera Syal) and lobotomised grandma Narg (gran backwards) who lost God and found a foul mouth.

Based on the childhood memoirs of window-dresser extraordinaire, style arbiter and writer Simon Doonan, the sitcom follows his childhood reminiscences of escaping the grey gloom of suburban Reading to live amongst the Beautiful People - before coming to the realisation that true beauty, as ever, is closer than we think.

Alongside Meera Syal and Olivia Colman the cast includes Aidan McArdle (Not Only But Always), Layton Williams (Billy Elliot in the West End) and Samuel Barnett (The History Boys). Thirteen-year-old Luke Ward-Wilkinson (Wild At Heart) plays young Simon.

The series is written by Jonathan Harvey whose previous credits include Gimme Gimme Gimme (BBC Two) and Beautiful Thing.